Wow! Any recipes you might like to share :)

The roasted are Alton Browns tomato sauce recipe. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/tomato-sauce-recipe.html We simmer it longer and use it for pizza sauce. The rest is just processed and simmered with fresh basil. We will freeze this 120 lbs next 120 we will can. Doing it with a friend to split. The real secret is a machine to process. Next to impossible by hand.

Wow! You and your kitchen are really working. It looks amazing.Are the tomatoes all yours?

Tomatoes in south Louisiana have been done for a while, and if they hadn't, the recent flooding would have taken the rest.

This is what I'm doing with my tomatoes:

Waiting for the darn things to get ripe!

These are our grown tomatoes. Frig pics They are too good for sauce. For sauce, a hu Local grower sold us the first 120# for $15/20#. Nice meaty Roma's. Our tomatoes either don't make it from the garden to the kitchen or are put pretty fast in salads and hoggies. A lot did ripen the last few days so I am going to chop them up and freeze for pasta dishes and stews.

Suzanne - green tomato relish is delish.

Nice! So jealous!!! We miss having a tomato garden, but between the blight that hit tomato plants some years ago, and the wildlife (groundhogs, squirrels, deer....), wasn't worth the $, or the work anymore. Oh well, I'll just have to live vicariously through your pics!

Our tomatoes are just so-so this year, and have quit bearing in the unrelenting heat. We did get enough Romas for a small batch of sauce. The cucumbers, OTOH, have been burying us! I picked eleven this week, and we only have ONE plant! A friend gave me a seedling, and I didn't have room anywhere, so I stuck it in the front flower bed. I'm starting to lose my taste for pickles.

120# for $15/20# - I read as 120 pounds at 15-20$ a pound... had to re-read a few times:)

Great KAW - I don't have a single tomato plant this year, so am vicariously enjoying yours...

LOL Sorry, was using my phone. Yes $15 per 20 pounds (75 cents/pound) of roma tomatoes. The goal is to have all cooking tomato needs our own with the exception of paste. No salt/sugar/you name it. In a few weeks, we will have a pasta noodle day and put up 20 or so frozen lasagnas and egg plant parms for lazy winter nights. Love that!

re cucumbers - ours are very sad this year. We got horrible bugs and the timing of their arrival was while we were away for 2 weeks, so they really did a number on the cucumbers and zucchini. very sad indeed. we are now looking for a local grower for those so we can make pickles in the next few weeks.

It was a mild winter, so we are overrun by rabbits and squirrels. Good for them, bad for the garden. We won't have many carrots. They destroyed the green beans. The squirrels nibble on the tomatoes, but don't ruin the plants.

Your KAW looks amazing! However, since this is the Kitchens Forum (TKO'd), I am a little scared for your island countertop. It is gorgeous - how is it holding up under the tomatoes - they are so acidic, any etching? Or, it's of no matter if there is?

My husband fell in love with that marble. There was NO talking him out of it. My choice was Caesartsone. But, we do try to be careful. If you look closely, you will see blue tape holding down some trashbags in the areas we figured would be most likely to be spashed. The JOY of the Stages 45 is that prep all happens there. Ultimately, there were only a few splashes on the trash bags when we pulled them up.

We do BBQ for large groups. When we do that, we protect the island 100% because that is where we put out the meats and the sauces really fly!

They're slowly starting to come in. One of my fav's: slow oven roasted!

And some pesto :)

Very nice Dawn. I LOVE making pesto. The end of the summer, we make bunches and freeze in ice trays. Then pop them out and put in zip lock bags. Basil grows like a weed for us. Sadly, our eggplant didn't work out this year. Yours looks great!

Nightowl, what a great idea for making pesto.

We've been making pesto all summer. It's hard to keep it from going to seed in our climate unless you constantly cut it back. Yum!

Jealous!! Thank goodness for my neighbour who grows tomatoes but doesn't love them. He's been a steady supply for me. Mine have withered skin and such. I'm not sure if it was over/under watering or the oppressive heat or my black thumb. Probably some combination of the three. My basil is still going strong but my cilantro is done. That was about the extent of it this year.