Tomatoes & yummies

Last Friday I grabbed my harvest basket and went out back to see what tomatoes were ready for pickin'. I found a few Amish Paste, a load of Sungellas, a couple of Costoluto Genovese (1st time growing), and a bunch of Ropreco Paste. The Roprecos plant is so dense that all my tomatoes on that plant grew on the bottom all the way in the back, hidden by heavy foliage. I had to get on my hands and knees, lift the bottom of the plant with one hand and snatch tomatoes with the other, much like I imagine lifting a hen to steal eggs. It was quite amusing. But then again, I amuse easily, so...

Most of my Sausage tomatoes came up with Blossom End Rot. Conflicting reports say it is either lack of magnesium, lack of calcium or inconsistent watering. So to remedy I pulverized eggshells, mixed in epsom salt and put it all in some water to water those two. Oddly, none of my other plants had BER to this extent. In fact, all of my other plants are doing fine except for these two, save one tomato I found on the Amish Paste with BER. The rest of my maters are beautiful.

Recently I found a new recipe that bf actually agreed to try. It's simple and easy and it turned out really, really good so I'll share it here with you. It's called Squash Parmesan.

2 large tomatoes in 1/2" slices

2 crookneck squash in 1/2" round slices

1/2 cup fresh grated parmesan cheese

2 Tablespoons dried oregano

2 Tablespoons melted butter

Layer the first layer of tomato slices and then the first layer of crookneck slices in an 8x8 casserole dish. Sprinkle with half of the cheese and half of the oregano. Make a second layer of tomatoes and crooknecks and top with the rest of the cheese and oregano. Drizzle the butter over the top and bake covered for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. (Note: My tomatoes and squash put off alot of liquid and I would cut the butter by half of eliminate it altogether - maybe just butter the edges to keep it from sticking.)