Tomato time

Everyone's talking tomatoes in these waning days of summer. Are they green? Are they ripe? Are there any at all?

I guess I've been lucky: I've already harvested quite a few. First just a handful at a time, good for slicing and eating plain with a little Maldon salt. Now a colander-full at a time, enough to make sauce with. I had this batch picked this morning, plus a similar amount picked two days ago, and another gallon bag in the freezer from last week.

(Note that a couple more came out with "lips." None of them of Mick proportions, though. And no, my Mick-mato didn't find any buyers on eBay. I didn't expect he would.)

I wanted to make a hearty sauce to freeze. A sauce with some depth to it. So I cored and seeded these and laid them out on a cookie sheet with a drizzle of olive oil and some fresh herbs – basil, thyme, oregano and sage.
They roasted at 225 degrees for four hours. Probably could have left them longer but I was impatient to get started on the rest of the sauce.

I'm working roughly off of Alecto's recipe. The sauce is simmering on the stove, and I may leave it there overnight.

One note on freezing tomatoes. Yes, you can freeze them whole, and the skins come right off when they thaw, but if you want to seed them, you'd best take the time to do it before they're frozen. It's an extra-messy chore otherwise.