“It’s Been A Good Summer”, mixed media by Kerry McFall

Long, hot summers make for fat, red tomatoes!  Not something we experience in the Willamette Valley very often, so it’s much appreciated when it happens.  Right now, mid-September, I have more tomatoes than I know what to do with.  My friend Tracy said, “Roast ’em – they make great pasta sauce!”  So I picked a bunch, washed them, and three jumped out of the colander and onto the pages of my sketchbook…  The rest of them went into a 275 degree oven, after rolling around briefly in olive oil, basil, oregano, and sea salt, and there they basked for two hours or so.  Here are the phases of their fate:

It’s too hot to cook, so tomorrow they will reach their ultimate fate: the key ingredient of spaghetti – or if tomorrow is too hot, into the freezer they go.