The Great Tomato Epic

Soo… as promised, I now bring to you the infamous tomatoes story!!

So as I mentioned in a previous post, Marlee and I received a large amount of produce, etc from the food program our first Tuesday here. Among that large amount of produce was an entire crate of tomatoes. Once again, I have no earthly idea WHY I accepted a 15lb box of grape tomatoes, but I did none the less!! Have any of you ever SEEN 15 lbs of grape tomatoes? Let me show you a picture to help you understand..



So anyways.. once I got this gastly amount of tomatoes home and into my fridge it began to set in just how many tomatoes I had on my hands! I immediately started eating them. I had a cereal bowl just full of tomatoes for dinner that night. The next night I bought cottage cheese to help me eat all the tomatoes. The next day I made sauce for Marlee and I, in fact, enough sauce for two meals! And yet, even after all of these attempts, along with daily throwing away a good amount of already wrinkly or rotten ones… It still appeared as if I had never so much as touched that silly box. I was at a loss! I had no earthly idea what to do. Every night I would get them out of the fridge and throw more away. But sadly, even with eating them on top of salads, I still was only getting rid of a handful (if that) at a time!

Come to find out, when Marlee told me she would not eat many, that was Marleespeak for “I won’t eat ANY”. Maybe I just imagined the ‘M’ in front of that. Sigh. So then I tried to gift some on to all of my neighbors, only to find out that I possibly might be the only person around here that eats fresh tomatoes!!

Finally I decided to just make a motherload of sauce and freeze it all. So that is what I did. 3 pots worth of that wretched sauce I made! There was enough for 4 pots, but I didn’t have enough pots. Then I also had some saved aside for lunch on Sunday to go on top of the salads.

The good news is that Sunday rolled around and I was able to use about half of the sauce to feed all of my hungry guests I had invited over. The bad news is that I never got around to making the rest of the sauce, and the salad came with tomatoes already in it. So we ended up throwing the last 2 lbs or so of it away. Sad times.

Needless to say, when I bought some tomatoes a few days ago for a recipe I was shopping for, it definitely hurt me a little inside.

My latest task is to figure out how to use two huge slabs of chocolate that we were gifted last week. Earlier this morning I was offered an enormous amount of carrots. I refused. I’m proud of myself. I did however give in to 1 tub of yogurt. But I convinced them that there was not enough room in my stomach, nor my refrigerator for the entire case. I think they have made it a game to see what all they can get rid of by sending it over to our place. Sometime last week Marlee accepted a partial block of roast beef. Yes block.. like what they have in the deli cases at the grocery store! Sigh.. oh well.. it is kinda fun. :)

Be good yall. Don’t accept bulk items from strangers!

~Kat K.