April’s Home and Garden

By this time of year many of you are harvesting your vegetables and I wanted to share with you some of my favorite ways to use my harvest.

Tomato Salad: The most basic tomato salad recipe consists of  chopped plum or other tomatoes, sliced red onions, olive oil, basil, a little water– about a tablespoon or so to keep the juice of the tomatoes and the olive oil from coagulating and getting too thick.

I never measured this recipe so this is a starting point, and you can adjust to size or taste, according to how much you want to make

Now my variation is this:
A mixture of plum tomatoes and yellow tomatoes chopped in large chunks (enough to fill a 2qt. bowl)

About one third as much sliced sweet onions as there are tomatoes.

Lots of chopped fresh basil–spicy varieties preferred, about 1/4 cup
(I once had to run out into my vegetable garden in the rain for more basil during a dinner party)

olive oil, water, a few drops of balsamic vinegar, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper.

The main thing is that if you use very juicy tomatoes, you should combine them with a more meaty variety or plum tomato for best results, because everything will tend to get mushy. Also since yellow tomatoes are very mild, they need a heartier tomato to help them stand up to the other ingredients, especially the basil. Aside from that the other ingredients are to taste I basically use enough olive oil to nicely coat the tomatoes and when everything is tossed ( I would start with about 3 tbs). For me the more basil the better, and of course my husband would not eat his without a nice crusty bread to dip in it . Next time we’ll talk about some yummy things to do with peppers and squash.