Our Legacy: Summer Tomatoes

Summer tomatoes are a favorite in the south as well as in our village, Zitsa, in Greece. Daddy and I both enjoy eating tomatoes too-----as do you! One of your favorite requests is to eat whole, skinned tomatoes right out of the can as Mommy is adding them to our spaghetti recipe. Thus, at some point in your lifetime you might find yourself growing and/or buying fresh summer tomatoes from the vegetable market in your town. If you are a fan of growing tomatoes then you will most likely come to a time in the summer when tomatoes are ripening faster than you can use them. Your paternal grandmother, Nanny Pat, finds herself in this situation at least at one point every summer! Luckily, we benefit from this surplus too. She shares her summer tomatoes with us! We enjoy them in salads and in recipes (like her homemade salsa recipe that she cans for us each year). Additionally, she has taught me how to preserve them so they don't lose their wonderful flavor and freshness. Most recipes will call for blanched tomatoes and if you want to freeze them or make sauce from them, they will need to be blanched. Here are Nanny Pat's and Mommy's directions for blanching summer tomatoes so that you to can be resourceful with the summer harvest, tomatoes: (1) Start with nice ripe red tomatoes. Give them a quick wash in cold water. If they have a spot, remove it with a sharp knife. Don't worry about any blemishes in the skin as the skin will be removed later. You can choose to remove any stems and the actual stem core from the top of the tomato on the front end (and/or leave these on to cut off as you peel the skin off). (2) Prepare a pot of boiling water large enough for two or three tomatoes as well as enough water to cover them. There is no point in trying to work with a whole bunch of tomatoes at once as they only need to be in the water for about one minute to three minutes. (3) Prepare a workspace: washed tomatoes, Bounty Paper towels, tomato knife, slotted spoon or tongs, and a bowl. (4) Drop the tomatoes into the rapidly boiling water. Pay attention to them as within 60 seconds their skin should split. Immediately remove them from the water with the slotted spoon or tongs and set them aside on the Bounty Paper towels. After about a minute, remove their skins. They should slip right off. If not, use a sharp paring knife to remove any stubborn spots. (5) At this point they can be cut in half and the seeds can be squeezed out. The tomato is now ready for using in a sauce recipe or frozen as is for future recipes like our Vegetable Beef Soup that I'll share here on the blog for you to refer back to in order to cook for your friends one day-----and your family too. I look forward to using these resources and recipes with you throughout your childhood as you are growing up. Today, you opted for watching cartoons and a wide variety of snacks: broccoli & carrots with blue cheese, honey sesame bar (pasteli from Greece), Mommy's Zone Perfect protein bar, milk----and a small bowl of blanched tomatoes after Mommy had finished blanching them.