Let's Do Tomatoes

I went to Soulard Farmers Market yesterday (Friday) to see if I could find some onions that had been grown somewhere relatively close to the St. Louis area and I found one vendor who was from around these parts. In addition to onions, he still had some roma tomatoes. Somewhat known for my impulse buying I thought "my romas didn't do much this year, it wouldn't hurt to put one more pack away for the winter" and bought these:
He had habeneros too. Glorious orange haberneros. He warned me that they were hot. Fantastic. My haberneros weren't as hot this year as I would have liked them to be, so I thought "I could PROBABLY use these too" and they had an otherworldly glow that was easy to catch when I photographed them. Aren't they beautiful? When you cut into them, they smell like heat, which I love.

So I spent an additional $2.50 that I didn't mean to spend, but when impluse buying is SO CHEAP, its hard not to do it. Anyway, here's how you freeze tomatoes for the winter.

Start boiling water.

Cut a little "X" in the bottom of the tomatoes.

When the water starts rolling, throw in the tomatoes (careful!) and leave them for about 30 seconds. (Blogspot reoriented this pic, I can't make it right.)

Remove them to an ice water bath.

The skins will pucker following the "X".

Peel, remove any questionable spots, and cut in half.

Give em a gentle squeeze over a bowl (that will end up in the compost) to remove the seeds.

Ew, look at all the ooky tomato guts.

This is what it looks like when all the tomatoes are peeled, cleaned and seeded.

Put em in a ziplock, squeeze the air out (oooops I was out of the vacuum bags) and retire them to the downstairs freezer.

I actually like whole canned tomatoes from the grocery store, but its nice to have a little reminder of summer in the freezer too.