With our fresh tomatoes from the garden this year (Better Boy and cherry tomatoes), as well as basil that we grew, I thought I’d share a few ways of using these delicious treats.
Many of you may very well do all of these, but here are some easy ways to use the fresh bounty and it’s all oh, so yummy. This is the kind of lunch I’ll fix for myself, if left on my own without a hubby to feed. I love a simple meal like this. Toasted English muffin, topped with a slice of fresh mozzarella, tomatoes from the garden, and fresh basil. This is SO good! I added a little chicken salad with almonds from Publix (one of my fave treats too) and some fresh Bing cherries.
Totally my kind of lunch.
And for dinner many times during the summer, I’ll mix up fresh tomatoes with chopped basil, cucumber and diced Vidalia onion, with olive oil and Balsamic vinegar drizzled all over, as well as salt and pepper to taste. Very fresh and tasty little salad.
And one of my alltime faves is Bruschetta, which I first had in Italy about 20 years ago. Love this stuff. You can do many variations on this wonderful treat, but I think the key is some good crusty bread. I picked up a loaf from Continental Bakery down in English Village and made this one. Drizzle olive oil over chopped tomatoes, basil, and fresh garlic, add salt and pepper.
And pile it on top of some toasted crusty bread. If you try it once, you’ll be hooked. It’s also good with a little Parmesean cheese sprinkled on top and there are many variations in restaurants on this Italian favorite.
Last, but not least….salsa! What is better than fresh homemade salsa? Not much in my book. We had SO many cherry tomatoes this year, I mixed up a big batch of this, so they wouldn’t go to waste.
Now, I did cheat a little and used this salsa packet from Walmart that my sister told me about, all you do is add fresh tomatoes and onion, stir this packet in and let it chill for about 30 minutes. It would be really easy to do it all from scratch, but this works great too. I had a little bit of fresh cilantro in the fridge and threw that in too. We like it HOT!
And boy, was it delish! We love chips and salsa. I could eat them for a meal, in fact I did just that one night.
However you do it, you just can’t beat fresh tomatoes and basil. We certainly enjoy growing our own and look forward to next year’s bounty. Do you love tomatoes and basil too?
Linked to Jen’s Tasty Tuesday.
Yes! I LOVE tomato and basil – one of my favs is to make a salad with chopped tomatoes, garbanzo beans and cucumber, oh and mozzarella and of course, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, salt. Yum.
These pictures made my mouth water! I recently had a caprise salad w/ a baugette, fresh tomatoes, mozzerella & basil w/ olive oil, it was so yummy!
Beautiful post! I LOVE tomatoes and never tire of them this time of year. Thanks for sharing your wonderful ideas!
We use our tomatoes and basil to make a tomato/mozzarella salad using fresh mozzarella, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt, with oregano and flat parsley I also grow. So yummy by itself or over pasta.
If I would add fresh basil leaves to jars of canned tomatoes, how many leaves per jar?
hi, Denise, I’m really not sure on that, but go with what you think. I would think 6 leaves would be good, but I don’t know for sure.