I Was Told It Would Happen...But It's Still Surprising

In September we were warned the cold weather was coming. Why wouldn't it? It comes every year. Each time I passed my little garden, I looked at my tomato plants and thought about all the food that would go to waste.

There were many green tomatoes that I knew would never ripen in time.

Then I heard that you can pick the tomatoes and they will ripen on their own.

Because I'd never personally done it or seen it, I wasn't quite sure it was true.

Turns out, it is...at least, so far.

This month, we pulled up the plants and laid out all the green tomatoes on our counter. For the first week or so, I saw no change. Then, the hues began to change. I wish I could set up a time lapse camera and film the transformation as green changes to orange then to red.  So far, three are turning--one was pretty much ripe when we brought it in--and the rest are still green.

I'm sure if I did an on-line search about how best to preserve tomatoes, there would be a lot of suggestions. Maybe I should freeze them. Maybe I should have not kept the stems or cut the stems longer. I don't know, but I do know that when I hear tomatoes will ripen after picking them, I'll definitely believe it.