I realized I have not talked about any food I have made lately and with the tomato avalanche that is going on at our place I figured I would share the latest tomato soup recipe.  This actually stemmed from my mother’s arrival the weekend of July 4th with a pile of veggies from her North GA garden.  We ate what we (or, I should say I ate, since The Mister shuns most veggies) could before it was time to start coming up with ways to put up the rest before it spoiled.  The freezer is full of bags of shredded zucchini and jalapeño peppers, and we just finished up the onions.  Everything was delicious and much appreciated, but I had one dilemma regarding all the tomatoes.  As many of you know, when you grow tomatoes, unless you can them or gift them to others sooner or later you are going to have way more than you can eat in a timely manner.  This happened with roughly a large Ziplock bag full of tomatoes.  In desperation to keep them for a later use I threw the bag in the freezer and hoped for the best.  I figured I would come up with a way to use them before they took on a funny “came from the freezer” taste.  Well this is the recipe was just the trick.

8 Large or 10 Medium sized tomatoes frozen and then thawed

1.5-2 cups of Chicken Broth

1/4 to 1/2 cup of fresh, chopped Basil

1/2 to 1 cup of Milk (or you could use cream)

1 can of tomato paste

Salt and Pepper (and any other spices you like) to taste

Parmesan Cheese

Squeeze the tomatoes right out of their skins into a large saucepan.  Add the spices, broth and tomato paste and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.  Once it comes to a boil turn it down to simmer for about 15 minutes.  Let cool and then run through a blender or food processor until smooth.  Poor back into the pan, add the milk and adjust the spices until you get exactly the consistency and flavor you are looking for.  Simmer on low, stirring occasionally, for another 15 to 20 minutes.  Serve it up with parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.

My homegrown and homemade soup along with a veggie pita, bursting with more homegrown tomatoes and homemade hummus.  All of this displayed on my new IKEA dinnerware in white.

This recipe was enough for three large bowls of soup, but it could easily have fed 4 to maybe even 6 if the portions were brought down a bit.  Either way it was very good, quite thick and rich, but relatively healthy.  The Mister did not realize it was homemade at first and when I let him in on the secret he said he thought it tasted to good to be from a can.  Awe, he always knows just the right thing to say.  ;o)

Hope you all are enjoying as much homegrown veggies as possible this summer!

Kitsch Krafts

This month has flow by and our backyard veggie patch is really starting to get crazy.  Although I have picked a couple of random ripe tomatoes to enjoy most are just now prime for the picking.  Also, early on we discovered that our old dog Roxy was eating the fruit right off the vine, so our early crop was lost to that little sneak.  I put up a 30 inch high decorative (if you can call those ugly push in the ground metal mini-fences pretty) fence to try to keep her out, but things still went missing.  Finally one morning I noticed mud all along my plants and one tomato, stake and all, bent backward at a weird angle.  Well after following the trail of mud I discovered that she had figured out how to go under the deck, open the lattice that surrounds the underside and slip through into the now fenced off garden in order to pilfer the goods.  Gotta give her some credit for this one, right?  It’s pretty impressive that she worked that all out on her own.  I have since rigged up some string to hold the lattice in place and “connect” the fence to the deck steps post.  It’s not pretty, but so far she is only able to poke her head through and reach a few tomatoes at a time and cannot wreak any more serious havoc…at least so far.  I fear one morning I may come out and find the strings untied- yikes!

After installing the barricade we are now seeing our plants start to burst with fruit.  So, yesterday the Little Guy and I went out to pick tomatoes for a caprese salad we will be enjoying later today and we had a really fun time.  He wanted to pick everything, though, so I ended up having to let him “hold the bucket”.  ;o)  While using one hand and a death grip to keep himself steady on the fence (he is not truly walking yet, just standing and “walking” with lot’s of help from mom and dad) he did manage to sample some basil.  Actually he sampled, spit out and then seeming to forget his distaste for the herb, sampled again.  During this whole time, Roxy kept coming up to sniff and poke him with her nose, all the while eyeing his bucketful of her forbidden treat.

Starring hard at a poking dog.  You can see my attempt at stabilizing the tomato plant that Roxy knocked over with some string to the fence.  The brick is to then help steady the rickety fence.  Like I stated above, it isn’t pretty.

Checking out his bounty after we moved down the bed to the yellow pear tomatoes.  Moments later the basil sampling ensued.

I don’t know what was going through his little head, but at this point he raised his bucket and started squealing at the plants.  I like to think he was thanking them for all the good grub. 

Now we just need to get some more recipes so we don't make ourselves sick on BLT's.  Please, let us know what you like to do with your fresh picked tomatoes.  We love a yummy new take on an old favorite too!

Hope your July was grand and that you are enjoying your summer!

Kitsch Krafts

Eat this..

…and this…

…and some of these!

We have already admired this…

…smelled these…

and eaten a lot of this…

and this.

So far our little efforts in the garden are paying off quite nicely.  What have you guys been up to outside lately?

Kitsch Krafts