Home Cooking From the Garden

I totally forgot to put these up a while ago. They're off our first (and only) meal from our home grown tomatoes. The tomatoes were pretty good (considering we'd had such a hard time growing them) and loads of them ripened at once, it was a coldish night and they needed eating - a salad just wasn't going to cut it. So I came up with another plan.

I made a Roasted Tomato and basil pasta. Very easy indeed, and so sweet and yummy.

YOU NEED:
A heap of tomatoes (cherry, or larger ones cut up, it doesn't matter)
basil
garlic
olive oil
dash of balsamic vinegar
pinch of sugar
S&P

Heat the oven up to about 17o degrees, mix all the bit together in an oven proof dish, then leave them in the oven until soft and gooey and caramelise, maybe about 30-40mins depending on how hot your oven is.

Take them out, mix them into some penne or spaghetti, grate some Parmesan cheese and you're away. couldn't be easier. and pretty yummy indeed.

green tomatoes

The tomatoes are finally arriving, even if they are a little late.. hopefully these will ripen up nicely before the evil squirrels get them.

Something from the garden

Finally - our first two cherry tomatoes from the garden and they were tasty. There are a few more waiting to green up. We've been growing two types - these cherry toms have been growing pretty well, but I've been pretty disapointed with the tumbling toms - they are just starting to flower now (not one sign of any fruit) and they have pretty hard to control..

as L says, we've learnt a lot of the garden this year - which I guess is what you say when it hasn't been as successful as you would of hoped! It seems that summer is pretty much over here in London so better luck next year!

Free food for pests

I'm a bit concerned about some of my veggies growing in the garden.
My purple sprouting broccoli isn't sprouting, my marjoram has gone to seed and the red cabbage is getting attacked by these nasty critters who have been slowly getting through them one by one.
The garden has not been too successful this year..
But at least we'll have some tomatoes soon I hope.

Spring in our garden

Coming back from a week's holiday in spain I was a bit concerned that our garden would have suffered after forgetting to leave M the keys to get in and water. How wrong was I? We came back it and has grown out of this world - I just can't wait to eat something other than herbs out of it.