Breaking Cat News by Georgia Dunn for September 05, 2021

Yes Puck, even you. Unfortunately.

I thought tomatoes were cat poison.

A friend of mine, who moved to east Texas, said that this is the only time of year when everybody has to lock their car doors in the church parking lot. If you don’t, your back seat will be filled with zucchini. (Maybe your front seat as well.)

Zucchini are easy to grow and they are prolific!

I see a couple robber mice checking out the tomatoes. Maybe they are going to help the Woman get rid of some.

We have had about that many tomatoes so far. Tomato soup is amazingly easy! Basic ingredients: tomatoes, onions, salt, pepper, lemon juice, chicken broth. Other herbs if you desire. I don’t bother—it’s absolutely delish when kept simple.

I can remember helping my mom can tomatoes and tomato juice. She’d pour boiling water over the tomatoes to make them easy to peal, then cut them into quarters, put them into pint jars along with a spoonful of salt and a spoonful of sugar and then process them in a water bath. To make the juice, she’d boil the tomatoes, skin and all, then smoosh them through a cone shaped colander with a wooden device that looked like a sawed off baseball bat. Then the juice would be poured into quart jars and processed in a water bath. Her enamel canner was so big it fit over all 4 stove burners. Those home canned tomatoes were so much better than any store bought ones I’ve ever tasted. Same goes for the juice.

Two robber mice and Lupin and Goldie bapping at each other, lol!

Hey, be glad she’s not growing zucchinis…. Al least with tomatoes, most people are glad to be given fresh home growns and you can also can them and freeze them and make sauce and salsa.

I see Goldie and Lupin have started a fruit fight…

My aunt once gave us some homegrown cherry tomatoes. They were quite tasty.

Just look how excited Pucky is in the last panel! ❤

Sunday Funday

I spent this afternoon making the base for Weapons Grade Ratatouille. I used 8 lbs of tomatoes, 7 shallots, 2 heads of garlic, 4 onions, and 4 large red peppers. It cooked down into 3 pints of intensely tomatoe-y umami jam-like consistency. I diced 2 lbs each of eggplant and zucchini, roasted them, transferred the veg into a bowl and mixed one pint of the tomato base into it. Add a generous heap of juliened basil. It’s wonderful with crusty bread and an omelet. (I froze the other 2 pints of the base sauce, and will use them in the winter when I’m desperate for a taste of summer.)

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/member/views/-weapons-grade-ratatouille-50150043

I used to can a lot of tomatoes back in the day, and make tomato purée for sauce, also juice. Fresh tomatoes never went to waste. I used to dip tomatoes in boiling water for a few seconds and the skins would just peel right off. Zucchini, while tasty fresh or cooked or made into zucchini bread , are not able to be frozen and I never considered canning or freezing them. I suppose they could be pickled but I never tried to do so. I did make a vegetable juice using tomatoes, celery and carrots that I canned.

I only grow cherry tomatoes and some slightly larger. We have a short season, and we never have too many on 4 plants of various types. Looks like we will have about 6 delicata squash. Basil has been enough to make 4 batches of pesto with more to come. We had plenty of snap peas back in the season.

I spy 2 cats playing ball with (so far) 2 tomatoes, and I spy 2 robber mice stealing (so far) 1 tomato. I spy the same 2 robber mice in another panel, and I spy Lupin toe beans too! What do you see in the details of this Sunday strip?

Link (of GMM) would hate to see this.

Better keep an eye on Lupin and Goldie! They’re up to no good.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, perhaps.

Lupin and Goldie have worked out what to do with the tomatoes.

And The Man said it.

I wants some sauce too. For me samosas be more yummy with them.

First the prawn tacos and now the sauce. I wonders what’s next week. Something more yummy. Something more delicious. Something special for Super Scrumptious Special Savoury Sundays.

You say, Tomato and I say Toma- OH NO!

I am now excited and enthused about making some Italian tomato sauce or gravy as they call it.

Mmmmmm! ❤ I’ll take half of those tomatoes off your hands!! I cannot believe it costs $10 for six tomatoes in New Zealand. Highway robbery! :(

No offense, but I wouldn’t want that sauce. A friend only has two large cats and they go into the kitchen too, including on the counters. They aren’t allowed to, but they don’t care. Everything she makes has cat hair in it.

When the pizza hits your eye like a big moon I say, tomatoes galore

Latest on GDSMom?

Goldie toe beans!

I’m with Goldie – these almost look like Tomato Tribbles. Aren’t there more in the seventh panel then there were in the third?

Just give away the tomatoes, Woman. You’ll be wee at saucing them all!

Ironically, I am canning marinara today.

My mother would make tomato juice and it was very good.

I lived in a small town for awhile. One year we had a "bountiful " tomato and zucchini season. It was dangerous to leave you’re car unlocked, you would find your back seat filled with tomatoes and zucchini.

I adore Pucky in that last panel. I hope he gets some sauce! Around this time of year I make a big batch of marinara to freeze. Although from farmer’s market tomatoes as my yard is too shaded to grow my own.

Meanwhile, Back on the Nile

At the Cosmos Nursery

Thomios: Looks like you have a great crop, Trev.

Trevor-Hotep: Yep. The pizza trees are almost ready for harvest.

Beatrixia: And the apples look good as well.

Thomios: I’ve also seen hints of the first pumpkin spice crop.

Trevor-Hotep: Yeah, that seems to come in earlier each year. But my greatest success is the miracle zucchini.

Beatrixia: What makes them miraculous?

Trevor-Hotep: Each plant only produces ten zucchini.

My friend, Ron, makes outstanding Salsa with his own tomatoes and homegrown peppers. However, this year the tomato harvest was sub-par, so he has had to supplement his harvest with store-bought vegetables. Too bad the Woman does not live close to St. Louis.

I have known Ron since we were both thirteen. We meet every Saturday we can for lunch – always Mexican food. His salsa comes in three heat levels and, trust me, the “hot” salsa will melt your fillings, but the flavor is outstanding. I have a standing order for three jars, every year.

@Granny Roberta Any update on your cat NightFury?

Donate the surplus to the victims of the wildfires in Italy.

I’ve got some sort of blight in my soil. Years ago they used to do well. Now, even when I tried putting them in a planter far away from the garden they died. This year, with a lot of anti fungal, some even poured into the soil, I got a handful of small tomatoes. Oh well, only my wife eats them. I don’t like raw tomatoes and we don’t get enough for sauce.

Make ketchup! Easy and fun, plus you can season it the way you like.

OT: GSD Mom

Thanks everyone. Getting stronger and I finally got to brush my teeth

As a tomato lover, I don’t see the problem here. ;)

Also, she either has gotten a whole field’s worth of tomato plants to get that many that quickly, or she has managed to grow some seriously productive tomato plants. My folks have been growing their own tomatoes every summer for years, and never have we ever ended up with that many tomatoes that quickly, and never to the point that we had more than we knew what to do with (that honor fell to the plum trees).

So I sort of want to know now what her secret is to grow that many tomatoes that quickly.

Do not let this woman near any zucchini…

At least hers are ripe. I always seem to end up with a tsunami of green tomatoes.

We are only just finishing off the last jar of green tomato chutney from last year.

We didn’t really know that much about zucchini the first time we tried it in the garden. We planted a whole row of the stuff. Yoicks!!!!!!!!

Both Poody and Roy LOVE red sauce and will crowd the plates on spaghetti night to get the remains to lick up.

I’ll take a few of the extras. Slice ’em up, add a little salt, chomp!

This little rat plays the harmonica! https://fb.watch/7Qytty7x4Z/

O.T.

OT

It could be worse. It could be zucchinis.

At least they aren’t zucchinoids …

My kitchen looks the same way this day, minus all but one cat and no mice. I told my hubby I didn’t know where to start. Just finished canning and freezing green beans yesterday, so, today is tomato day. And, I was running out of jars, so hubby went to Walmart to pick up more. The lady at the store told him they had more, but haven’t been able to keep up shelving with the demand. And I must get the tomatoes done as next week is grape and apple harvest and that gets made into jam and applesauce. You would think that at 81, I would ‘retire’, but somehow I keep doing this preserving with a lot of help from my husband.

A pizza the size of the Moon? I want one! Expecting to have pizza for dinner tonight as it is.

(Also, “A Pizza the Size of the Moon” sounds like a perfect children’s picture book.)

OT: Guess who did too much yesterday…

That’s the trouble with home gardens: everything gets ripe at the same time. Tomatoes from a garden are so much better than anything you can buy in a store.

OMG! A pizza the size of the moon! Bwahahahahah!

I had an over abundance of cherry tomato’s this year, the big boys I only got about 2 dozen, and a darned horn worm is now destroying my jalapeño plant. I’ve plucked off 2 just in past 2 days. Big boys they were!

I tried growing tomatoes. Got a few puny little ones, and one nice, big, perfect one… that a jerk of a squirrel took a bunch of little bites out of. Not just on one side, no — it took single little chomps all the way around the tomato!

This years tomato crop was huge in my garden. In 2 weeks I canned +71 quarts (net from fresh) of tomatoes and 50 lbs of zucchini. Had to use a wagon to transport all from the garden in my back yard. Plus I put up cooked collards and froze green peppers and jalapenos. Pickled 24 quarts of cucumbers. Ate fresh lettuce all spring. The only things left growing now are the peppers. Boy am I tired.

There’s no such thing as too many tomatoes. They can be canned, etc.

Now if you had grown that much zucchini, you’d have a problem.

I did not even notice the mice at first, but Lupin and Goldie in the last panel. Oh my.

No, Puck, no sauce for you.

I love Pucky’s gentle paw of consolation for the Woman.

The next day — “Honey, why do Goldie and Lupin both have dried tomato pulp in their fur?”

Our tomato plant flopped. Actually two flopped. I replaced the first and the second did slightly better. We will have a total of about 15 tomatoes. I think we got a bad bag of soil. We’ve never had trouble growing tomatoes in that pot before.

And although this has been noted already, I have to say I just love the colouring in this comic.

Easiest solution when you have more than you can eat or use: rinse them and put them in the freezer. Once they are frozen you can put them in bags or just leave them loose. The skin slips right off when you want to use one or more.

What an unexpectedly saucy woman!

I think he needed to finish that sentence. I swear it’s “Mamma Mia it’s me, Mario!” Not some lame song that lead to two lame movies.

The Man just couldn’t resist.

In re cats and tomatoes: “My cat Horatio loves cheese, but I have had cats who liked tomato and basil sauce or broccoli above all things.”—Cooking the Books / by Kerry Greenwood.

Gravy

this reminds me of the “zucchini” era of foxtrot.

Nice action face from elvis in the last panel.

This one really strikes a chord with me. Last month, I visited some family in another part of the country. They have a garden by their house. One of their main harvests is tomatoes, and (I swear) one of their kitchen counters looks exactly like the one in panel 3—covered in tomatoes. Small world. This comic made me smile.

Great! Where do I send my mason jar?

Actually sugar-free tomato sauce is a great idea. Freeze it instead of canning (if you have the space!).

This reminded me of the Jack Prelutsky poem," A Pizza The Size Of The Sun."