After an early morning heavy rainstorm, I went out to the garden to check the veggies. Oh, I had two tomatoes, two cucumbers and a few more peppers last week, so I wasn't expecting much. Voila! I ventured around the back of the garden and found many more tomatoes than I had seen previously, pulled some carrots (small but we did have them for dinner) cut the basil and picked some more of those pretty hot peppers.
When you pick tomatoes choose various stages of ripeness so that you don't end up with more ripe tomatoes than you can use in a given time frame. However, this doesn't always work if you have planted tons of tomatoes. Good luck, I have been there with making every tomato recipe I could find, giving them away to the point where friends and family said they couldn't use anymore!
Keep the basil flowers deadheaded or the plant will go into decline. I cut quite a bit today and I can't use it right away, so it becomes a decorative arrangement plunged into a pitcher of water. It will hold for a couple of days until I can make my pesto recipe. This is a recipe given to me by my daughter-in-law because the children would not eat my pesto but went back for seconds with hers. Mine was the James Beard adult recipe, a little too strong not only for children but for some adults.
1/4 cup of pine nuts
1 large bunch of fresh basil, no stems
1/2 cup of parmesan cheese shredded
1 clove of garlic
1/2 cup of olive oil
Process in blender or food precessor, store in refrigerator or freeze
