Ripe yet? It’s tough to know.

Just like every year for the past several years, some of the families in the neighbourhood got together and ordered tomatoes.

Let me be a little more specific: Some of the Italian families who know the value of a basement full of tomato sauce took pity on me and allowed me to ride on their produce-ordering coattails. Apparently about 30 cases of Roma tomatoes showed up on Friday. Five were mine.

One of the neighbours has a food mill. She and her sister turn their tomatoes into passata (crushed tomatoes) with the mill, and they always allow us to borrow it, as who wants to store a food mill for 364 days of the year when you can rent one for a day with a decent bottle of red wine?

Here’s the issue: She gets to deal with her tomatoes first. We work around her schedule and every year it isn’t a problem.

Doesn’t mean I don’t worry, though. The tomatoes last year were perfectly ripe right off the truck. This year, not so sure. Not only were they about a week later than last year being delivered, they also needed at least a week to ripen up. It’s Tuesday. We have had them for 5 days. They’re looking pretty good.

Here’s the question: Do I trust the neighbour who thinks they need a few more days? Or do I trust my gut and do them early? I’m heading out of town this weekend so I either do them on Thursday (2 days’ hence) or wait until Monday.

Will they be too far gone on Monday? Will they be ripe enough on Thursday?

This is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night, you know.

I think I will wait until Monday. I just had one and although it was incredibly tasty, it still had a fair amount of crunch. I think there is still time.