The Tomatoes Have Arrived!

Thanks to the rain and the Georgia summer heat we are getting lots of tomatoes! Today I walked out to the garden and seemingly overnight many tomatoes were ripe and ready to pick. 

These tomatoes are from my two roma plants. Many of them are a little less than ripe because they were getting spots on them. They are chilling by our kitchen window and I am sure they will be ready soon! You better believe a HUGE batch of pico de gallo is in the near future :).

The darker tomatoes are cherokee purple, the yellow ones are striped and of course the red ones are cherry tomatoes. I picked so many cherry tomatoes today. Many of them had split because of so much rain recently. So, after I brought them inside I sorted through them and placed the smooth ones in the bowl for us to eat fresh. 

The split tomatoes were divided up. Half of them went into a pot with garlic, a little bit of chicken broth, olive oil and salt and pepper. I cooked it down for about 30 minutes and hit it with my trusty immersion blender. My most used appliance in my kitchen at the moment. I plan on chilling it and drinking it cold. It will be like V8, only better! :) 

The other half of the cracked tomatoes were cut in half and drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper and baked at 350 for about an hour. The finished tomatoes are SO delicious. I plan on freezing them and using them in the winter in soups and stir fry's. In addition to ALL of that, I also froze two sandwich bags full of fresh cherry tomatoes to put in soups in the winter. 

I harvested a large bunch of stevia. I am going to dry it and grind it to a powder to make homemade raw powdered stevia. I am hoping this experiment goes well! 

I also harvested about 3 cups of basil that went into a batch of pesto that I am freezing in an ice cube tray to have pesto for the winter. Come December, I know I will be thankful for some pesto cubes to brighten up a meal. 

Finally, I got a batch of cold brew coffee in our french press to steep overnight. We don't make this very often, but it makes the best iced coffee in the mornings! To make it, we grind about 1/4 cup of coarsely ground beans, dump the grounds in the french press and fill with filtered water. We normally let it steep in the fridge between 12-24 hours. I have read that you can also leave it out on the counter to steep. 

I am pleased with how productive today has been so far. In the kitchen at least. Now I am going to type up about 20 pages of history notes for school and do my workout for today. 

I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!