Saturday, August 6, 2011

Harvest Recipe

So what do you do with an over-abundance of cherry tomatoes? Make bruschetta, of course!
One of our new favorite restaurants makes a really good one so we combined parts of that with some recipes we found online.

First, take all those wonderfully ripe cherry tomatoes you harvested yesterday...
Then cut them up, the big ones in quarters and the little ones in half. Add a little olive oil, salt, pepper, and balsamic vinegar to the bowl then very gently fold it all together. Set it aside to sit and meld while you work on the other stuff.
In a little skillet over very very low heat put some olive oil and minced garlic and fresh basil (also from your garden obviously) and let it all warm up. That will let some of the basil and garlic oils out to mix. Don't let it boil, just simmer a little. Let that sit on the low heat while you work on the next part.
Grab a good loaf of Italian bread, or whatever denser bread you'd like. Slice it into about 3/4" slices. Nothing too thick yor you won't be able to bite into it. Too thing and it'll burn when you put it under the broiler.
Yummmmmm... toasted bread. Now use that garlic/basil oil you had simmering and brush it over the bread. You don't have to use all of it. Any you don't use just add to the tomatoes, it'll help to warm them up and soften them just a bit.
Then put the bread around the edge of the platter, pour the tomato mix in the middle and crumble some goat cheese over it. Oh yeah, it's best to get the goat cheese out at the beginning of all this so it warms up and softens a bit. Cold goat cheese is gross.
I'd recommend a nice glass of wine with it. Smear some goat cheese on a piece of bread, spoon some tomatoes on top and dive in. Delicious!
And that's what you do with all your ripe cherry tomatoes!

Friday, August 5, 2011

I'm Baaaack

Contrary to popular belief, I did not take a cross-country hot air balloon trip. I can't believe how long it's been since I've updated the blog, but the end of class and then some visitors and then work and then buying a car (!) all got away from me and somehow it's August! When did that happen?
And with the end of summer comes harvest! Sadly, our container plants are not doing quite as well as I'd hoped. The only thing we have in over-abundance is tomatoes. And lordy to we have LOTS of tomatoes!
We have cherry tomatoes, and big beefy tomatoes, and heirloom wrinkly tomatoes.
The cherries are all ripening fast so we're enjoying them.
Check back tomorrow to see what we did with the harvest.The biggest problem we're having is blossom-end rot. We've been really careful to keep even watering and we planted the seedlings with some eggshells for calcium, but we stopped at our local garden store and the guy said our weird weather (hot, cold, warm, WET, cold, dry, HOT) means that he's seen it a lot. He recommended some of this:
I've sprayed it on twice and we're hoping for the best. Any other suggestions for ending blossom end rot?