Insalata Caprese

Alas, we had our first frost on Friday night. Luckily we had a heads up from the weatherman. So Mike shifted his hours on Friday so that he could come home early to harvest all of our tomatoes.

This year our neighbors, who have certified organic land, started vegetable farming. (This has been great for us given that our garden was largely a bust¹ other than the tomatoes.) They bought a new seeder and in the process of trying it out had planted five 1,000 foot rows of basil. Yes, that's almost a mile of basil! Since a frost was imminent, they told us we could pick all we wanted. So on Friday afternoon Mike also picked a kitchen garbage bag full of basil. And to put things in perspective, this was probably only about 5' of the 5000'.

We decided to devote a good portion of the weekend to the kitchen, making and freezing tomato sauce and pesto. Anders also had his first insalata caprese. We had given him a few pieces of tomato a couple weeks earlier and he didn't seem to be a big fan. But apparently tomatoes are a whole lot tastier - or at least more interesting - when he gets to hold the whole tomato and snack on it.

- Corinne, Mike, and Anders Rocket

¹ Bust = crazy work schedule which delayed or prevented us from planting + gophers who ate the entire bed of garlic Mike planted last fall

Date: October 5, 2009