Green Tomato Invasion

Monday August 9th

Day 110

I feel besieged in the kitchen today - by an invasion of green tomatoes. Kilos and kilos of them - rescued from blighted plants by my husband. He says,

“We need to cook them now.”

He fears they may infect each other if we don’t. I Google what to do with green tomatoes and make a cauldron of chutney - sweet and sour with vinegar and brown sugar, chopped apricots and ginger. I roast a panful with red onions and garlic and slice and fry a handful with chilli and soy sauce for lunch. Like marrows and nettles it’s what you cook green tomatoes with which inject them with any flavour.

I can smell my husband’s version of the chutney floating upstairs - stinging my nostrils with extra red chilli and garlic, ginger and some kind of alcohol. This year’s Christmas stocking fillers.

There are still three bowls of tomatoes, all shapes and sizes, sitting on the counter. Their grassy greenness taunts me. I feel the loss of their redness, their warm skinned sweetness, like a blight on a summer that never arrived.