Comfort Food on a Rainy Summer's Day

I was hoping to work on the new border today and perhaps even finish it. It's just the last 3 meters that have to be done. But no, it was raining again today, with thunder and lightning too, so working in the garden was out.
Just 3 more meters to go!
Thanks to all that sunshine and rain we've been having lately the new border grows away like there is no tomorrow.
And not just the new border, the tomatoes are doing fine too. This trug is what I harvested yesterday and as I was unable to work outside I decided to do some work inside.

It would have been great to sun dry part of the tomato harvest but as it was pouring with rain today that was out.
So oven dried tomatoes it had to be.
They are pretty easy to make; just slice small tomatoes in halves and big ones in quarters and remove the seeds.
Sprinkle a bit of sea salt on them and some freshly milled black pepper and bung in the preheated oven, at 100 C or F for 3 hours and leave the door ajar.
As I had so many tomatoes and love eating sun or oven dried ones I decided to make another batch. You can never have too many dried tomatoes! This time I jazzed the tomatoes up a bit with a mix of salt, garlic, marjoram and some olive oil.
Just fill the tomatoes with the stuff and bung in the oven and that's pretty much it. Once they are done (after 3 hours) let them cool, then put in a jar and add some more cloves of garlic, marjoram, salt and pepper, fill to the brim with olive oil, et voila, one jar of scrumptious oven dried tomatoes.
The seeds and pulp I had removed before I put the tomatoes in the oven did not go to waste. I decided to make a nice tomato sauce with it, which was also very easy to make.
Just put two finely chopped onions in a frying pan and fry them lightly in a bit of olive oil. Add 3 big diced tomatoes and the pulp,
some black pepper, salt, thyme, 2 bay leaves and some marjoram.
Let simmer for half an hour, take it off the heat, and let it cool. It's great to make pizza's with or as a sauce for pasta.
After I made the oven dried tomatoes and the tomato sauce there were still some tomatoes left so I thought I'd make some pesto and tomato salad. After I'd used these tomatoes my trug would be empty (hurray!) so off to the greenhouse I went to pick some basil for the pesto.
But that was not the only thing I picked, my trug is once again stuffed to the gills with tomatoes, back to square 1. Oh no, what on earth shall I do with those ones? And there is plenty more where they came from!
Perhaps some more oven dried tomatoes or when the sun shows its face I could even try drying them in the sun which takes about 2 days. For the time being I will just eat my lovely pesto tomatoes and gloat over the yummy tomato sauce.

copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

I say tomahto, you say tomayto :-)