Eating Homegrown Tomatoes on January 15th!

"Only two things that money can't buy - that's true love and homegrown tomatoes" - Guy Clark

Just before Christmas we got some REALLY cold weather.  I had reported to you that I went sadly to the garden and picked all of the fruit off of the gorgeous tomato plants.  I had many different varieties growing and they were all healthy.  Here is one of the boxes of tomatoes shortly after I brought them inside.

In past years, I cooked them down and made a green tomato sauce that we used as a soup base.  This time, however, we decided to try to ripen them.  We covered them in paper bags and put a banana under the paper bag with them.  

Soon the very green tomatoes began getting pink and then red!  We put them on the window sill for further ripening.

Soon we had bunches and bunches of red ripe tomatoes to eat and cook with...

Our summer time tomatoes are good, but these winter tomatoes are largely free of any blemishes brought about by stink bugs, worms and disease.

Tricia sliced up this perfect one right here to eat along with our after-church Sunday lunch.

It's interesting that while we are eating the last of the winter crop of tomatoes, just one room over from the kitchen, our spring crop of tomatoes have germinated and are just about to put on their first true leaves.  Out with the old and in with the new.  Spring is right around the corner.  In a month or so we'll transplant the seedlings in the garden so that we can get homegrown tomatoes harvested before the intense battle with heat and bug/disease pressure commences.