Thursday, July 15, 2010

Heirloom tomatoes and white peaches

I was listening to the songs of crickets tonight; summer is here in the mountains of North Carolina.  They were delayed compared to the Piedmont, not surprisingly, but are singing loudly now.

I've been harvesting lots of tomatoes since I returned home (to the mountains) and have been trying to shore up the vines (the lightweight tomato cages available at the big box stores simply can't support the weight of Cherokee Purple and Summer Feast tomatoes without extra support).  I thought I'd taken a picture of the raised bed vegetable garden since returning, but apparently not!

I slow-roasted a batch of sliced Cherokee Purples overnight, and stuck them in the freezer.  They'll be summer magic in the winter, for sure.  And there are lots of green Summer Feast tomatoes that were casualties of the tipped-over cages.  I'll need to see if they ripen well, or not -- they're quite big, in any case.

I succumbed to buying a basket of white peaches at the Western North Carolina Farmer's market yesterday.  White peaches are wonderful, but, hmm, this is a lot of them.

But, the cost was remarkably low, and I'm planning to slow roast some of them for the freezer, make a peach salad for a potluck party on Saturday, and we'll eat lots of them fresh, and maybe I'll dry some of them as halves?

I was going to make a peach tart, too, but then realized that I don't have a pie or tart pan here;  it could be rectangular, however, or a 'rustic' tart on a baking pan.