Compare these to the tomatoes of a few weeks ago back, click here
The slugs in my garden have had a spectacularly good year, so good that even the tomatoes, which usually get away unscathed, have suffered their assault, and so I eventually decided to salvage the remaining green ones and bring them inside. I am not a fan of fried green tomatoes and had a bad experience with an over-heated green tomato curry last year, so I was determined to get them to ripen indoors this time around.
Tomato ripening is triggered by the gas ethene, which causes the conversion of starches into sugar and the generation of the red pigment lycopene. This happens naturally on the vine, and as the green tomatoes begin to ripen, they too give off ethene, encouraging their neighbours to ripen in a virtuous cycle of increasing deliciousness.
To mimic this process in the safety of my slug-free kitchen, I popped some ripe tomatoes on a tray along with my green ones and, sure enough, a few weeks later, my green tomato harvest was almost entirely red. As I contemplated these mutually ripening tomatoes, I was reminded of the words at the end of our passage for this Sunday:
And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10: 24-25)
As the green tomatoes are encouraged to ripen by their slightly redder neighbours, we can encourage each other to greater ‘love and good deeds’ – but for that to happen, just like the tomatoes, we need to be in close proximity, ‘not neglecting to meet each other’. See you on Sunday?!