Tomato survey

[pbenven]

I have some (contraband?) beef steak tomatoes from Italy. My grandmother brought the seeds over in '76. Every year my dad kept the first one to ripen and then gave the seeds to the local nursery. In the spring he picks up the seedlings. We gave one to a neighbor last year and she was so freaked out that she weighed it - 6 pounds.

Besides the 7 plants my dad gave me, I have about 10 Big Boys. All plants are doing extremely well this year, but alas, as Egon mentioned, late start/different season - everything is still green. I anticipate a few fried green ones for lunch this weekend, though.

As for what we do with them, the beef steaks are eaten as a meal - sliced 1" thick and drizzled with olive oil, some basil, salt and pepper. The others we can and use during the winter for pasta, chili, whatever. I don't like to add anything to them at the canning stage as that pretty much limits what you can do with them later on.

[LazyJ_Arabians]

I hate to reinforce my coming across the net as CrazyJ but my favorite use for tomatoes is a peanut butter and tomato sandwich. Yep, I made that one up by myself when I was about ten years old and I still love them.

[egon]

Now that is one interesting sandwich.

For me hold the peanut butter and add thinnly sliced purple onions and use bread from the xxyyzz bakery.

The bread used makes a real difference too. We are fortunate to have a few small local bakeries that produce some of the best bread I've ever eaten. One is just 100 yards or so from our house and if the wind is from the right direction the smell of fresh baking comes wafting thru the window at about 03:00 AM.

Egon

[Hayseed]

A bakery a hundred yards away? Lucky you! I'd weigh five hundred pounds if I had a bakery for a neighbor! [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

[Chuck52]

We got a big chunk of pretty decent blue cheese at Sam's, and I've been eating thick-sliced tomatoes on toast with that melted on it. My youngest has a summer job at a bakery/sandwich place and has been bringing home left-over breads. He came home with a tomato-basil loaf the other night. Hooee, that makes good toast for my tomato creations!

I still haven't segregated my various tomatoes for a taste test. When I go out to pick, it's been so hot my brain gets over-heated and I forget to keep them separated. The only ones I can tell later are the Park's Whoppers, which really do have a good flavor.


Chuck

[pbenven]

Oh my, you just made me think of one - the super-duper sandwich (what my family calls it):

Toast, olive oil, big thick slice of tomato, salt, pepper, more olive oil, another piece of toast on top, and more olive oil. If it doesn't drip down the sides of both your cheeks when you bite it, you didn't make it right. Yeah baby.

[Slamfire]

We are making marinara sauce just a fast as we can. We finally discovered the secret to great flavor. Fresh lemon basil, grown in a basket hanging on the back porch railing.

[LazyJ_Arabians]

Wife had basil & thyme growing in pots on our deck. I realized just the other day our goofy lab was doing his best to "overwater" them for us so I built a bench to set them on. Didn't have the nerve to tell her the real reason after she'd used it in gallons of salsa, just told her I thought it looked nicer.

[Chuck52]

I usually make my best tomato sandwich creations open face, but that's at least partly because of my beard. It is remarkably difficult to get tomato juice and seeds out of my beautiful white beard.

I just picked another basket full of tomatoes. If I keep them watered, they are apparently going to keep producing until frost. There's about half a bushel on the kitchen counter at the moment. The wife has put up salsa, and basic sauce with onions, and plain tomatoes enough to do us through the winter. She used cayenne peppers in some, for chili, and we have a nice bunch of cayennes drying on a thread in the kitchen window, also mainly for chili. About all that's coming from the garden now, besides tomatoes, is onions....assuming I can extract them from the concrete that used to be dirt! It's completely overcast this evening. If it actually rains, we'll probably go out and dance in it.

Chuck

[Chuck52]

Great source of nitrogen! Now they'll probably die on the bench.

Chuck