It feels like fall and we've still only had a handful of tomatoes from the garden. That's alright though because we've had a lot of other great homegrown food in the past couple weeks including Brooks plums (into wine and dehydrated), zucchini (grilled, pureed into soup, sauteed and then some), lemon cucumbers (straight up, but soon to be pickled), and some really nice garden gifts from neighbors -- big sacks of green beans and pickling cucumbers to be exact.
A lot of people have been complaining about green tomatoes in the past few weeks (myself included) and so I'd just like to pass on a little trick. If your tomatoes don't ripen on the vine this year -- a lot of them still will -- harvest them and keep them in a brown paper sack rolled up or fastened at the top in a cool part of your home. Check the bag every couple days and pull out the ripe ones. They'll ripen that way for weeks and although they don't taste as good as vine ripened it's a nice trick if you can't deal with any more fried green tomatoes or tomato chutney.
Here's a slice of what I've been cooking up during the past few weeks...
Happy hour spread and homemade hard cider with Steve and Lorna.
Roasted red pepper, zuke and scallion sandwich with cheddar and romesco sauce.
Grilled salmon and fresh jalapeno sandwich on Pearl ciabatta with slow cooked green beans and tomatoes.
Pureed zuke, potato, cilantro, spinach and lime soup with bread and olive oil.
Turkey, lemon cucumber, green zebra tomato sandwich on an english muffin.