Tomatoes, Tomatoes

My vegetable garden always has three or four varieties of tomatoes:  a beefsteak variety for sandwiches, especially BLTs, a cherry or grape tomato for salads, a roma and this year I went with a yellow tomato.   I absolutely love the flavor of those yellow tomatoes mixed with cucumbers.   A great summer salad.

Yesterday my husband and I picked 3 baskets of vegetables.   The romas were ready and it was sauce time! As I was slicing up the tomatoes, I remembered picking tomoatoes as a kid with my family.   We would have bushels of tomatoes and it became a family operation  to clean, prep and boil the tomatoes into sauce.  Two days of boiling down sauce and then canning.   Last week I made a few quarts of sauce using the crockpot to boil the sauce overnight.

The dehydrator is working overtime, this morning with two kinds of basil, parsley and oregano. My own Italian Seasoning Mix is ready.   Later in the morning, the tomatoes will be boiling on the stove and the sweet smell of boiling tomatoes will permeate the house.   Just one small pot, flavored with onions, green pepper and garlic, all out of my garden!    We tasted the mixture in the evening and the flavor was astounding. We decided it would make great bloody mary’s in the morning!

Bloody Mary Recipe

1/4 cup (2 ounces) vegetable juice.

3 dashes Talulas Hot Sauce.

3 tablespoons (1 1/2 ounces) vodka (Titos).

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce.

1 pinch salt.

1 dash freshly ground black pepper.

1 pinch of celery seed

About 1 cup ice cubes.

We thought to garnish with olives, celery or martini onions later….

 

Vegetable juice

Mixed Romas, yellow, beefsteak tomatoes sliced and boiled down to two quarts

half an onion, 3 green peppers, 1 clove elephant garlic

Boil all ingredients together and put through a food grinder.

 

 

Modified Blooming Onion Recipe

For over 15 years, I’ve been eating gluten and lactose free.  In the last two years, I’ve been eating low FODMAPS (See Stanford’s FODMAP Chart for more information).  

Every once in a while, I just want a taste of something that every one else can eat.  I can’t possibly go out to eat this. This was the time when I just had to try to make a Blooming Onion! So I took a recipe that I saw online and modified it to be gluten free and EDTA free. For a first attempt, I think the recipe turned out well.      Unfortunately, it isn’t low FODMAPS, but I just wanted a taste. This recipe did it!  I was able to taste a Blooming Onion and my husband liked it too.

SAUCE

2/3 c. EDTA free mayonnaise ( I used Trader Joe’s)
2 TBSP organic ketchup (no High Fructose Corn Syrup)
1 TBSP siracha sauce
1 TSP smoked paprika
1 TSP chili powder
1/2 TSP garlic power
1/2 TSP dried oregano
kosher salt
1 TBSP horseradish sauce (optional to keep this EDTA free- go without)

Mix all of the sauce ingredients together and refrigerate.

FOR THE ONION

1 large onion
1 egg and cold water scrambled
1 c gluten free bread crumbs
2 TSP paprika
1 TSP garlic powder
1 TSP onion powder
Kosher salt
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Peel the onion.   Slice off onion stem and set onion on flat side. Cut inch from the root down, into 12 to 16 sections or use an apple slicer to cut evenly, being careful not to cut all the way through. Flip over and gently pull out sections of onion to separate petals.
In a small high bowl, scramble the egg and cold water together.   In a second bowl mix the rest of the ingredients.   Dunk the onion in the egg wash and then dredge in the bread crumbs.   Do this twice to get full coverage.  Set the onion on a parchment covered baking dish and place in the oven for 18-20 minutes.

 

 

Gardening Diary 2018- Results

It seems that all winter long, I look over gardening magazines, review the results of last year’s garden and buy seeds to get started.  I use my guest bathroom as my winter green house and hopefully have some plants for the spring.   This year was no exception.   I planned, fretted and dreamed.  Over winter, I planted 3 types of garlic.   I also left some onions in over winter.   In the spring I was checking on the garlic, onions and second spring of asparagus.   Still not quite ready for asparagus.    My strawberries took over any spot where I would let them.

The vegetable garden is 500 square feet, fenced in too keep the deer and dogs out.      I have four raised beds, each 16 square feet, I have one area that has been tilled and setup for my root vegetables.  This year that area has sweet potatoes, I have a strawberry bed, asparagus bed and then the rest is for planning each year.  The blueberries are in their own area and the herbs are all closer to the kitchen.

What did not do well this year?

  • Peas-  Only able to harvest enough to add to small stir fry.
  • Squash-  Squash bugs this year have completely decimated my yellow squash, we harvested three small squashes
  • Zucchini-  Not sure why we’ve just gotten NO zucchini (I have plenty of bees)
  • Carrots-  These became food for bunnies, I’m sure.   The tops were all down and withered one day, the tops of all the carrots were chomped down.   I harvested to save what I could… disappointing…. The second planting is still in the ground.
  • Tomatoes-   I’m putting the tomatoes here, although we still have a ways to go.  The plants are all scraggly and the leaves have rust.    I’ve gotten romas to make some sauce and the yellow tomatoes are EXCELLENT with raw cucumbers.  But it doesn’t look like we’re going to get as many tomatoes as last year, when we canned for a few weekends and had three large batches of sauce and some salsa.

What did well?

  • Purple potatoes-  each plant gave me more than a pound of potatoes.
  • Cucumbers- 3 cucumber plants, way more than we need.  1 plant for next year
    • I’ve been making dill pickle spears and eating cucumbers raw for more than a month.  I believe there are more than 20 cucumbers still waiting for disposition 🙂
  • Gherkin cucumbers-   I love this little plant and am looking forward to the gherkin pickles from these.    Next year I’ll plant them away from the regular cucumbers.
  • Eggplants-  This year we went with a Japanese fingerling? variety.   Loved these in stir fries.
  • Beans-  I really appreciated these bushes this year. I only put two bushes in, next year I’ll put in four bushes.  We harvested beans for quite some time and still are harvesting beans.
  • Kale-   GREAT baked with potatoes and great in smoothies.   Three plants are too much for us
  • Blueberries did well until a hole in our netting let the birds in.   It only took a day or two to have them decimated….
  • Green Peppers-  9 plants seem to be perfect for us, we received just enough peppers to support what we needed this year, but nothing for the freezer.
  • Garlic and Onions-  Although  not as many made it over the winter (I believe chipmunks were the cause) I’m very pleased with the results.

The jury is still out on the sweet potatoes.

 

Update:

15 pounds of sweet potatoes!   They are so beautiful!   I  just pulled up my green pepper plants and picked the last of my green peppers!  Stuffed green pepper soup and fajitas were on the menu this week.  I also sliced up some and froze them.   We’re going to have stuffed peppers later this week and