Tomato+harvesting+and+cooking

Hello, My husband and I grew 9 tomato plants this year. Some were beafsteak tomaotoes, these were so big three out of four of them fell over. Some were cherry tomatoes, and we even had one early girl tomato plant. In this wiki, I will describe my plants, show you how to harvest them, and show you how to cook a delicious tomato soup. First let's take a look at the plants. This is a picture of the one beefsteak tomato plant that stayed up. The others, to the left have fallen over. That's okay, we were still able to harvest a number of tomatoes from these plants. These are our cherry tomatoes. You can see that they are not completely red, yet they are still very sweet and totally ripe. This is our early girl tomato plant. In this picture, I am showing you how to harvest a tomato. You simply pick it with you hand. Sometimes, you need to twist it a little bit to get it off of the vine. As you can see, we have many tomatoes. These all came from the past week or so. Now, I am going to show you how to make tomato soup based loosely on Bernard Clayton's tomato soup from //__The Complete Book of Soups and Stews__//. First you place the 6 tomatoes into boiling water and wait until their skin splits. Once the skin splits, take the tomatoes out and let cool. Take the skin off of the tomatoes, then cut the tomatoes up in a bowl (in order to save the juices) and put aside for later. Next cut up one onion and some carrots. First, cut the onion in half. Then cut the onion in slices going downward (with the cut half on the cutting board). Then cut the onion in slices going the opposite direction in order to get small pieces. Also slice the carrots into small pieces. Look at the two following pictures for a pictorial explanation: Next saute the onion and carrots in a large pot with two tablespoons of olive oil and two tablespoons of butter until onions are semi-translucent as shown below. Next, add the tomatoes, six bullion cubes, six cups of water, and a cup of wild rice to the pot. Let cook for 45 minutes to one hour, or until the rice has opened. Once the soup is done cooking, add a handful of fresh basil. Last, serve a dish up and add a spoonful of sour cream and a pinch of sugar (depending on how sweet the tomatoes and onion are). I hope you have enjoyed this pictorial lesson on how to harvest and cook your very own tomatoes. Thank you Anna Liss