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September is peak tomato month across the corridor — which means most CSA boxes and market hauls right now come with more tomatoes than one household can eat fresh. If you don't have a free Saturday for a full canning session, here are five ways to use them up this week instead.
1. Freezer tomato sauce (no canning required)
Skip the acid-and-processing-time rules entirely by freezing instead of canning. Simmer roughly-chopped tomatoes (skins and all — a blender or immersion blender smooths them out later) with a little olive oil, garlic, and salt until they break down, then blend and freeze flat in zip-top bags. Flat bags stack like files and thaw in minutes.
2. Slow-roasted tomatoes
Halve tomatoes, toss with olive oil, salt, and whole garlic cloves, and roast at a low oven temperature (around 300°F) for 2–3 hours until deeply concentrated. They keep in the fridge under a layer of olive oil for a week or freeze well for months — and they turn an ordinary weeknight pasta into something worth bragging about.
3. Quick pico de gallo or salsa fresca
No cooking, no jars — just diced tomatoes, onion, jalapeño, cilantro, lime juice, and salt. It uses up a large volume of tomatoes fast and disappears just as fast at any late-summer cookout.
4. Tomato and bread salad (panzanella)
Stale bread, ripe tomatoes, olive oil, vinegar, and whatever herbs are also piling up from the same CSA box (basil, if you're lucky enough to have it). Let it sit for 20–30 minutes so the bread soaks up the tomato juices — it's a full meal for almost no active cooking time.
5. Gazpacho
Blend ripe tomatoes with cucumber, bell pepper, a little onion and garlic, olive oil, and vinegar, then chill. It's the fastest way to turn a full counter of vegetables into several meals with zero heat in the kitchen — useful on the still-warm September afternoons this corridor tends to get.
Still have more than these five ideas can handle?
That's exactly the situation water bath canning is built for — see Water Bath Canning 101 for a beginner-friendly first batch, including the one safety step (acidifying each jar) that's easy to miss.