What is Tomato Pesto? Why Put it on a Pizza?

A vegetarian's delight: pizza with marinated artichoke hearts, kalamata olives and pickled banana peppers on fresh tomato pesto, topped with salty feta crumbles and creamy burrata cheese, finished with fresh summer savory.

Have you made Fresh Tomato Pesto yet? It's one of my most popular posts every summer, and with good reason. This flexible dairy free recipe uses ANY type of tomato (I've tried cherry to Roma), assorted nuts--or sunflower seeds--and whatever herbs you've got handy. I prefer a combo of flat Italian parsley and basil, but I'll be experimenting with cilantro this year.

This is after thawing!

Eat it fresh, and if you've got a bunch of ripe tomatoes--put some up for later by freezing! I like these reusable storage caps for freezing (Amazon affiliate link) and freeze my pesto in half pint size jars. I use a piece of clear tape to write down the contents so I don't get mixed up--for example between arugula pesto and  garlic scape pesto. The lids wash up fine and only break when you swing the freezer door open too quickly and everything falls out and rolls on the floor to the delight of Robert Barker. [I'm sure that only happens to me, though].

I like to dip a variety of veggies and crackers into my fresh tomato pesto, but I really like to use it on pizza. I thaw a jar a day or so in advance, in the fridge, and drain off any water that rises to the top [For use as a pasta sauce I just stir it in.] Then I've got a flavorful sauce that adds a homemade touch to pizza.

Go make Fresh Tomato Pesto. My tutorial is here. For other recipes using tomatoes, please see my Red & Yellow Tomato Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. For other Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks, please see my Pinterest board. For more vegetarian pizzas, please check out my Visual Pizza Recipe Index and my Friday Night Pizza Night Pinterest board. Wanna know how to Use This Blog? Click here!

How to Make My Family's Favorite CSA Vegetable Spaghetti Sauce

Practical advice for how to save ripe summer farm share vegetables--by roasting--for use in a kid-friendly spaghetti sauce all year long.

The purpose and timing of this post reflects my mission for this blog: to provide practical support for local eating. We chose to get a large Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share not because I'm a masochist and like to torture myself with overwhelming quantities of vegetables for the kids and I to eat while my spouse is deployed because it's a good value and I know if I put up the produce properly, I'll be feeding my family from the farm share all year long. With a couple of tried-and-true techniques, including #4 from this post, and a substantial Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient filled with ideas for what's in the box, my goal is to help you feed your people from your farm share as well.

Let's talk fantasy versus reality, especially as it pertains to spaghetti sauce. In a fantasy world, I'd start with ingredients like this and spend a leisurely day chopping and simmering in my spotless kitchen [this is my fantasy, after all]. Tomatoes would always be ripening in m weed-free back yard [no need to watch where you step either], basil would be fresh for the plucking, and I'd have an interesting assortment of eggplant, peppers, fennel and squash to make flavorful sauce. [Oh, and plenty of freezer space while we're talking fantasies].

In reality, this is what the start of my spaghetti sauce often looks like. It's a bit beetier, no? I grab a bag of vegetables and a piece of Parm rind out of the freezer, a jar of tomatoes out of the pantry, and 30 minutes later I've got sauce. Homemade sauce in a half an hour is possible only because I did some prep work in the late summer, as in right about this time of year. Typically I roast my vegetable surplus and freeze it in bags as shown, but this year I'll be throwing the farm share on the grill.
When I have more propane.

Funny, how propane is a necessary ingredient when you have a gas grill. Sunday night I came back from sled hockey camp [my son plays, I'm a hockey mom] planning to Grill All The Things in the crispers. I'd forgotten I was almost out of propane when I made pizza last. I turned on the oven instead. Using my previous little grill, a tank lasted almost 2 years. Now it lasts about 4 months. Just like you need lids and jars when you're ready to get canning, or a fresh roll of bags when you're freezing produce (Amazon affiliate link), you need propane to grill. If you have a gas grill, that is. Lesson learned.

Oatmeal Orange Beet Blender Muffins

These perky morning muffins have roasted beets from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, oatmeal, and orange juice. They are easily made in the blender for a smooth batter, bright flavor, and golden hue.

We were only engaged for a week, so we didn't undertake any type of pre-marital counseling. Instead we drove from Michigan to New Mexico, seeing the sights en route but probably not avoiding chain restaurants--see this post if you want tips on Local Eating on the Road--since we'd just been living in Germany and were craving all things American. We got hitched once we arrived in Alamogordo.

Why the rush? Well, if you're someone in the military who loves someone else in the military there's this thing called a Join Spouse assignment preference. There's no Join Boyfriend or Join Fiancee or Join Significant Other assignment category. You need the paper to make it officially easier to be with the one you love. It made more sense to my spouse and I to get the paper rather than have a big To Do. So we did.

Had we undergone pre-marital counseling, however, I would hope that it included the orange juice pulp issue. There are too many choices in the grocery store and the amount of pulp and/or calcium in your OJ is just one example. My spouse likes Lots of Pulp. I'd rather have pulp than not have pulp, so I'll easily go along with his desire.

For other recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. I've been working behind the scenes adding links to recipes from a host of creative and generous bloggers to make this index a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share. For another muffin recipe using beets, how about a sweet Cherry Beet Yogurt muffin or a savory Beet Horseradish muffin?