Right now my practical-unboring thing is tomatoes. They’re starting to come in enmasse from the garden–red, pink, yellow, purple… and hopefully my favorites, the green-when-ripes, soon. As usual, I overdid it this spring and ended up with 24 plants instead of 7 =) Almost all are heirlooms. The typical round red ones make me sad, they remind me too much of February tomatoes at the grocery store. I just can’t bring myself to grow them.

So far, my favorite this year is Thieneman’s Australian Heart. It was a toss-in at the end of my seed starting, when I had an extra cell to fill. SO glad I gave into the “Australian” part calling my name… it’s definitely one of the richest tomatoes I’ve ever had, good enough to slice up and eat all by itself!

Most of the tomatoes are being roasted up with garlic and olive oil, though. I decided to try roasting after reading that it’s really easy to pull the skins off afterwards… so much less time and effort. And somehow we don’t even notice the seeds when they’re roasted, so no de-seeding necessary either. They come out so luscious, for so little work. I made the first batch into pasta sauce, the second into chili. Here’s hoping my plants will give me lots more to roast and freeze for the winter!