A Few Pictures From October 22 Trip to Spokane and Gonzaga University

Here are a few pictures from our trip to Gonzaga University last week.  First, a confession:  I didn't take any pictures on campus during the campus tour.  Seriously, it was harder than you might expect to take pictures during the tour.  Besides, if you go to the Gonzaga website, you can see many professional photographs of the campus.


Spokane is an interesting city.  There is a river with water falls running through the middle of it.  This is a view of Spokane Falls, taken from Anthony's restaurant, where we ate lunch after the tour.

Here is another view:

The following pictures are from Riverfront Park.  We went on the Spokane Falls Skyride, which takes you right out over the river and the falls.  Being late fall, the river is actually kind of low.  I imagine in the spring and early summer, these look  nicer.   In any case, the picture portrayed on the website is a bit of an optical illusion.   

The Last of the Tomatoes

Late last week, we had a couple of nights dip into the 30's, so Sunday morning it was time to pick the last of the tomatoes.   This is what I brought inside:

By the way, this bowl is bigger than the bowl pictured in the previous tomato post.   And the prize winning tomato of the season:

In some ways the baseball doesn't do it justice - it's shorter than the ball, but much bigger around.

Meanwhile, I've planted carrots, beets, and parsnips again - they are coming up better than they did in the spring.  And I have two winter squash varieties started.  One bed has four healthy artichoke plants, which will winter over one way or another.  The rest of the garden has been put to bed, and is ready for some compost.  

Tomatoes - Better Late Than Never

It's been a cold and wet summer, and even in my sheltered back yard with southern exposure, tomato farming has been slow.  But in the end, I somehow have the largest crop of tomatoes ever.  For a long while, it was the largest crop of green tomatoes ever, but on September 21, I finally picked my first large red tomato from my Super Lakota plants.  

I also planted another heirloom called Jaune Flammee.  These are too small, and too sweet - they don't really taste like a tomato.  Could be a weather thing, but I think I'll go with something else next year.  As you can see, the plants are looking dead, but I've just let them alone and the tomatoes keep ripening.  These plants were huge, and they produced a lot of fruit, but the tomatoes are barely more than a cherry tomato.  They are golf ball size.   This is a Oct 8 photo.

By October 8, more of the Super Lakota had ripened, too, and I picked about one-third of what I have out there.

First, a tomato sandwich - which I love, but can't eat too many.  See, the sad thing is - I love tomatoes, but am very sensitive and/or allergic to raw tomatoes, so I don't dare have any more than once or twice a week.

So what I've been doing is freezing the tomatoes.  Since I have an upright freezer, it's much easier than canning.  I would have to invest in a lot of equipment to start canning, and freezing fresh veggies is very easy.   For tomatoes, you just blanch them, skin them, seed them, and put them in ziploc bags.  It's also easy to do in small batches as I pick the tomatoes.  To use them, I'll just run them through the food processor and use them in recipes where I'd normally use stewed tomatoes.  I can eat cooked tomatoes without any problem.  

Although my plants are looking pretty sorry, I'm leaving them alone for now to see how many tomatoes will continue to ripen.