Tomato Sauce

Last week the farm share was still flush with tomatoes. I grabbed as many plum tomatoes as I could carry and let them ripen for a few days on the counter. Tonight I processed them through the food mill, getting 13 cups of purée which I then cooked down to 6 cups of sauce. Each pint has a sprig of basil, some lemon juice and salt. Maybe there will still be more this week? It's been warm enough and there were still plenty of green ones on the vines. Having a lot of tomato sauce around has been really handy. 

In the row of sungold cherry tomatoes, which I love, I found a single plant that appears to have been some sort of cross between a larger red tomato and sungolds. Or something. It might have been a random heirloom seedling that got mixed in. Anyway, these tomatoes were about 1.5 inches across, deep greenish-red, and flavorful. I made a tomato tart out of most of the ones I picked. Yum.

Thanks to the elderchild, I've been introduced to a YouTube series called Pasta Grannies. They're incredibly inspiring. I may have to start making more pasta by hand!

Mystery at the Door

This morning, just before I was heading out to do a few errands, my husband saw someone pull up in front of the house, run up the steps and leave something at the door. He disappeared back into his car before my husband could see him clearly, so instead we went to the door and found a small jar of pesto. Who could have brought me pesto? There were a few options. We decided to put it in the fridge until we figured out the identity of our mysterious benefactor.

A few hours later I got a text from a friend from culinary school, identifying himself as the bringer-of-pesto, made with basil from his garden. I had loaned him my bee suit a few weeks ago and he wanted to thank me. Little did he know, I had been eyeing a recipe that required pesto and had been wondering if I needed to buy some. Now I could make the recipe today!

The recipe was for a tomato tart that was in the New York Times over the weekend. I have been getting heirloom tomatoes from the farm share and there was this one tomato that was likely almost 2 pounds all by itself. It had been ripening on the windowsill and it was time to do something with it. Everything was coming together nicely. I made the crust and par-baked it, spread it with the pesto, mozzarella cheese, fresh basil and oregano from my garden, and then arranged the tomato slices and topped it all with an egg custard.

It was so good, even the youngerchild ate a slice. And pretty much every ingredient except the cheese is usually a no-go. 

Before adding the custard

After baking

Lots More Tomatoes

This is just what isn't already in the fridge, in the canner, or on the counter!

Since last week I canned tomatoes whole and was reminded how easy it was, I grabbed a whole bunch more salad tomatoes (the uniform sized ones) and canned them in pints and quarts. I also added fresh basil to the jars. I am hoping to enter these in the fair instead of last week's batch because I managed to get one more tomato into each jar and I didn't use any salt in the hopes that they won't float as much. We shall see.

All told, this was what I brought home today:
2 cantaloupes, 1 yellow watermelon, 2 pounds of golden beets, 1 spaghetti squash, 1 kabocha squash, 1 black futsu squash, a lot of potatoes, 1 pound carrots, 2 shallots, 3 sweet onions, 3 yellow onions, 2 eggplant, 4 peppers, 1 head of cabbage, 1 large handful each of braising mix (greens) and arugula, 3 heirloom tomatoes, 4 regular tomatoes, 10 pints worth of salad tomatoes, 2.5 pounds of tomatillos, parsley, cilantro, basil, 5 serrano peppers, 9 sweet "lunchbox peppers," about a dozen leaves of kale, 1 quart of sungold cherry tomatoes, 1 bunch Hakurei turnips, and 2 heads of broccoli.

Here's what I skipped: dill, other herbs, flowers, blackberries, other hot peppers, husk cherries, green beans, plum tomatoes, and "slicing" tomatoes (likely something like beefsteak).

I think I need a root cellar. This is a bad time of year for my share-mate to be out of town for 2 weeks in a row!

When Life Gives You Zucchini

Make chocolate zucchini bread!

I've made this before, but it's worth repeating.  This chocolate zucchini bread recipe is fabulous.  And it makes two loaves!  Even better.  The bread came out of the oven an hour ago and we've already eaten half a loaf.  No guilt, either, because of the zucchini.

The zucchini came to me by way of our mason who asked us over so he could give me things from the garden.  We got 2 monster sized zucchini, some celery, peppers, swiss chard, a white eggplant, and a LOT of basil.  I'm drying most of the basil; and I have a plan to make a stuffed zucchini with the other one.  The rest we'll work through.  Soon.  The farm share pick up is tomorrow!

Herbal Experiment

After a long night at work and a 4-hour nap I felt refreshed enough to tackle that second batch of crabapple jelly.  Same recipe from the Certo package as yesterday, but today I put large sprigs of purple basil into 2 of the half-pint jars.  I have no idea if that will work, but I remember something about lavender and strawberries in the past and thought it might be interesting.  The purple basil came from the farm share.  Usually when there's basil I give it to Stephanie as I'm not too into pesto and I don't really have a whole lot of uses for fresh basil.  But the purple basil was pretty and I thought I might find a use for a little bit.  I split that bunch with her.  And voila, I have a use for it!  Purple basil looks really nice in the bubble-gum-pink jelly.  Will let you know how it tastes when we open it.

The crabapple jelly itself is really wonderful.  Just ask my 9 year old who scraped the pot clean!