Extending Your Tomato Growing Season and Broiled Cherry Tomato Recipe

I have left a tip for extending the growing season of tomato plants in the comment section on a couple of blogs that I follow. I realized that unless you follow the same blogs (which I highly recommend) and read all of the comments (even those left by incoherent, sleep deprived mamas at 2:00 a.m.), then you will have missed this tip. If you have already read it, skip to the bottom for a delicious broiled tomato recipe.

This tip doesn’t actually extend the life of the plant, but gives the green tomatoes extra time to ripen on the vine. Our first freeze comes before I have grown tired of tomatoes. And even though I have been harvesting a pint of cherry tomatoes and 4 –8 medium size tomatoes a day, when the first freeze comes there will still be hundreds of tomatoes on my plants. I have not yet acquired a taste for fried green tomatoes, so I rescue the plants. I pull my tomatoes up by their roots and brush off as much dirt as possible. I sometimes dunk the roots in a bucket of water and pat them dry with a towel to remove more of the dirt (this is advised if your husband has just used a pressure washer to clean the garage floor). Then I take twine and tie the plants by their roots to the rafters in the garage (my garage does not usually dip below freezing. If yours does, you can use a laundry room or basement). The foliage will die off, but the tomatoes will continue to ripen. Pick the tomatoes as they ripen and when you have picked as many as you want, toss the remnants into your compost pile.

Unfortunately, our fist snow usually travels in stealth mode. Its arrival not announced until after the fact, usually by the shouts of glee from our children. You must imagine the previous steps being done by my family still wearing their pajamas under their snow clothes, blinded by snow, with all questions and directions lost to the wind. I have found that a little advance preparation hastens the job. I identify the location where I will tie the plants up in advance. I also locate a bucket and place twine, scissors, and an old towel inside in it ahead of time.

Broiled Cherry Tomatoes

This recipe was inspired by Oven Roasted Cherry Tomatoes. I would love to tell you that the modifications were inspired by my desire to minimize cooking time to save on utility bills, but the truth is that this recipe was created in response to poor planning on my part. The oven roasted version requires 2 1/2 hours of cooking time, so if you try them (and they are good) you should probably start at least 2 3/4 hours before you are planning on serving dinner!

Ingredients:

1 pint of cherry tomatoes

2 Tablespoons olive oil

4 cloves garlic minced

1 Tablespoon fresh basil, minced

1 Tablespoon fresh oregano, minced

1 Tablespoon fresh thyme, minced

1/2 teaspoon pepper

~1/4 cup grated cheese (optional)

Set you oven heat to broil. While your oven is heating up, slice tomatoes in half and place on a baking sheet, cut side up. Mix oil and spices together in a small bowl. Brush each tomato with a dab of the mixture. Broil for 6 minutes. Remove and top each tomato with a bit of cheese. Broil for one more minute.

My kids eat these like a snack, but I have served these as a side dish and over rice. A total of four pints of tomatoes have disappeared this week because of this simple recipe. I will also be using some tomatoes in this salsa recipe and this oven-roasted tomato sauce recipe. What is your favorite tomato recipe? Please leave a link and let me know. I will have a lot more tomatoes to use in the next month!

This post is linked to Foodie Friday , Food on Fridays, Friday Feasts, and Hooked on Houses.