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Monday 8 August 2016

109. Tomato? Tomato.

When I was a student, I read a play called Blue Kettle. I don’t remember much about it except the words ‘blue’ and ‘kettle’ began to randomly replace other words in the dialogue until, by the end of the play, ‘blue’ and ‘kettle’ were the only words left. Literally every line was ‘blue’ or ‘kettle’ or a combination of the two. Life feels a bit like that at the moment.

‘What shall we have for breakfast?’
‘Tomatoes.’

‘What’s for lunch?’
‘Tomato salad.’

‘Should we tomato more tomatoes for the freezer?’
‘Tomato.’

‘I tomato you.’
‘I tomato you, tomato.’

One day's harvest. 

Only a freak would organise their tomatoes by variety. Ahem.

We’re snacking on tomatoes. We’re having tomato salads for lunches. We’re cooking up huge pans of tomato sauce to have in meals each week (useful to keep in the fridge for a quick pasta meal at the end of a long day). We’re roasting tomatoes in the pizza oven every week to make smoky tomato freezer sauce. We’ve made a giant batch of tomato ketchup. We’ve made oven-dried tomatoes in oil. Next, we’re planning to bottle our own passata – even though I am terrified of ballsing up the bottling process and dying of botulism. If we’re still inundated after that, we might make some barbecue sauce. I’ve also noticed there’s a recipe for tomato fritters in Vefa’s Kitchen (a cookbook I’ve had for years but am suddenly obsessed with). Fried tomatoes make me gag but I’m getting so desperate I might have to give it a whirl.

Who knew that growing 70 tomato plants would lead to such a glut? Well, obviously we knew, but we pressed ahead anyway. As the saying goes, ‘Feel the tomato … and tomato it anyway.’ Or something. I am losing the power of tomato.