Home Grown Tomatoes

Home Grown Tomatoes have to be the best tasting! My dad planted a huge crop of tomatoes this year, yellow, red and orange. They are beautiful and tasty! One thing with home grown tomatoes is the tough outer skin. Store bought tomatoes are usually picked early and then gassed later to help ripen them. So their skin stays thin. Home grown tomatoes develop and ripen on the vine so when they are ready to pick the skin has toughened up quite a bit. The best way to remove the skin is by using a knife to cut an "x" on bottom of the tomato (not the stem end). Bring a pan of water to low boil and drop tomatoes in the simmering water for about 1-2 minutes depending on the size of your tomato. Using tongs, remove the tomato to a cutting board and immediately you will notice the skin has split apart more and the skin may have begun to curl up ready for you to take hold of it with your tongs and peel it away. At this point, you can refrigerate the tomatoes for salads or sandwiches or use them right away. Home grown tomatoes are easy to grow even if you don't have a garden in the ground. You can purchase some big planter pots at your local department store (Walmart had them for $5) and plant tomatoes in them. Just make sure you water and fertilize regularly. You'll be harvesting tomatoes in no time!

Enjoy!