Food

How to Use up All Those Tomatoes You Grew

Here’s how to keep your blessing from becoming a burden

Cover art from 19th-century seed catalog (public domain)

So your tomato plants outdid themselves this year. Congratulations! Mine did, too. I have seven indeterminate plants and, although I didn’t bother to weigh everything they produced, it was a lot. Certainly a lot more than my husband and I can eat.

Eat and share some fresh, preserve some for later

So far, I’ve made several quarts of pasta sauce, 5 pints of salsa, an untold number of Caprese salads, and tomato paste. (Click the links for the recipes.) I shared some with my sister and my neighbors. I also canned 2 quarts in 8-ounce jars to use in soups and stews over the winter.

Photo by Luke van Zyl on Unsplash

I find canning to be an awful lot of work for what you get. If you have the freezer space, I suggest you opt for freezer bags instead. I recycle sour cream and deli containers of different sizes to freeze just the right amount for single, double, or more servings.

If you have more shelf space than freezer space, The National Center for Home Food Preservation website will tell…