This years garden season was quite a fun one. Mainly because it was the first garden at our new house. Although, I must admit, I had not planned to have one this year because of the house renovations, full-time job, and elderly dog to take care of. But then I saw some plants on sale at our local market and I couldn’t resist.
   The garden started out quite a bit rocky. A few weeks after I planted everything I went out to the garden and realized that I was not doing a great job at keeping up with the maintenance, the weeds had taken over. So that day I buckled down, pulled the weeds, unburied our plants, put in some paths, covered the bare areas with cut grass and “started again”.
   Not everything did well, and a few plants died… we can’t win ‘em all. But after the garden got established it did pretty well. Thankfully things got ripe at a rate that I could process them and use them up before they went bad.
   I thought it would be fun to put together a list of recipes for the tomatoes and peppers. Feel free to send me any recipes you would like to include in the line up.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups green tomatoes diced
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 3/4 cup shredded or grated Monterey Jack cheese
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 clove garlic minced
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl combine tomatoes, honey, milk, egg, salt, garlic, cheese, melted butter, and oil. Mix with a spoon. Add flour and baking powder to mixture. The batter will be lumpy
2. Spray or grease 8x8 pan and fill with mixture. Bake in preheated 400 degree oven for 45-55 minutes until brown on top and toothpick comes out clean.​

I just made these, and I admit, I ate almost the whole pan full of them. They are Parmesan Broiled Tomatoes. The recipe I found said to use Roma’s, but I only had a few ripe, so I used my beefsteak tomatoes 🍅 sliced in thirds. The recipe is simple,

Tomatoes cut in half or thirds depending on their size
1/2 cup crushed saltine crackers
1/2 cup cheese (I used a combo of Parmesan and shredded queso)
1 tsp garlic salt (+/- to taste)
1/4 cup olive oil

Combine everything but the tomatoes in a bowl, mix well. Place tomato halves (cut side up) on a baking sheet. Top each tomato half with mixture, broil for 3-5 minutes. Keep an eye on them, it can burn quickly if you get distracted. ENJOY!!!