My favourite tomato – the ‘Orange Queen’. Late-harvest and prone to end-rot, but soooo tasty. Close runner up is the prolific, early-season ‘Stupice’.

My other tomato: Brandywine heirloom. This year was a bumper tomato crop in the PNW. Lotsa hot days led to enormous tomatoes breaking all my trellises. Quite a few brandywines grew in this double-tomato fashion:

We pulled up the tomato vines in early October during a week when night temps were threatening freezing; hung them in the cool den and waited to see if the fat green ones would ripen and how long they would last.

We’ve lost a few to rot, but are roasting our way through fall. Our favourite roasted tomato meal is so simple:

First, roast tomatoes:
-Slice any taller than 1″. For large toms, this means cutting in thirds, for cherries, leave them whole.
-Toss in olive oil
-Crowd tomatoes onto a roasting tray (with lip)
-Leave a bit of room to throw in sliced, oiled onions to roast the last 20 min
-Roast 300-350F for 1.5h until house smells heavenly and toms are very soft (more info)

Next, make the sauce:
Right on the still-warm roasting tray, fold and stir the tomatoes. They should fall apart into a chunky sauce. Apply a drizzle of olive oil if they are too dry. Add fresh cut basil leaves, salt and fresh-ground pepper, toasted pine nuts, a gob of goat cheese, maybe a splash of red wine. Add homemade pasta, sprinkle with freshly grated parmesan, and if you haven’t tried this before, you’ll thank me.

Some photos of what we put up from before the rain.

Gold Nuggest and Royal Acorns. Now snuggled away in the bedroom closet with the garlic.

And, finally, the obligate chickens photos.

Permissive parenting. Though if you know him you wouldn’t expect it of him, he also taken to feeding the cat. At the table.

Baracka, the-most-curious-bestest-chicken-in-the-world, was intent on exploring every corner of the house — if we would but turn our backs long enough for her to sneak into the house undetected. While we were in & out of the house putting up storm windows last week, Scott found her in the kitchen eating the cat food.