This post is all about bragging. That’s right, I’m writing this just so I can sing my own praises. And, since I am longwinded, my boasting is sure to be lengthy.

Last spring Jason and I planted a garden. We have just one 8×4 garden box in our yard but it’s big enough to provide more fresh deliciousness than two people could possibly consume: squash, cucumbers, onions, peppers, and, of course, tomatoes. Although all of our garden plants did well this year, our tomato vines were extraordinarily productive. From two tomato plants we harvest at least 429 tomatoes over the course of the summer. I tried to diligently keep track of how many we pulled off expressly for the purpose of rubbing it in everyone’s faces but I forgot to count my bounty now and then so 429 is a low estimate. And don’t you be thinking that that quantity was only possible because our pickings were pathetically small; no way, these were big juicy babies. Yum!

So what’s our secret? Did we spray our tomatoes nightly with mutant growth hormone? Make sacrifices to the great tomato gods? No and no. Though maybe we should have tried one of those proactive approaches so we could take credit for our tomatoes being awesome because, honestly, they pretty much did it on their own. We filled our entire garden box with a special soil blend from Olson’s Nursery specifically formulated to make garden box plants happy. It was well worth the $100 or so it cost us. We also, purposefully, built our garden box in the perfect sunny spot on the south side of our house. And that is pretty much the extent of our gardening labors. Sounds like a lot of work, right? Sunshine + nutritious soil = more tomatoes than we know what to do with.

So what has become of those nearly 500 tomatoes? Salsa, salsa, salsa, salsa, some pasta sauce, salsa, salsa, salsa. And, now that the weather has gotten cooler, tomato soup has become our new favorite way to use up lots of tomatoes. (I would highly recommend Tyler Florence’s recipe.)

That brings me to the sad part of this post; the part where I whine instead of brag. It is now time to pull up those hardy tomato plants that have provided their fruits so faithfully for months. Goodbye good fellows and thanks for all the fish…I mean veggies. I will morn your loss forever, or for about 7 months, whichever comes first. After said time I reserve the right to forget all about you and pursue my latest vegetable fling; I’m so fickle.