As the weather changes, mornings are cool and warm afternoon sunshine gives way to chilly evenings. This all happens way too quickly for me. I know a lot of tomato growers who have pulled out their plants and put in winter vegetables. I'm still harvesting, making panzanella and gazpacho and comparing tastes and textures of the many tomatoes I grow. I will admit that it's the cherry varieties that continue to give the best flavor. But that doesn't mean the medium and larger tomatoes should be ignored.

Today I tasted Golden Jubilee, Barnes Mountain Yellow and Amazon Chocolate. Golden Jubilee is a tomato that I planted late in the summer as an experiment. I wanted to see how it would do as summer gave way to fall. It has produced one tomato so far, a small golden fruit that was a bit too tart for my taste. Amazon chocolate was quite tasty. It's a pretty, red, oval shaped tomato with subtle yellow feathering on the skin. It tasted good and fairly mellow. It would be nice in a salad but it's nothing special. Barnes Mountain Yellow is one of the prettiest tomatoes I've seen but I don't know what it's called yellow...it's a deep orange tomato, a bit flat on the top and has beautiful bright green stripes. This tomato definitely gets a Wow! The taste of this tomato is deep and rich, much like it's coloring. It's got a true tomato taste with just the right amount of acidity. Sometimes it's really nice to know just what you're going to get - no surprise, no mystery...the skin of this tomato tells you just what to expect and it definitely doesn't disappoint.