When the thermometer hits 100 and summer humidity thickens the air, smart folks head for the lake to enjoy memorable days of boating, fishing and sunbathing. That would be the smart folks. The rest of us head to the kitchen to prepare for the days when the only 100 in sight is the cost of a week’s groceries. 
When I took the camera out to photograph my garden the lens fogged up from the humidity. Hence the artsy shot of my one ripe tomato. Said tomato has since been picked and enjoyed. There are others on the plant but no sign of ripening yet.
Along with the tomato I also harvested more basil and turned it into pesto. This is so easy I don’t understand why I haven’t done it before. Since I froze the pesto, I didn’t add any cheese, just basil, olive oil, nuts, garlic and a little salt. A minute in the food processor, transfer it into freezer containers and I’m done.
The farmer’s market also provided more bounty for this winter. I shredded a couple of large zucchini and measured out serving size portions. I think this is probably enough for a few batches of cookies and to add to soup and casseroles. But if I get ambitious next weekend I might do some more.
The other processing I did this weekend was three quarts of tomato sauce. I got a basket of organic seconds at the market that yielded a few for eating and the rest went into two batches of sauce.
The first batch I did by dropping the tomatoes in boiling water to loosen the skins, then peeling, seeding and crushing the flesh before popping them into a kettle with olive oil and 5-6 cloves of garlic. There’s something sensual about smelling the ripe aroma as they fall through your fingers and seeing the deep red color as they cook up in the pot. The garlic added another dimension to the aroma and made me want to eat it all now.
Once the batch had simmered long enough I gave it a couple of quick whirls of the stick blender to break up the bigger chunks, then into the freezer.
The second batch I did by just removing the core and the worst blemishes before throwing whole tomatoes, seeds and all, into the olive oil and garlic. After simmering for 30 minutes, I ran the sauce through the food mill to remove the seeds and skins. This gave me a smoother sauce than the first batch and was quite a bit less work. We’ll see this winter which one makes a better spaghetti sauce. I’ll definitely be putting up more sauce before the summer’s over.
I didn’t work on my sun tan this weekend but when we sit down to the table come December there will be a little bit of summer in front of us to lessen the winter gloom outside our front door.
Well we headed to Oregon to escape the heat and humidity and were so successful I had to buy a jacket at the Oregon Zoo! The weather has been glorious … and so has most of the vacation so far. Please email me your email address and I will send you an update as I left home without it
Tell Dad we ate at Mo’s tonight and everyone LOVED the clam chowder. But no more peanut butter pie.
Love, Christine
You can also just freeze the tomatoes after removing the skins, and then do your cooking in the winter (that’s my lazy summer way!)
I don’t have enough basil yet to make pesto, but yours sure sounds good. And I was just thinking this morning of buying zucchini at the farmer’s market to make zucchini bread.