Thursday, September 11, 2008

Heirloom tomatoes and, of course, more zucchini

It never ceases to amaze me just how abundant a backyard garden can be. I just love spending time in the backyard garden but even more I love watching E in the backyard. He wanders around snacking here and there, watching spiders and other critters.
This time of year becomes a blur of veggies and fruit to be processed and tucked away for later use. I love working with each as it ripens and then moving on to the next harvest. Lately I have been up to my ears in tomatoes and these show no sign of slowing down.I especially like the colour of these heirloom tomatoes and want to be sure to grow them again next year. I'm pretty sure it is an Old German tomato. My planting chart (which my son made for me) shows each plant by initial and I think this one is marked O.G so it must be (unless it is an R.M which means I have no idea what it is or it could be the one that looks like it is marked scribble, scribble).They are so pretty and tasty as well so they will make the cut of the ones that we save the seeds of.The freezers are quickly filling up, I have no saved yogurt containers left and have had to move on to jars. Today I will start making tomato sauce with whatever ripens this week. I love having jars of this handy in the coldroom for quick dinners. I seem to be doing well at using up all our zucchini this year and it is completely due to the fantastic book Simply in Season. Yesterday I made the Zucchini yeast rolls and they are delicious. I went on a bit of a baking spree because I got a 20 kg bag of flour from Grainworks and wanted to use up all my old flour first. We had Katherine's recipe cinnamon raisin bread for elevenses.
Then the zucchini rolls for lunch. We ate them with some Gort's spiced gouda, tomato and cukes from the garden and some red pepper that I had roasted. Yum! And what do you have at dinner time with the rest of the zucchini rolls? Why, zucchini garden chowder, of course. (also from Simply in Season)

4 comments:

denise said...

You have the most amazing garden layout - love seeing those big overview shots. :)

Everything looks great!

Marilyn Bott said...

We're trying something new with our zucchini - seeing if we can get one big enough to use for a dugout canoe! I figure it will be easier to carve out than a tree trunk. :o)

Katherine said...

As delicious and wonderful as all this looks, I bet it smells just heavenly!
Yum!

Heather said...

Oooh, what a brilliant idea, Muddy, a zucchini canoe. Hmmm, I've been wanting to get my own kayak...and there are some awfully big zukes out in the garden...
;-)