Last week, I came home to an overflowing garden after spending five days in the mountains. I’m convinced that as soon as I leave town and stop “supervising” my veggies, they decide to have a growth spurt overnight. That ginormous squash? I swear that it wasn’t there the week that I left. But when I [...]
tomatoes
Looks like summer came early to the garden… Here we are in the middle of April, and I just spotted my first green tomato on the vine!
Last week I had the honor of hosting Jere Gettle (as in the Jere Gettle from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, pictured at right) and Paul Wallace (the man in charge of Baker Creek’s west coast branch, the Petaluma Seed Bank) at my humble little abode. They were only in town for a day or two, [...]
You’ve made countless salads and salsas, even pickled and frozen them, but if you’re like me out here in zone 10b, you’ve still got those late-season cherry tomatoes coming out your ears. Here’s one last way of using them all up with a minimum amount of effort — a cherry tomato bisque for busy people [...]
Once you’ve had a taste of tangy, organic heirloom tomatoes painlessly oven-dried at home, you’ll never go back to that inferior, expensive, store-bought sun-dried stuff. That wrinkly little nub of tomato packs a serious punch, with a zesty flavor so concentrated that it makes magic out of the simplest sauce and adds gusto to any [...]
Back in the 16th century when tomatoes were first introduced in Europe, the French adoringly called the fruits “love apples” (pommes d’amour), believing that these succulent orbs had aphrodisiac powers. And do they? One look at this voluptuous tray of delectable, juicy, vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes, freshly picked from the garden, and you might start to [...]
Last week’s massive harvest of the rogue tomato plants didn’t just yield green tomatoes; I also harvested a hefty basket of ripe, juicy, orangey-red cherry tomatoes ready for eatin’. Problem was… I couldn’t eat them all right away. I turned some of them into roasted tomato soup and sliced the others fresh into salads. I [...]
