A Perplexing Case of Mystery Seeds

Last month, while clearing out a cubby beside his desk in our home office, my husband found this:

I have no idea how old these seeds are or where I got them.  That's my handwriting, so there's no doubt that I was the one that saved them.  There are dozens of them, stuck to the inside of the paper towel ... like I just squeezed them out of the tomato and folded it up.  The newest I think they could be is from 2008, because that's when I moved my stuff out of the office and gave it over to my husband.  'Hillbilly' is a real heirloom tomato cultivar, a pass-along variety, but I don't remember if that's what these are or if I just called them hillbilly seeds.

I like a challenge, and I was really curious about these seeds, so I decided to see what would happen if I planted some of them.  I soaked 24 seeds in a cup of water overnight, then I planted them in a take-out container, with drainage holes drilled in the bottom of it and a lid, and put it under the lights in my basement grow area.  Within a week, I had this:

Babies!!  Over the course of the next few days, more seeds sprouted.  Twenty of the twenty-four seeds germinated.  One of sprouts was weird and stunted, so I discarded that one.  Last week, when the babies were large enough to handle, I transplanted them from the community container into little individual pots.

There's one rose seedling here, too.  I will tell you about it some other time.

This morning, one week later, the babies look like this:

They're all about three inches tall, and they are fat, healthy and happy ... and almost ready to transplant into larger pots.

Our weather has been unseasonably cool and very rainy, so I will have to wait till it's warmer to begin to harden these off to life outside.  I plan to keep three or four plants and give the others to friends and family.  

I have to confess that I have never been a very good vegetable gardener.  I know roses, of course, and I'm pretty proficient at gardening with ornamentals in the sun and in shade, but I never been able to get the hang of growing food.  I try, and results are always less than stellar.  Maybe this year will be better ... I say that every year.

Canning Tomatoes

A friend gave me two cases of leftover farmer's market tomatoes last weekend.  What does one do with that many ripe tomatoes all at once?  Can them, of course.  It means that most of a day will be spent with a ton of chopping and cooking and mess, but there's nothing like the taste home-canned tomatoes.   For that one day's worth of effort, we now have 25 quarts of stewed tomatoes.

The finished jars were so pretty, I decided to make them into a watercolor using the Waterlogue iPad app.

Here is how I did it.

1.  Peeled the tomatoes by scalding them in boiling water, then placing them in cold water ... the skins slide right off.  Cut out cores, bruises, and any other blemishes.

2.  For this recipe, in addition to the chopped tomatoes, I added onion, green pepper, a couple of jalapenos, garlic, basil, and some salt.

When my back was turned, as I was working at the other counter chopping tomatoes and stirring the onions and peppers in the pot, Dorothy must have thought that I wouldn't notice her sitting in the empty tomato crate.  

3.  When tomato mixture is simmering strongly, ladle it into prepared jars and process the jars in a hot water bath.

4.  The jars should simmer for at least 30 minutes after the water begins to boil.

5.  Remove jars from the canning pot, and let them cool.  All that's left at this point is to wash the piles of pots and utensils, clean up the mess on the kitchen counters, and admire the colorful results of a productive day.  This fall and winter, these tomatoes will be good for soup, pasta sauce, chili, and whatever else I think of.

For those of you who do canning ... is there any more satisfying sound than the sharp "dink" that you hear as the lid on that last jar pops to indicate that it's sealed?

Summer's Bounty

On Sunday afternoon, I was given a case of farmer's market tomatoes.  As much as I would love to say that I grew these beauties myself, this is not the case.  I do, however, know the farmer who did.

A case of ripe tomatoes means that I was going to be spending an afternoon in the kitchen canning said tomatoes.  That's exactly what I did yesterday.  For those of you who have never done this, this is what to do.

1.  The easiest and fastest way to peel the tomatoes is to put them into a pot of boiling water for 30 - 45 seconds.

2.  Take them out of the boiling water and drop them into a bowl of ice water.

3.  This process causes the peels practically slide right off.  I'm making chopped hot-pack tomatoes, so I core and roughly chop each tomato, removing any blemishes or soft spots.

4.  Fill a large pot with the chopped tomatoes ... I use my favorite turquoise Paula Deen stock pot.  Simmer the tomatoes, stirring them frequently, until they are hot and bubbling vigorously.

5.  Ladle the hot tomatoes into sterilized jars.  Seal jars with lids and rings, which have been simmering in a pot of water.  Process in a water bath canner for 45 minutes (for these quart jars).

6.  Use jar tongs to remove the jars to a cooling rack.  For me, the most rewarding part of canning is hearing the 'pop' of the lids as the jars cool ... which indicates that the jar is sealed.

I started working on this at about 2:00 yesterday afternoon, and I was putting the last of the jars into the canner at 6:30.  Not a quick process, by any means, but a very 'fruitful' one ... which yielded 17 gleaming quarts of tomatoes, ready to store and use in all sorts of recipes for the next year.  It also resulted in tomato juice all over the kitchen and myself, and a mountain of dirty pots, bowls, and utensils.  My sweet husband did all the dishes and cleaned the kitchen for me.  By the time he was finished, the only evidence of the afternoon's activity was the hum of the dishwasher and the jars of hot tomatoes cooling on the counter.