A surfeit of tomatoes. Ideas? Want some?

I’m getting at least ^that many tomatoes, twice a day. I go out and pick in the morning, and at the end of the day there’s yet another batch of ripe ones. Three different varieties of cherry toms, plus various other (mostly heirloom) types. I always go overboard with planting tomatoes and try different types every year.

What I’ve been doing with them:
Giving many, many away. :slight_smile:
Telling neighbors, and the guy who cuts my grass, to please help themselves.
Take for lunch, eat with slices of dill havarti. Yum.
Eat like candy right off the vine.
Skinning and stewing the occasional pot-full, then freezing in baggies for winter.
Putting them in. Everything. I. Cook. With ravioli, summer vegetable soup, stewed with pork chops or chicken, chopped into scrambled eggs, pasta sauce.
Fry up green ones coated with brown sugar, cornmeal, with bacon. Because, bacon.
Salad with fresh basil, garlic and feta cheese.

Any other ideas, or good tomato-based recipes? Or if you live in my neighborhood, feel free to help yourself! (And to zucchini, that’s a whole 'nother story…) :smiley:

Besides stewing up baggies of regular tomatoes, what about making big vats of marinara and spaghetti sauce and freezing them?

I don’t have any ideas, but wow, those tomatoes are beautiful! That picture looks like it’s from a magazine or something. If they taste as good as they look, they must be wonderful.

For a different twist on chicken stewed with tomatoes, try Georgian Chicken with Herbs (Chakhokhbili). It’s tasty even with canned tomatoes, but sooooo much better with fresh. Georgian is pretty much my go-to cuisine whenever I have lots of herbs that need to be used up!

Ratatouille is another one that’s tasty even with canned tomatoes, but soooo much better with fresh. I make it a lot in the summer. It’s very versatile: over pasta or polenta with cheese, as a side to fish or chicken, etc.

What about making sun dried tomatoes?

I don’t have any better recipes than those above, although I’d have used mozzarella cheese instead of feta. But since you mentioned “other ideas,” I wanted to mention Ample Harvest. They help home gardeners in your situation - too much of a good thing! - and help them find local food pantries that will accept the extras. So there’s an extra option of how to usefully get rid of the extra, if you run out of friends and neighbors.

Ooh. Sun dried, hadn’t thought of that…I love sun dried tomatoes in alfredo sauce. And the Georgian chicken recipe looks definitely worth trying; in fact I just emailed that link to a friend who is also overwhelmed with tomatoes. Thanks!

Queen Tonya, I’m sort of doing that - adding Italian herbs, onions and garlic to some of the stewed tomatoes so they’ll be a sort of instant pasta sauce.

Heffalump, thanks! That was yesterday morning’s “harvest” minus one of the green striped ones that I ate like an apple. :slight_smile: Those ones are very sweet and mild.

Digital, neat site, thank you. I hadn’t thought about that notion and there are several food pantries not too far from me according to that site. Not sure I’ve got enough extra to make a meaningful donation but maybe next year…

Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce:

Take two pounds of tomatoes. Blanch them (put them in boiling water for about a minute). Take them out and let them cool down. Remove the skin. Cut them into chunks.

Melt five tablespoons of butter in a big saucepan. Cut a medium sized onion in half and put it cut side down in the butter. Add the tomatoes.

Cook at a low simmer for about forty-five minutes. Occasionally smoosh up any big chunks of tomato.

When you think it’s thick enough, remove the onion and serve the sauce over pasta.

The phrase “I have too many tomatoes” is, to me, just as confounding as someone saying “I have too much money”.
mmm

Gazpacho. Cut them up with cucumbers, red onions, and green peppers (and a jalapeno, if you like that), add a some tomato juice and a bit of lemon, garlic, vinegar, and olive oil. Put it into a blender, then leave it in the fridge for several hours or overnight.

Don’t serve hot. :wink:

Yes, I need to do that! Thanks for the reminder. Jalapenos are wimpy. :stuck_out_tongue: I am also growing Thai Dragon peppers and Scotch Bonnets. So, yeah, I like me some spicy heat.

Little Nemo - classic! I’ve done a version of that with cherry tomatoes, but I added other stuff. I like the simplicity of this recipe.

mmm, heh. I know.

The New York Times has some more ideas for you. Too bad you’re not a bit closer, or I’d help you out. :slight_smile:

Ooh. Cool, thank you.
Hey, you could be here in six hours!:slight_smile:

In years when I have a lot of 'maters (sadly not this year) I make a batch or two of tomato spice cake.

2 lb. tomatoes, seeded (and peeled if desired), pureed in a food processor (makes about 2.5 cups)
4 c. all-purpose flour
2.5 c. sugar
0.5 c. shortening
2.5 t. baking soda
2.5 t. cinnamon
2 t. vanilla
1 t. salt
1 t. nutmeg
0.5 t. cloves
0.5 c. chopped walnuts

Beat all ingredients except walnuts at low speed until just mixed. Beat at high speed for 2 minutes. Fold in walnuts. Bake in a Bundt pan at 350 F for 65-75 minutes. Cool. Dust with confectioners’ sugar or frost with cream cheese icing.

In addition to making up big pots of stewed tomatoes to freeze (which you are already doing), you can also puree them fresh and freeze the puree. You can also make batches of pasta sauce and freeze that.

Each has its place in cooking.

Confit cherry tomatoes. Slow roast them in the oven with loads of olive oil, garlic and sprigs of your favourite hard herbs - I like rosemary and marjoram. Put them in a jar, cover with more oil, and they’ll last a week or so, if you can keep from eating them for that long.

Garrison Keillor in one of his Lake Wobegone monologues told of planting waaaaay too many tomatoes and then sneaking out at night to leave heaping baskets of them on the back steps of neighbors… and then coming home to find someone else had done so at his own house while he was on his own clandestine mission!

I made chutney/relish this year with all the cherry tomatoes our generous neighbour kept giving me. The tomato cucumber chutney got rave reviews. We went through it in record time :slight_smile:

How about gazpacho? I made it for the first time ever today (the Classic, with homemade sourdough and farmer’s market tomatoes), plus an extra jalapeno. It was delicious, and I’m not generally a fan of raw tomatoes.

Stand on an overpass on the freeway and drop them onto windshields lol!