Summer's Fertile Finale

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Keeping Food Fresh,

edited by Claude Aubert.

Drying tomatoes is something several of us do. In Tucson, Arizona, Barbara dries them on her roof, spreading the tomatoes on oiled screens under cheesecloth tents to foil the birds. Most places are too humid for that, and several of us have food driers. I grow a cherry tomato named 'Principe Borghese,' specifically for its dried sweetness. But my contribution to the easiest solution to tomato glut is the sauce described on

Page 99.

If you're a canner, make tomato juice. Mary gets together with friends and makes 40 to 50 quarts of tomato juice by cutting up all the fruit that's neither rotten nor moldy, cooking it down until it's soft, then put it through a food mill and can what comes out of the bottom. You also can freeze tomato juice, but 50 quarts would fill my freezer!

Mary's tomato juice party is a reminder that in most times and places food and community have gone together Mary also shares a peach gala in August. She and her neighbors put up 50 to 60 quarts of peaches each. When the children were young, moms came alone, a time to visit without interruption. Now, Mary says, the teen-agers those children have become actually do help. With midwinter peaches in their memory banks, they willingly blanch and skin.

Gail, who lives in a solar community surrounded by almond trees, speaks fondly of the community almond harvest that marks September. Sheets are laid under the trees, and a mechanical shaker brings down the nuts, which all the neighbors help gather and store.

A day spent putting things by provides a kind of security not available in the supermarket with its glossy hyperabun dance. When we talked about this time

of year, all of us agreed there's something very special about the storing-up process. it makes us feel, as someone said, as if we're going off the food grid, taking care of ourselves year-round.

With the harvest preserved, you can share the product. Jars of peach jam make wonderful Christmas presents. So do dried tomatoes. I once gave a nephew a box of assorted potatoes and a recipe for using them. In a time when so much makes us insecure about the future, there's a wa rm security in knowing you have food stored away just as autumn begins.

Thanks to advisers
Mary Anselmino, Michigan; Gail Feenstra, California;
Barbara Kingsolver, Arizona/Virginia; Toni Liguori, New York City; and Jennifer Wilkins, New York.

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