When Good Veggies Go Bad

This has been a bonanza year for tomato growers. I have several varieties and they have all produced prodigiously. Somehow I got a couple of beefsteak tomatoes, not my favorite except for BLTs. (This is the only time of the year when I allow myself the luxury and cholesterol of bacon.)

With the other tomatoes, I have made chili, spaghetti sauce and even experiments with tomato paste which Erma Bombauer promised I could do easily. Alas, I do not keep the required brown sugar in my staple supply , but I made a tomato paste-like concoction which took most of the day to cook , turning 8 great tomatoes into about a half cup of goop with which I thickened my spaghetti sauce.

With most of the tomatoes I have made our favorite tomato, basil, garlic and onion topping for pasta, the memory of which will haunt us in February. Or sliced tomatoes, with mozzarella and balsamic vinegar. I have also frozen a few little packets of tomatoes for soup this fall and winter.

What with family reunions and much loved company for the past month or so, however, I have rather neglected that care of my garden. I went out yesterday and discovered the above horror in one of the beefsteak tomato plants. Eeewww! There is something so disgusting and ghastly about the transformation of a healthy plant into something so grotesque. It looks like something Hieronymus Bosch would put into a sort of corrupt still life, fruit for the damned. A good veggie gone bad on its way to eternal damnation. No more the shiny, red, edible globe. Aargh! Something nasty in the garden