Tag Archives: tomatoes

Easy Basil & Tomato Cream Cheese Spread

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P1040896I had a couple packs of herbed cheeses. We really enjoyed the tomato and basil cheese. We haven’t tried the other yet. I liked the tomato and basil cheese so much that I decided to make some.

I went in search of a recipe. The recipes were either too overdone with oodles of ingredients or made too large amounts for my small family. As usual I ended up making up my own recipe. The recipes gave me a good idea what ingredients to use. I decided on using just 3 ingredients.

My husband really enjoyed my homemade spread. It’s so easy to make. I plan to use this simple recipe as a spring board and add some other ingredients with it to make some other spreads and dips.

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Basil & Tomato Cream Cheese Spread

8 oz. softened cream cheese
2/3 cup chopped fresh tomatoes or chopped sun dried tomatoes
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil (or 2 tbsp dried basil)
1/4 tsp Mrs. Dash garlic & herb seasoning

In a medium size bowl, use a fork to thoroughly mix all 4 ingredients together.
Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight so the cream cheese can soak up the flavors.

Serve with crackers or chips
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Happy Snacking!

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Sewing & Juicing

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Except for doing repairs and making some adjustments, I haven’t sewn anything in a while. I’ve been in the mood to make a wallet or clutch or coupon keeper or whatever you’d like to call it. I chose this pattern ‘McCalls Fashion Accessories M6768’. I’m making the yellow wallet in the pattern photo; mine’s going to be greens & beiges. I’m going to attempt to go by the pattern as close as possible. It’s a real challenge for me to follow a pattern because I always want to make changes (and complicate things.) I hope this wallet works out okay. I’ll post an update and let you know if I made it or tossed it away.

P1030970Last evening, I had a brainstorm of an idea for my tomato juice. If I freeze it in water bottles, it’ll take up less space and can be thawed out for drinking and/or cooking just like the juice frozen in the bowls. My husband liked the idea too. So today after I made and cooled the tomato juice, I poured it in bottles and set it in the freezer. Hopefully it’ll do just fine.
*I’m going to edit this photo into my tomato juicing post as another idea for freezing containers.

That’s all for me at the moment.

I hope you all have an enjoyable rest of the week.

Tomato Juice

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P1030894bThe first batch of tomato juice is finished and in the freezer. It’s now ready to be thawed either to be drank or used in cooking. I didn’t add anything to my juice: no sugar, no salt, no herbs. More tomatoes are ripe and ripening, so I’ll probably up to my elbows in juice making again soon.

I poured some fresh juice in a glass. It’s foamy and thick, so I added a spoon of water and the foam bubbles rose to the top where I dipped most of them off. I stirred in a bit of salt and it tasted quite good.

I’ve never froze tomato juice before so I don’t know how it’ll do; I figure it should do okay.
I’m happy to be finished for now. Hopefully I can get caught up on my blogging.

Wishing you all a terrific Tuesday.

Cherokee Purple Tomato

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Through the years, my brother has mentioned a tomato called a Cherokee Purple. The Cherokee Purple is a beef stake tomato, so it’s a dandy sliced up to put on a sandwich or hamburger. It sounded like it would be a good tomato to grow and eat, but I’d never seen any plants for sale around here.
This year, we found some Cherokee Purple tomato plants for sale. We bought two and planted them. They’re growing well and full of tomatoes. I’ve kept a close eye on the first tomato that began to grow and grew more larger each week. I put my glasses on it to show how large it was when I took photos of it.

I waited patiently and then…

I was so excited the other day to see that the tomato was changing color, ripening beautifully.P1030186Once again, I put my glasses on it to show how large it was. I intended to make a post about this delicious wonder and then…

Sunday, my husband and I went to the garden and saw deer tracks going down by the tomato patch and my gorgeous ripening tomato had been snacked upon. 😦P1030254I was sooo not happy, but there was no sense in getting to upset since we don’t have a fence around the garden. I took some photos and  well, our first Cherokee Purple got it’s own post after all.

Storms visited our area yesterday gave the land a good hearty drink. Our garden sure appreciated it. The tomato vines are full of tomatoes so hopefully, we’ll be able to get to one or two Cherokee Purples before the deer does.

I hope you all are having a good week.

Further Reading:
Cherokee Purple Tomato

 

 

1st tomatoes & cucumber – Baby Asparagus Beans & misc

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P1020385We got a super tasty surprise when we went to the garden: 9 Husky Girl Cherry Tomatoes and 1 pickling cucumber.
We’re amazed at how early this year we got our first tomatoes and cucumber.
I grow pickling cucumbers strictly to eat. I like their taste better than the salad cucumbers. My husband has some  burp-less cucumbers growing. I hope they have as good of a flavor as these little ones do.
We had a nice snack of these tasty fresh veggies.P1020408

P1020436We have several baby asparagus beans. They’re long and scrawny and still growing. We hope they’ll fill out soon. It’ll be interesting to see how long they grow. We’re anxious to harvest a mess of them and see if they taste good. So far, the deer hasn’t bothered the asparagus beans nor the decorative corn. I hope our luck holds up with that.

P1020444Our regular bush green beans are trying to be productive, but as you can see in the photo, the deer have eaten the tops off of them. Hopefully, the beans that are growing on them now will get to mature and we’ll have at least one mess of regular green beans to cook.

P1020486The fan-fob is a bee-nursery again this year. Apparently only the lower fobs are in the right region of the universe for a nursery because the bees haven’t ever used the upper fobs.

P1020474Here’s our latest harvest of squash (and some of my herbs in the background) We’ve given away a lot of squash already. We like the sweeter taste of the yellow and golden squash better than the green squash.  I decided not to let my green egg squash plants continue to grow. I pulled them up and tossed them away. I’ve replanted a few more golden squash seeds and they’re already growing well. We won’t be hurting for squash. As you can see in the photo, we have more than plenty.

Happy Gardening!gardeningcouple