Tomato season is drawing to a close in many parts of the country, so it's time to eat them while you have them, or put them up for the winter. We want to know: what are you doing with your tomatoes?
I'm a gardenless apartment dweller, so I only buy as many tomatoes as I need at the farmers' market and have to make a point to buy in bulk when I want to preserve something.
When it comes to gardening, I live vicariously through my parents and their backyard vegetable harvests (a recent one is pictured above). They're deep into tomato sauce-making mode at the moment, and the Slow Cooker Tomato Sauce from All Recipes has become a quick favorite. What isn't going into the sauce pot is being oven-roasted or turned into fresh salsa.
Is your garden overflowing with tomatoes? Are you stocking up at the farmers' market? We want to know how you're using them! Any good tips to share?
Looking for inspiration? Here are a few tomato recipes and tips from our archives:
Recipe: Oven-Roasted Tomato Jam
Home Cooking: Slow-Roasting Tomatoes
Quick Tip: Roasting Tomatoes Under the Broiler
How Do I Make and Preserve Tomato Sauce?
Food Mill for Sauce Season
Tip: Use a Wide Pan to Make Tomato Sauce
Good Question: Do I Need a Tomato Press?
There's Only One Way To Skin A Tomato
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Season ending? My tomatoes are either still green or just budding. With the cool summer, all of the crops are behind. I'm trying to figure out what I'll do with all the green tomatoes when the frost hits. I'll also be getting some extra tomatoes from the market to can and freeze.
Ditto. We're all green here in Minnesota.
I always have grand plans for my tomatoes but I end up eating them all before I get a chance to do anything special. Salads, sandwiches and just sliced up with a bit of black pepper. . . yum!
Same here in southern Ontario. I've had two full-size tomatoes so far this year. This week is probably the first time we've had more than a couple days of sun in a row.
The cherry, grape and golden are all overflowing, but the the early girl (go figure) and roma are struggling still! I made Tomatoes Provencal, a great way to use up extra tomatoes! http://twitpic.com/gcmju
Three glorious letters: BLT
Hahaha... I have probably eaten every kind of tomato sandwich/salad there is!
Preserveing:
Canning sauce
Freezing soup
Making oven-dried tomatoes
Ketchup
paste
Aaaand I cant type apparently. Ugh.
we are in chicago, and last year we still had green tomatoes on the vines when the first frost hit. here's what we did:
1. picked entirely green ones, pickled and canned them. spicy pickled green tomatoes are excellent in place of salsa, in tofu scramble or stir-fry, or homemade macaroni and cheese.
2. for larger tomatoes, especially ones with a hint of color, we pulled up the entire vines, shook off the dirt, and hung them in a sunny, dry place. they ripened naturally on the vine within a few days, and the flavor was much much better than if we had picked them and set them on a sunny windowsill to ripen.
I'm like you--can't grow tomatoes in our small apartment and they're too expensive to get large crops of. But I've recently been gifted a ton by friends with gardens, so I've been living it up tomato style with:
-simple Seville style gazpacho in the blender
-cut into chunks and added with every other veggie imaginable to make simple Indian veggie dishes
-chunked for panzanella
-plopped into the food processor with a can of cannelloni beans, some kalamata olives, and fresh parsley and thyme, lemon and olive oil for awesome dip
Time to jar tomato sauce! Just put up a recipe here using "Dirty Girl" dry farmed tomatoes, they're fantastic!
http://www.paintedpeach.blogspot.com
I've been making panzanella, bruschetta, and plain old salads. I think the two heirlooms I got from the CSA this week were the last for us--they lost most of the non-heirlooms to blight.
I just got about 15 big tomatoes at the Farmers Market today for $5. I'm going to make pasta sauce and freeze it. Next weekend, I'll go get more and do the same.
Also, tomatoes and cottage cheese is my favorite.
kls987, you must be well north of us in Minneapolis!
Our tomatoes (and our friends' & neighbors') have been going gangbusters and it's been panzanella every other night for us for at least the last 3 weeks. And the cherry/grape/plum varieties have been going for even longer than that.
btw, some friends gave us some indian poona kheera cucumbers they grew and they were the most sensational cukes I've ever tasted. The panzanella we made with them was out of control. Now we're making do with lebanese cukes and it's good but not quite the same.
We've had a late growing season, so I still have lots of tomatoes. I made green tomato cake with the green ones, sun-dried tomatoes with the cherry ones and salsa with the romas.
I am sad the growing season will be coming to an end!
They're still coming in here in Wisconsin too. Honestly, if a tomato makes it into the house, I must have just finished a good meal. If it makes it into some sort of dish? That almost never happens. We eat them just as they are, and for my larger varietals they are few and far between. It's been a tough growing season, especially as many local sources have had problems with tomato blight:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/53813477.html
Also, speaking of Tomatoes - if anyone's in Milwaukee this weekend, check out our version of a Tomatina!!:
http://www.bayviewnow.com/userstoriessubmitted/57708087.html