Tomatoes - OK I can't stop myself. I ask the world for abundance and it often delivers in tomatoes. I am grateful

 

one day's harvest in the kitchen sink

Here is a good sampling of my tomato garden this year.  I'm trying to think which is my favorite but it's impossible to choose.  I love Cherokee purple for a traditional beefsteak tomato.  I also love love Chocolate stripy which is a pear shaped with tons of flavor and always is firm.  Last year I tried Lava Flow which is yellow orange medium size with rich non acid flavor.  Then there are chocolate cherry and Shadow boxing.  This year I tried black strawberry which is a gorgeous jeweled color cherry but was a little disappointed in the flavor but is so pretty plated.  I couldn't ignore my new one this year: Brad's atomic grape:

Yes  These are ripe...a small sauce tomato- delicious in a salad sliced or as you must do with a sauce tomato I made Marinara:

Brad's atomic grape marinara

Yes  I sent some to my son, Brad, for his birthday!

But I kept some myself to sauce up my eggplant Parmesan or simply use as a dip for the quite decadent Fried eggplant.

My first tomato was enjoyed in early June and I will today (September 9) sit down today and enjoy the end  of my crop.  I did plant a winter variety called Glacier.  Fingers crossed I'll have fresh tomatoes for Thanksgiving salad.

The entire month of July I had my dehydrator working 24 hours each day.  As posted about an hour ago in my stone fruit post I dried the plums and peaches during the day and at 9pm would place sliced tomatoes to loose their water by morning when it was time to place the plums again.  Here are Lava Flow tomatoes on their way to dry:

Lava Flow

Chocolate Stripy

OK  Now I have 100 pounds or so of dried tomatoes securely locked in vacuum bags and losing most of their weight. In cooler weather I'll grab a bag of these beauties and add them to a soup.

Rogers Gardens in Newport Beach presents "Tomato Mania" the last weekend in February and offers over 250 tomato varieties.  I think I show extreme self control to only take home 8 ( or was it 9?)

Plums, plums and more plums

 

On June 30 I stripped the Satsuma plum tree.  This was what I picked on this day....all of these.  I need more friends

When designing  my orchard  I wanted to add a Satsuma plum tree.  They are so sweet with beautiful dark purple meat,  I really only needed one tree but the Satsuma is not self pollinating and like almost all plum varieties needs a Santa Rosa plum for the bees to work with.  The Santa Rosa plum is a gorgeous dark purple on the outside with yellow meat on the inside and usually not as sweet.   Usually.

Santa Rosa plums

Harvesting time  lags about 2 weeks starting with the Satsuma.  So for six weeks solid I had ripe plums.

I made some stone fruit jam from The Yummy Life blog.  It's a recipe that uses 3 ingredients: stone fruit, sugar and lemon juice - no pectin so pretty easy.

 

Stone fruit jam

Now what to do with the rest of the 400-500 plums?  On about July 1 I pulled out my food dehydrator and put it to use.  Each morning I would pit and slice enough plums to arrange on 6 trays.  I started each morning at about 10 am so I would have all day to keep watch on the progress. Oh yes I set it up in the "office" kitchen ( which is just a part of the garage that has an air conditioning unit in the window and access to electricity.  My "office " kitchen also houses my freezer and overflow pantry items along with the small appliances that don't have a home inside. 

Satsuma on left, Santa Roses on right

The fruit took all day with a turn and right before bed I would remove the dried fruit and get it ready for the overnight fruit= tomatoes.  The room smelled absolutely divine all day long whenever I would wander past or in the office.  Almost without exception this was my routine every day of July.

I also froze several pounds but I am excited that I have such a reserve for the winter and plenty to share with my friends and family.  I use a Food Saver for vacuum storage. 

OK  moving on to my intermediate crop: tomatoes

After apricots come peaches, nectarines and plums

 Next to ripen on the orchard trees is peaches followed by nectarines.  One characteristics of stone fruit is that it all ripens within a short period of time - usually 2 weeks to a month.  When I planted my trees 3 years ago I studied a calendar of harvest time and made a graph. I jokingly realized that most of my fruit ripens in alphabetical order: apricots ( same time as apples), nectarines, peaches and plums.  Although not stone fruit the Asian pears follow the plums, then pomegranates and this year the resurrection of persimmons.  And there are tons of passion fruit ripening on the vine but first nectarines and peaches and what on earth am I going to do with my bounty

peaches plums and nectarines

Nectarines ripening on their branches - will be ready soon

My peach crop was ok- about 30 but my nectarines were abundant - maybe 400

Besides eating them fresh - lean over a sink because they are juicy I made a batch of canned stone fruit using as little sugar as possible.  I added cinnamon, star anise, allspice and about 2 " of a vanilla bean for a rich spicy flavor  Here is the recipe from Food in Jars 

And then I made a batch of peach scones.  King Arthur Baking is a great go to for anything baked.  Her is their recipe

What a great treat for breakfast