Tomatoes!

When vine ripened tomatoes are in season I can't get enough. The ones in the grocery stores are so "GMO'ed" - genetically modified organism - they don't resemble the real McCoy. I recently received a harvest from my friend Marian. Wow, thanks! The picture doesn't include the beef steaks, they were so ripe and tender they literally melted away from the knife as I tried to slice them for dinner.

So I ran the first half through my juicer and put the juice on to simmer. I added sea salt, dried basil and oregano. Wished I'd planned ahead and used fresh herbs. After it simmered more than an hour I decided it was going to take way too long to turn into sauce; so I put it in a pitcher and have been enjoying my own fresh tomato juice. Incredibly sweet.

Then I chopped up 6 or 8 cups and made a fresh vegetable soup loosely based on this recipe, but instead of pureeing it I left the vegetables whole. We like a chunky soup. But we *still* had tomatoes.

That's okay, one of my all time favorite summer meals is tuna salad stuffed tomatoes; so sweet and oh so good. I think we've gotten our RDA of vitamin A and C lately. :)