Tomatoes!

I was in Michigan last weekend, but Jamie stopped by my garden and there was our first red tomato - and several green grapes. I knew the juicy Better Boy tomato would be good, but I'd almost forgotten how good. Summer tomatoes, especially home grown, are so flavorful, tart, sweet, tender...I could go on. Also, another difference between home grown tomatoes and store bought is that there is so much more meat in homegrown - not as much gooey seed stuff. Dressed with a little salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil, and Balsamic vinegar, these tomatoes are pretty much summer on a plate. Serve them up after some steak and corn - perfect.

Vegetable Garden Week 17

After being overloaded with zucchini last weekend, this weekend I only had one little baby! These are the fruits of the garden this week. There are still a few little rainbow Swiss Chard, although most of them have been smothered by the monster zucchini plants. The Green Grape Tomatoes are doing really well and taste amazingly sweet and delicious (I'm planning to make salsa tonight with the Green Grapes and the jalapeno - hopefully it'll carry the same kick as its predecessor.) The eggplant will either be marinated in olive oil and garlic and grilled in slices or made into babaganoush tonight, not sure which yet. This is the second eggplant I picked this weekend - the first was a little bigger and we tossed it with olive oil and salt and grilled it - tangy, fresh, and sweet. So much firmer than those you get at the grocery, but as I've said, watch out for the thorns up top!

I've also been having fun with my hipstamatic app on my iPhone and here is my adorable niece Grace proudly holding the eggplant (looks better on the small iPhone screen). I wish I had a video because she was waving it around in the air saying, "Robot robot, robot robot," for no apparent reason - so cute.

Vegetable Garden Week 16

Attack of the monster zucchini! I picked all of the zucchinis last week on 6 days later, look what I found bursting out all over the garden. 10 zucchinis, several of which were enormous. The big one in the foreground had to be 6 pounds. My mom says those are zucchini bread zucchinis (recipe to follow). Now I'm thinking up and researching all sorts of recipes to use this plethora of courgettes.


Also ripe and happy this week were my little green grape tomatoes! Look at this beautiful plate of them. They make an excellent salad. They're colorful, sweet, and juicy. If there are tons next weekend, I'm going to try a salsa. Below, I just sliced them and tossed them with very thinly sliced Vidalia onion, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and a little julienned basil. It's so summery and fresh.

Everything else in the garden was pretty happy. The rest of the tomato plants are covered in green tomatoes, and the yellow brandywine has a few big green tomatoes that I suspect will be turning yellow very soon. I can't wait to try them! There are three pretty good size eggplants but I'm letting them get a little bigger this time. More next week - hopefully the zucchini will be a more manageable bunch!

Vegetable Garden Week 15

After my hiatus in Greece, my garden was booming! The peas were finished and turning brown and the Swiss Chard were taken over by zucchini, but everything else was super happy. The yellow brandywine tomato plant is about 6 ft tall with a few big, green tomatoes. The thing is like a tree! It got so heavy I had to go buy steaks to position on either side of the garden and tie the cage to them with twine - hopefully soon those green tomatoes will turn yellow so we can eat them! The three better boy tomato plants were covered in green tomatoes (I've learned with heirlooms the plants tend to get pretty big but you get less fruit, so the yellow brandywine is huge but just has two tomatoes on it while the better boys are smaller but each had about 6-10 tomatoes already) and the green grape tomato plant has tons of little green tomatoes, some of them already edible and sweet ad delicious.

There were 4 eggplants on the eggplant plant - 1 ready to eat - so sweet and tasty. I was surprised. I've never grown eggplant before and I was kind of expecting to just get one eggplant all summer. This little plant seems to be pumping them out, plus it has really pretty, light purple flowers. Watch out for little purple thorns on the flowers and eggplant stems!

Vegetable Garden Week 12

First, please excuse the truck and portapotty in the background - the house is under construction. My garden is doing so well! The zucchinis are huge and I got 5 little ones that grew from last weekend to this. (I picked them all since I'll be gone the next 2 weekends in Greece! Recipes to follow, of course.) I grilled them up and fried the blossoms. Sooo tasty.

Vegetable Garden Week 10

I don't know if it was least week's heat wave, but the garden is growing like crazy! The zucchini are enormous, the yellow brandywine tomato has grown up to about 3 feet, the green grape tomato is bushy and thick, and the three Better Boy tomatoes are starting really grow (about a foot high now). The Swiss Chard is growing and I was actually able to harvest some - dinner recipe will follow soon.

The peas are getting a little too tall for their trellis, but there are finally peas to be had!

The basil is also growing like crazy, and one of the peppers has its first flower. I can't wait til next weekend when I can start pulling off peas. The mulch (and all the rain) has helped keep the garden moist, and the new marigolds and nasturtium give it a little more color. The zucchinis are starting to have little blossoms, so that'll add some nice yellow/orange flowers. And fried zucchini blossoms are out of this world (recipe will follow). The eggplant is also finally growing, yay!

Jamie behind the peas

 Beautiful healthy garden

 Me with my basil and Swiss Chard - first harvest from the garden

 My pretty rainbow Swiss Chard

Vegetable Garden - Week 3

My garden is starting to look like a real garden! I went to the Union Square Green Market last week and was pleased to find that all of the vegetable plant vendors are back! I browsed several of them to find the plants I was looking to use. I found a pretty big green grape tomato plant (produces bright, almost neon green cherry tomatoes that are tart and sweet and look beautiful in salads) and a small yellow brandywine tomato plant which is supposed to make big, yellow beef steak tomatoes. I want to plant a few big beef tomatoes as well. The heirlooms are definitely pretty and tasty, but the big beef tomatoes straight from the garden are equally as tasty and they're much hardier and produce more tomatoes. To hedge my bets, I want a few heirloom and a few big beef for a good mix. I also bought an eggplant plant - first time planting them and very excited.