Tomatoes

If you're a real tomato lover, picking a fresh tomato and eating it like an apple isn't unheard of, and that makes you our kind of people! So while we love all tomatoes equally, different types can serve a different culinary purpose. Determinate tomatoes ripen all at the same time so you can make all your sauces and salsas at once for preserving. They grow on compact bushes, so you probably don't need to stake these plants. Indeterminate varieties grow and produce fruit all season; therefore, you could use these tomatoes more regularly in salads and sandwiches. In between these two types are the semideterminate. As you might guess, they do both—produce a main crop that ripens at once, but also continue to produce up until frost. The really big, juicy tomatoes are probably slicer tomatoes, meaning they are thick and sturdy for slicing. They range in size from small (up to 5 oz.), medium (5–8 oz.), large (over 8 oz.). Paste tomatoes are smaller and drier with less seeds, making them the right choice for sauces and drying (you will not regret drying tomatoes and soaking them in olive oil).