Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes.

I've been processing a lot of tomatoes in the last month.

I decided not to can this year for a couple of reasons. Mostly because it is a time consuming task and I have a chest freezer that needs to start pulling it's weight around here.

The top picture is roasted tomatoes. Ooooh, they are so tasty. This is the way Hubs always wants to eat tomatoes. All I do is cut them into wedges, toss them with olive oil and salt, spread them on a cookie sheet and bake at 400 for a long time. If I feel like getting fancy, I'll peel garlic cloves, smash them and toss them in the mix.

What you get is concentrated flavor with some sort of caramelized bits and we eat them right off the pan. I froze a couple of batches to see how they fare in the freezer. We'll probably eat them with pasta. This is an experiment because unlike most other preserving decisions I make, I haven't read anything at all about this-it came strictly from my brain. Kinda scary, right?

Next, I froze whole tomatoes. Who knew? I read somewhere-probably some blog, 'cuz whatever I read on the internet is reliable, right?-

Anyway, I read that you can wash them, core them and freeze those babies whole. Then just defrost and you can easily pull off the skin and they're ready to toss into sauces or whatever. I have several bags of beauties waiting for me. Man, I hope this works because it was so freaking easy.

And then I sauced and sauces and sauced. I tried a new method for this, too. (I think I may have gone overboard with the "new" methods this year. What if they all suck? I'll be so sorry I didn't just can.)

I decided long ago I cannot possibly take the time to de-seed the tomatoes. Can anyone tell me why I should, because everything seems fine to me.

I blanch them so they are easier to peal, then I just cook them down to sauce thickness.

A few times, I've really needed to get the tomatoes processed before they turn into a rotted mess on my windowsill-but been too busy to babysit cooking tomatoes. So, I put them in the crock pot instead. Took a lot longer, but did the trick.

I froze all my sauce in zip top bags.

The only thing left to deal with is all the GREEN tomatoes. That's a whole other story.