Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

After being up most of the night for the past three nights with a teething baby and not even getting a hint of a nap due to a very energetic five year old, we'll see how this post turns out. A couple of days ago I stopped by the local produce stand. I have to pause a minute here. Our local produce stand here in Shelton sells a lot of locally grown and chemical free produce. This is a definite plus because most of the other ones around do not do this. Anyway, I stopped by the produce stand and picked up two boxes full of various veggies (for the next couple of weeks), two large boxes of tomatoes and one large box of pears for $50. I am ecstatic! Needless to say, however, that I have been busy in the kitchen the past couple of days.
Last night, I peeled the pears and put them on the stove to cook with a bit of water. My Dearest Husband pureed them for me and put them in jars ready to freeze as I was too tired to get up. (see note on not sleeping for the past three nights above) Today, I peeled the two large boxes of tomatoes. Now probably everyone in the world knows how to peel tomatoes, but I thought I'd do a brief post on it anyhow seeing as not too long ago this was a most daunting and unknown skill to me.
First things first. I cleaned out the sink by actually doing the dinner dishes that I was too tired to do last night. I finally figured out that it's so much more pleasant to clean up my previous mess before making another one. It's funny. I try to teach my kidlings this principle every day. You would think that I would have had it down before this.
Next, I put a pot of water half-full on the stove on high to bring it to a boil. I used my six quart stock pot, but any pan would do. While the water was heating, I filled one side of the sink about half-way full of cold tap water, as cold as I could get it. I am blessed with a sink very near to my stove. If you do not happen to share this blessing, a large bowl with cold water would work fine. You would just need to change out the water mor often as it would heat up faster. I also picked a spoon for transferring the tomatoes from the pan to the sink and some large bowls for putting the skinned tomatoes in.
By now the water is boiling so I plop a few of the tomatoes in the boiling water. When the skins start to split, they are definitely ready. I actually try to pull them out before the skins split. They are ready if you poke the skin at the top and it feels loose. It really is just fine if you wait until the skin splits though. When the tomatoes are ready, scoop them out of the boiling water and into the sink filled with cold water. You can then slip the skins off quite easily.
I usually get a little system going where I scoop out the tomatoes that are ready. Then I put more tomatoes into the pot. Then I head over to the sink and finish peeling the tomatoes and plopping them in the bowls that I set out. All done (well besides the clean up). It's seriously that easy!
From here, there are so many options: seed and chop them to use in spaghetti sauce, squeeze the juice out and pack them in jars to can (you can even season them before you can them), Chop them and use them to make salsa, freeze them, etc... I will probably be posting some recipes here in the future as I use up some of the ones that I did today. As always, I hope that this helps you!