Heirloom Tomatoes: When is enough?

I love great, home grown heirloom tomatoes, don’t you? There is nothing like the flavor of a great ‘Big Rainbow’ or ‘Mortgage Lifter’ tomato, still warm from the sun. Those are just two of the varieties I planted this year of a total of 10 different varieties, 14 plants in all. I grew nine of the varieties from seed, right in our own basement. I picked up the other one at a farmer’s market, I liked the name: ‘Stump of the World’.

The Harvest:

I may have planted a few too many tomatoes. Near daily forays out to the garden with my baskets result in a kitchen counter-top filled with bounty. It’s just nearing the end of August, still a few more weeks of summer left for the main harvest. Gradually, the plants will produce less and less, and I’ll bring in a few greenish yellow fruits to finish ripening indoors when the first frosts of late October threaten.

What to do with all of this abundance? We have been eating as many as we can fresh: salads, sliced, marinated, gazpacho, or just by the  handful. Some have been peeled, chopped and frozen- I will add them to soups or chili, or thaw out enough to make pasta sauce when I have more time this fall.

  Heirloom Tomatoes Preserving:

The most prolific tomatoes have been the ‘Yellow Pear’ and ‘Jelly Bean’ cherry tomatoes, I made a batch of tomato jam with some of those. Sounds weird, but think of it as more of a condiment than something to spread on toast for breakfast. Like a chunky, sweet ketchup. I want to try some on a block of Greek Yogurt Cream Cheese I picked up at the grocery store.

The ‘Romas’ are great simply sliced in half, seeded and oven dried to use as sun dried tomatoes in recipes this winter.  I have enough of those now, so I will just freeze the rest.

I canned a few jars of ‘Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce’ to use this fall and winter too. We have a big chest freezer, so a batch of ‘Heirloom Tomato Sauce with Italian Sausage and Mushrooms’ filled 3 quart bags for our freezer plus a couple of dinners for us last week.

Salsa! Let’s not forget the salsa! I whipped up a big pot of salsa and froze it in small jars. It’s great on tortilla chips or on a quick dinner of flautas from Costco.

The Heirloom Tomatoes are still coming, and we are still eating them, sometimes just sliced up for a simple summer salad with fresh mozzarella, olive oil and fresh basil.

A Bountiful Year:

Every day we enjoy several crops from our garden, the refrigerator is always full of fresh vegetables. I’ve been cycling through summer squash, broccoli, beets, cucumbers and green beans along with the tomatoes. Occasionally, I will add some Swiss Chard to recipes, and I have frozen a bunch of that for winter also.

We do enjoy beets, but there’s another crop that I planted too much of. Not wanting to waste them, I put up some pickled beets. I’ll give away a few jars, and the rest will make their way to the table over the winter. For dinner, I like beets sliced up in french fry shapes, sauteed until cooked through, then add in their chopped tops to wilt.  With just salt, pepper and butter to season their goodness, they are a favorite here. As an experiment, I froze some of the left-overs. Some say beets get mushy when frozen, some say not. I’ll find out.

So, what’s for dinner tonight? How about pasta with chicken, summer squash, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and swiss chard in pesto sauce? Yummy!