My last few days have been spent knee deep in tomatoes: on Saturday morning we went round to the next door neighbour's for morning tea where we found their tomato vines overladen with tomatoes. It hasn't been a great year for tomatoes here in Oz so we were surprised to see so many and even more surprised that our neighbour was going to let them rot as he had already had his fill! He told us to take as many as we wanted, so my Godmother's filled a whole basketful of all shapes and sizes.

We had been invited round so they could meet me and I them, as we had only seen each other from afar up until then. Fernando, the husband is Italian and Margaret, his wife, is English and they are, at the moment, providing lodging for Fernando's nephew, who is planning to live here for a while. We had tea and a wonderful Italian cake while our dog and their dog frolocked outside in the sunshine. When we got back I made plans with my Godmother's husband to make some tomato chutney with what we had collected.

We didn't have the time or ingredients to start right away but Sunday morning, raring to go, I ploughed in to peeling onions, crushing garlic and deseeding chillies for the first 2lb of tomatoes I weighed out. We had to quadruple the recipe as we had so many tomatoes to use so it took me about an hour just to prepare everything! After getting it all into the pot, I waited, I stirred and I waited some more. Then I stirred and waited a bit more, all the while, the mixture had slowly reduced further and further, thickening up beautifully as it did so. The whole room began to fill with a beautiful aroma that all those who wandered into and out of the kitchen during the morning remarked upon. Another load was dutifully done, but with a few extra hands to lessen the prep time and with fewer chillies!

Our neighbour then came round to collect his basket on Sunday afternoon and as thanks to them, we gave him some of the freshly made chutney. He informed us his other neighbour had started picking the tomatoes as well, so I was sent back today to get some more before they all went. You are now thinking that these must be pretty special tomotoes, well, I have to take people's word for it too, as I do not like tomatoes raw. But I am told that Fernando has magic hands and a very green thumb when it comes to things like this but I just need to see the dark, rich colour of the chutney to know that.

Anyway, back to today's tomato expedition: my Godmother sent me off with one of their own baskets and Freya the dog for company looking very much like little red riding hood apparently! Our trample through the wooded area between the two properties disturbed the roos having a munch there which sent them bounding off across the field in a flash (I still can't get used to just how close we are to them). I picked as many tomatoes as I could when I got there, unfortunately forgetting just how heavy it would be to carry them back up to the house afterwards...oops; that was definitely a good upper body workout!

Once again I had no time to use the tomatoes today, but I have planned out a simple tomato base sauce for bolognese and pizza to make tomorrow, using them and some of Fernando's basil.

When I was packing my chutney away into tubs, and my Godmother was juicing her own oranges, I felt very content with the world and truly enjoyed the sustainable picture we had begun to paint of ourselves.