I've turned into quite the Suzy Homemaker...

If you've read any of my previous posts (I know, my faithful 10 followers), you know that Matt and I have a garden, and that I have little do with it except that it is in my backyard...well, that has changed!  Over the past 3 weeks, we have picked so many tomatoes!  I probably have at least 30 sitting on my kitchen table right now.  I come home every day from work and bring in at least 5 more, if not 10.  Now - I'm only one person, and Matt doesn't eat tomatoes, so what is a girl to do?

Ps.  We planted one yellow tomato bush.  Oh, wait, we planted FOUR yellow tomato

bushes without knowing.  Luckily, yellow tomatoes my be better than red ones in 

my book, so this is OK.

Plan A :: take tomatoes to work.  Eh.  This didn't work too well, and I came home with tomatoes on Friday.

Plan B :: give them to friends.  This works, but you have to remember to get them to your friends or they just stay on the table soaking up sun.

Plan C :: Cook stuff with tomatoes.  This has to be the most promising. I Googled a recipe for homemade tomato soup, which, after an hour, gave me about 3 cups of tomato broth. So, I revamped the recipe, and ended up with 8 cups of FANTASTIC tomato soup.  Here is what I did ::

Chop up 3 lbs of tomatoes - I think I chopped about 20 medium-ish tomatoes.
Simmer in 1 cup of chicken broth for 45 minutes.  Add other flavorful veggies as you like (I added 5 cloves of garlic, 3 stalks of celery **chopped**, and a handful of minced red onion).
The recipe said to strain the juice, add pepper, basil, and flour, then add 1 cup of milk and simmer for 10 minutes.  LAME!  OK - so I strained the juice and added lemon basil, chives, and thyme (all from the garden), some flour to thicken it up, then I pureed all tomato/celery/garlic/onion gunk to a pulp and mixed it all in.  Add a cup of milk, some pepper, and 10 minutes later, we have soup!  And it is good!  It doesn't taste anything like Campbell's, but it gets the Matt seal of approval, so I'm pretty pumped.  Tomorrow, I shall tackle spaghetti sauce.

TA DA!!!!  And I got these nifty plastic freezer things so I don't have to worry

about learning to can soup and sauce!

We've also discovered the OSU-OKC Farmer's Market - which is AMAZING!  We went last weekend, and got plums, cucumbers, cheese, chicken, pizza crust, steaks, ground bison and ground beef.  All locally grown in Oklahoma, and all grass fed, pesticide free wonderfulness.  Needless to say, what we have eaten thus far has been sooooo good.  You can tell the difference in the veggies for sure, and the meat passed Matt's day after test (his steak still tasted good after being microwaved for lunch today).  We've also demolished the cheese - if you go, get some Christian Cheese and meet John Christian.  He and his wife have been milking cows together for 35 years.  Be sure to head over to the website to see the produce availability (and certified organic meat availability).  We have spent more on produce and chicken than we normally would at the store, but the steaks are a comparable price..the upside is we have yet to make a trip to Wal-Mart to pick up food - which I am 100% OK with.



I'll leave you with a parting shot of my super tired puppy dogs.  Poor things are just too hot and they come in and just pass out...until they start wrestling again...