Here in Vermont, it seems that, say, a quarter of all households have gardens, to pull a fraction out of my ass. However, the tomatoes produced by those gardens only stay good for a week, maybe two. Therefore, unless the gardens are very small, or people in the house really like cooking and like recipes that use tomatoes, a lot more tomatoes will be produced than their producers can eat.

This is why there is more fresh produce in my apartment today than at any point since last fall. My parents gave me a bowl full of cherry tomatoes when I left their house yesterday (a small fraction of their total yield) which I have been eating as snacks, and I have also had to politely refuse offers from the guy in the other apartment and someone at work because, come on, when would I eat them? Maybe I should cook more than I do, but not in Martha Stewart's wildest dreams would a single guy be able to go through 20 beefsteak tomatoes in a week without getting sick of them. Or even four or five. (Why not one or two, then? Well, to that I have to confess to laziness, I guess.)

Actually, though, I have to correct two parts of that last post. A bowl full of cherry tomatoes would not be the most fresh produce in a year for me by itself. The peck of apples I picked yesterday afternoon, almost on a whim after biking by an orchard and being surprised to see it was open on Labor Day, is a lot more, at least by weight. And while I haven't done it yet, I plan to do some kind of cooking with that. Maybe I'll never get around to it, etc., but don't count it out yet.