Foodie Friday - Roasted Tomato Sauce

We all have them, those tomatoes that have a spot or two, or big cracks, or that just don't look pretty. Here's what I  did with mine. I cut them up, keeping the good parts and getting rid of the wonky parts. I chopped up some peppers from my garden (not as many bad looking ones, but they would work in this recipe too) and some garlic and an onion or two and mixed them all in a metal baking pan with extra virgin olive oil - about 1/4 cup. I then sprinkled on salt and some crushed red pepper flakes.

This went into my oven at 375 for an hour.
It ended up looking like this:

I then stirred in a lot of basil and some oregano from my garden and put it back into the oven for another half hour. When I took it out it looked like this:

This got dumped into my food processor and was processed until smooth.

We mixed it with pasta for a yummy meal, but this would also be great as a pizza sauce. There's a lot of olive oil in it so I would only make it occasionally, but the taste was out of this world.

The Potager in late July

It seems you wait and wait for things to eat, then suddenly, you are having a hard time keeping up with the harvest. Isn't it wonderful?
In particular I am talking about squash and cucumbers, but today I noticed that I'd better pick some purple beans. I didn't even realize they were at that stage.

 We have tomatoes. They are very small, but every day we have some with dinner. They taste great and there are larger ones on the vine getting riper every day.
I am not sure what to do with these Black Krim. I've never seen one, so I don't know what they should look like when ripe. Unfortunately they are splitting on the vine. I guess I'll pick them and let them finish in the house where bugs won't get in the cracks.
And something is in the vines of my Amish Paste tomatoes. I haven't had time to really examine and see what it is, but half the plant is very yellow




I took out the broccoli plants. While they were still producing broccoli off shoots, they were quite bitter - I'm guessing it has just been too hot. We have had several days over 100 and most days over 90.
I will plant snow peas there in a few weeks, getting ready for fall.

I planted more bush beans, but the hot weather fried several seedlings while I was at work.

I'll have to wait and see if any more are going to germinate. It's pretty sparse right now. You can see the areas that receive a bit of shade in the afternoon. The seedlings are all doing well there. I guess I should have set up a shade cover.

A few of my Everbearing Strawberry plants are producing fruit! It will only be enough to sprinkle on cereal or ice cream, but I'm excited.
I need to get some bird netting soon.

This made me laugh. I guess it's a twin? It's a white scallop squash with two blossoms!

The two weeks I wasn't really working the garden, the raspberries exploded. They are hanging all over the place. I need to get hubs to make my containment system. There are several baby raspberry plants in the raised bed, and quite a few on the ground outside the bed! (Ugh! those weeds! This area really needs some TLC)

In the Garden

There are new and interesting (to me anyway) things in the Potager this week.
We are continuing our hot days, big rainstorm routine and it is making the garden grow incredibly fast!

The rain gauge doubled as a japanese beetle trap today! That's fine with me!








The Mammoth Sunflowers are living up to their name. They are huge!

When they finally bloom, I'll only be able to see them from the second story window!

I am hoping to collect seeds to eat. I know you have to wrap the seed head in something so the birds don't eat them all.

I'm gonna need a bigger ladder!

Some of the Freckles lettuce has bolted. I am going to try to collect seeds from it.
This was my favorite lettuce this year.
We are still eating the ones that haven't bolted.
I am amazed how heat tolerant this lettuce is.
The leaves seem to be a bit thicker, but they are still tender and tasty.

I have about three spinach plants that I hadn't picked yet. I always seem to notice them after dinner and say, tomorrow, but then eat something else the next day. Poor planning on my part.
I guess ithey're bolting, but instead of getting flowers on the top , it's getting broccoli looking like things up and down the stalk! That's different.

I need to pick these and saute the leaves for dinner.

I've never grown onion before. Are they supposed to form on top of the soil like that?

Look at the size of this Black Krim tomato! And no bottom rot! I can't wait to eat this guy!
No signs of turning red yet.

This looks like it will be my first White Scallop Squash. I've had other little ones, but they all had blossom end rot. This guy looks pretty healthy!

And I love the little curly-cues this plant makes!

If you look past the leaves, you'll see two (there are actually three) Eight-Ball Squash.
These were my favorite new vegetable last year.
They get eaten when small so they are only a few days away from dinner!
Stuffed squash - yummy!

The spaghetti squash plant looks healthy, but there is the tell-tale damage along it's stem that a Squash Vine Borer may have made a home inside the stem. I will clean it out and bury the damaged part. Hopefully the rest of the plant will send down roots and survive the onslaught.

We are eating cucumbers already. They are so wonderful this time of year - a taste of summer. I remember having so many by the end of last summer that I could not keep up with them. But at this time of the season we anxiously watch each one, anticipating being able to harvest a true "summer" vegetable.

Our church has Vacation Bible School this week, so the garden may get ignored a bit. I'll have to make an effort to get up extra early to get the gardening done before work.

Tiny Tomatoes!

What every gardener longs to see

Ugli Tomato from seeds I saved last year

Black Krim from seeds from the Hudson Valley Seed Library

I'm so excited that the tomatoes I grew from seed are starting to bear fruit. Here's hoping for tomatoes in July!