Being just a plain ole country girl, and so much like my mother, I cant let anything go to waste. An old friend of mine put 4- 5 gallon containers of Roma tomatoes on my porch, which I worked like a beaver to "work up". Yesterday was really productive. I made 30 pints of Salsa and 10 pints of ripe sweet ketsup that goes wonderful with the pot of beans I prepared also. Today is the same thing, my house smells like Taco Bell, except for the hot pepper smell that burns your nose and eyes. I canned 10 pints of hot pepper jelly that my husband has consumed half of them poured over a block of cream cheese, he says pure heaven, and needless to say the small grocery in town laugh when I come through the line with a cart full of cream cheese and crackers, he also has diabetes, and is wondering why his vision has been blurred all week, I wouldn't know.
This reminds me of a funny thing, about 4 years ago when these twin boys from town that raised tomatoes in the summer for their college money, they both had scholarships for football but used the cash for spending money, great kids, I think one is in prison for theft and the other has about 5 kids and lives in a trailer down by the Green River, but other than that, good kids. After the harvesting season, they brought a pickup lad of tomatoes to me. I worked hard all week, canned over 100 cans of juice and about that many of salsa and stewed tomatoes. Didn't let any go to waste. After the week was over my husband decided to take me to the lake for the weekend to rest and re coop. The whole weekend away my cell phone rang with numbers I didn't know, so by not answering when it rang if filled fast with messages. After returning on Sunday night after dark, I decided to listen to the messages, all were people in town wanting to know if I wanted more tomatoes. I remarked to Tim "are they nuts" I don't want to ever see another tomato.
I awoke the next morning and went to the mailbox to get my paper. There in my front yard was a big sign stuck in the very front. " WANTED TOMATOES TO CAN" with my cell phone number underneath. It was the laugh of the town. We have drinking buddies that went to the Eagles Nest on Saturday night, got looped and thought it would be funny to send me some more.
It is always hard work trying to come up with one better. That is another project I will work on for this week.
