Several weeks ago I was given a whole bunch of green tomatoes. The kind, wise woman who gave them to me said that if I put them in a sunny windowsill they'd ripen and be fine. My kind, wise mother said that if I put them in a sunny windowsill they'd ripen and be fine. A young, smart fellow in my community garden said that if I pit them in a sunny windowsill they'd ripen and be fine.

I had my doubts. They were so green and hard. If green tomatoes left in a sunny windowsill would ripen properly, why did those things trucked up from Mexico taste so wimpy? But I tried to keep the faith. I cleared my sunniest windowsill and lined them up. And gradually, they did all turn red. Some of them reached an impressive colour. But they were still hard. And they didn't have even a whiff of that real tomato smell.

I decided to slow-roast them to see if I could excite their flavour a bit. And then I looked outside at the endlessly streaming rain and the dark broody sky (no sunny windowsill today!), and I decided that it was a day for pasta. A day for not just any pasta, but Spaghetti with Meatloaf. Not just any meatloaf, but meatloaf made with ground pork, naturally raised on the Gelderman family farm. It's spiced up with a bit of fennel seed and chili flakes, and then sweetened with a little maple syrup. It was really, really tasty. And the tomatoes were pretty good too.