Tomato Time

My tomatoes seem to be at their peak.  I have a crazy mish-mash of tomato varieties growing this year, thanks to my shopping at the UWGB heirloom plant sale and the UW-Extension sale, plus my desire to find ideal canning tomatoes:  

• a cherry tomato (good for snacking on;  I have limited myself to one plant/year and that is perfect)
• 2 (or 3?) stupice (a salad tomato;  too many plants for me...don't bother next year)
• a brandywine (love the gorgeous pink color and huge size, though it wasn't a great producer for me) *
• a green zebra (for fun...it's pretty and a yummy slicing tomato)
• a striped Roman (another one for fun;  it's a paste tomato so it's good for canning but not as large as my other paste tomatoes)
• a Hillbilly (not a great producer for me, but they are large fruits)
• 3 Polish linguisa (a plum tomato...definitely a keeper for next year...firm flesh, great for canning and oven-drying) *
• an Opalka (another great plum tomato with firm flesh) *

*definite keepers for 2011

As you can see, it's the canning (plum/paste) tomatoes that I'm really excited about.  Also, the hot new trend seems to be oven-roasted tomatoes (like this recipe).  It seems like everywhere I turn, someone else is talking/blogging about these.  I made up two baking sheets of them last week and am doing the same again tonight.  They turn out rich and sweet and are great for putting into sandwiches and pasta. 

Yesterday a friend and I canned some tomatoes.  Here's what we did:

9/4/10 7 pints crushed tomatoes, uga.edu recipe
9/4/10  6 half-pints heirloom tomato salsa, Put 'Em Up recipe (added the optional 1 tsp. cumin)

Lessons learned:

• Replace canning rack:  it's not meant for jars that are smaller than pints;  smaller sizes fall through and it's quite annoying.  I've known this for years but just haven't broken down and replaced it.  
• Don't crush the tomatoes to make juice.  The tomatoes cook down enough to make their own juice anyhow.  My crushed tomatoes turn out too watery for my taste...though really it doesn't matter a great deal.  They generally go into chili and soup and their consistency is not all that critical.  I probably could use a recipe for half or whole tomatoes to get the results I want with a bit less effort.