What a bountiful year for the nightshade vegetables! Beautifully red tomatoes and potatoes abound in my kitchen, and lets not forget the zucchini and beans! Now is the time of the season when we start to say, “How do I use all of this?”
A great topping for pasta or rice is simply chopping tomatoes and zucchini into bite size chunks, sauté them together with a clove or two of garlic in olive oil, add a couple of chopped basil leaves when the zucchini is tender and spoon over your pasta. (Adjust garlic and basil according to the amount of servings you are preparing)An uncooked version would be to chop tomatoes and mix with minced garlic and chopped basil leaves and spoon over hot pasta—yum!
Salsa is the ultimate summer concoction. Chop up tomatoes, jalapenos, onion, garlic and cilantro and add some limejuice. AWESOME!
I love to boil the new potatoes, drain them and then just toss some Earth Balance (butter) and fresh garden peas in and serve. Add mint leaves if you have them. If not, basil is good here too.
If you still are at a loss of what to do with this abundant squash, freeze it! Grate it up and freeze in quart size freezer bags to extend the taste of summer into winter. Warm the house up making zucchini bread and you’ll wonder how you could have ever despaired of using all that zucchini!Tomatoes also do not have to be jarred but can be frozen whole in freezer bags to use in the darkening winter days anyway you chose.
Celebrate abundance!
