WEEKLY FOREST MARKET DAY: HOW I PURCHASED, PROCESSED AND PRESEREVED MY TOMATOES

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It's your favorite girl @debbie-ese 😍
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Yesterday was the Market Day at Forest Market. It is a market that opens every four days. I decided to buy some tomatoes on this market day and of course in large quantity. The market was bustling with activities as early as 7am when i got there. I had to go as early as possible so that i can be one of the first to buy from their best stocks and also to enable me leave the market before the sun is out.

I headed straight to the tomatoes section where they were packed in wooden baskets. Surprisingly, the price of tomatoes have dropped drastically compared to the price it was sold during the festive period which is just less than a month ago. Some weeks ago a basket of tomatoes was about #48000 but the recent price is #20000. The reduction margin is so high that I had to increase my budget so as to seize the opportunity of the present price. I intended to buy a quarter but i had to purchase half basket.

So, this is how it works. In a case where a person does not want to buy the full basket,he or she will have to get two or more people that they will share the basket together. Also, the sharing process will not commence until everyone is complete. In my case, since i wanted half a basket, I had to look for another person to share with me. On the long run, the basket was shared between three people, i bought half and two other people bought quarter each.

After purchasing I headed back home to start the other process. I knew I'd need some help in washing, so I called one of my neighbours to assist me. We spent a lot of time as we washed thoroughly and made sure they were clean. Then we sliced them into halves and squeezed out the water in the process. The next thing we did was to to parboil the tomatoes for some minute to soften them up. Then when it has cooled down we took it to the grinding machine near my house to grind them into a smooth paste.

Then I poured it into a pot when i got home one more time so that the water can get dry. The essence of parboiling it the first time was to reduce the time i would spend drying the water. I used a charcoal pot to dry the tomatoes at the back of the house. It was much more economical than using cooking gas. The whole process took me quite some hours that i had to shower and change my clothes at intervals because of the heat that was coming out of the cooking area.

Finally when the water drìed up i packaged them into containers and kept them in the freezer.

Thanks for your time. See you in my next one.