Party Time!

Today's harvest includes 36 SunGold, 13 White Currant, 12 Violet Jasper, 8 Snow White (back yard), 7 Japanese Black Trifele, 6 Red Grape, 5 Gajo de Melon, 4 Garden Peach, 4 Zapotec Pleated, 4 Red Currant(2), 4 Marianna's Peace, 3 Lyn's Mahogany Garnet, 3 Topaz, 3 Red Boar (one 6 ounces), 3 Nyagous, 3 Husky Cherry Red, 3 SunSugar, 2 Black Krim (6 ounces, 9.5 ounces), 2 Principe Borghese, 2 Snow White (front yard), Babywine, Poma Amoris Minora Lutea, Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge (7.5 ounces), Aunt Ruby's German Green (8.5 ounces), Chile Verde, Sweetie, Taxi, Plum Tigris, Brown Berry, Green Zebra, Weeping Charlie (6 ounces), Dr. Wyche's Yellow(1) (12. 5 ounces), Dr. Wyche's Yellow(2), Black From Tula, Thessaloniki and Gypsy for a total of 143 tomatoes.

Wow, what a fun party! Easy for me to say...my wife prepared most of the dishes in the limited time remaining. I went out in the morning and got supplies from various places and help set up, but my wife had prepared several salads (and several people were raving about the marinated salad) and pulled it all together. Our neighbor made salsa with mint using our tomatoes. We asked some people to come later because of the expected heat (it got up to 104 degrees) and that bought us some time. My mother-in-law came earlier in the day and helped to pull it all together.

People came from all over – neighbors, mutual friends, people I haven't seen since our wedding, and a couple of consultant friends that I haven't seen for about 13 or 14 years. Several children came as well, I can think of a half dozen off of the top of my head.

In spite of the heat, everyone seemed to have a good time. A fair amount of people brought food and spirits. We ended up in the unusual position of having as much (if not more) food and drink than when we started. This week for dinner – leftovers!

Unfortunately because of the hot weather and the lack of hot water until Friday, some of our harvested tomatoes got soft. They won't be thrown away but still will be used for other things.

Here's what I remember from some of the taste testing:

Aunt Ruby's German Green – Tasted good but tasted more like a tomato than I remembered it from years past. Perhaps it was picked a tad soon.

Garden Peach – Good stuff, citrusy and refreshing.

Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge – Tasted quite good actually, good texture. Still no purple smudges on anything. I'd bring a plate for sampling. give the name and always get the purple question when the tomato in front of them is clearly 100% orange.

Poma Amoris Minora Lutea – Mushy, little taste. But the tomato was a bit overripe so we'll try again.

Berkeley Tie-Dye Heart – Good tasting with a bit more acid than normal. However it didn't knock my socks off like the original Berkeley Tie Dye.

Persimmon – A real winner. People really liked this tomato. I did too. Good texture.

Japanese Black Trifele – Quite good, some of them reminded me of Black Krim.

Pineapple – People really liked this one, too. It doesn't remind people of a tomato.

Black Krim – Response was muted but I noticed there weren't any left.

Marianna's Peace – We hadn't tried this tomato (like several others) until this party. A very good tomatoey taste. I like it.

One of our container plants bit the dust – I think it's Red Cherry. My wife may have broken the stem earlier and one of the newborns reached out and apparently grabbed it. It's not much of a loss at all. This plant had about five small tomatoes slowly maturing and hadn't done much in a while.

My mother-in-law stayed the night. All of us are dragging today.