Barring the heat wave, we’ve not had great weather, but the veg garden is coming along nicely with plenty of fresh organic produce. Post some photos of your tomatoes. They sound amazing.

Not a problem, Mars. Here's a before and after. Bear in mind that's just 5 weeks between the two photos.

@majordennisbloodnok I sent the following to Mars as I know he and his better half are keen on living off the land if possible. He liked it and suggested I might put the recipe in this forum, well, I thought I might re-write it as a ‘proper recipe’ but then…. I thought, NAH! Let readers adapt to their own needs; quantities are deliberately missing as I am sure others must occasionally ‘create’ in the kitchen as I do (I shun recipe books and just follow my nose), no two meals are ever quite the same but isn’t it said that ‘Variety is the spice of life’?

So here is a solution for all those tomatoes:

The tomato vines in the greenhouse were looking very heavy; my wife Chris brought in bowls of them, Shirley, Gardener’s Delight and Sweet Million. I decided that the prudent move was a cast iron casserole filled with a few litres of chopped toms sat on the solar powered induction hob to be slow cooked.😊

Shirley toms (large jobbies) de-cored and de-seeded.
Gardener’s delight chopped and the firmer ones de-cored.
Sweet million (cherry toms, like sweets, they is), just halved.
Some garlic (as chris can’t tolerate onion in her diet), some more garlic, and some more garlic.
Basil leaves straight from the plants.
Some freshly ground ginger.
A goodly amount of Herbes de Provence.
Some dried Chives.
Tinned Coconut Milk.
Brown Sugar to equalise the acid.

The crushed and chopped garlic and ginger cooked gently in some olive oil for a few minutes before adding the toms and then bringing to a gentle boil, added herbs and sugar, turned down the heat, lid on and cook for an hour with occasional stir. Turn off heat and leave for 30 minutes, blend and then add coconut milk - serve or pot up for freezing purposes.
My efforts produced 11 very healthy servings and I toasted some mixed seeds to sprinkle on top of the soup when served. (with oat cakes)

Are you feeling peckish?!

Regards, Toodles.

That's brilliant, @toodles; thanks very much.

For my taste (and not to suggest anything awry with yours), I wouldn't add any brown sugar since all the toms we've grown have been bursting in fresh flavour and not needing sweetening. If I did feel the sauce needed any sweetening I would, as you say, just increase the proportion of cherry toms and, to be frank, I'd dispense with the seeding altogether, partly to avoid the waste but mainly 'cos I'm lazy like that. I would also use some fresh ginger since I've always got some around for Indian cooking purposes and in any case I rarely have any dried herbs around, preferring to pick fresh from the garden.

As it happens, we've had a bumper crop this year of garlic so your garlic-heavy suggestion would work really well. However, since we can and do tolerate onion I would put some in from what has also been a bumper crop.

Your post has reminded me that I always intended to post a picture of some pickings from the greenhouse the year I took the above pictures. That year the first tomato weighed in at, as the photo shows, 525g.

My preference now, when we have a tomato glut, is to pick them, chuck them straight into the food processor and whizz. I then pour the result into deep freezer containers meaning I've got multiple portions frozen of about 600g (equivalent to about a tin and a half of chopped toms) ready for any sauces or soups I want to make during the subsequent months. That year I didn't have to start buying more tomatoes until around March the following year.

@majordennisbloodnok I used two tins of Lidl’s coconut milk (full fat version) with approx. 3.5 litres of prepared tomatoes. A whole head of garlic was sacrificed in this recipe and … much love was lavished! 😉 Toodles.

Posted by: @toodles

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… much love was lavished! 😉 Toodles.

…on your food and your wife in equal measure, it sounds. Quite right too.

We’ve had a horrendous veg gardening year. Weather and slugs have decimated most of our veg this year. We’re only getting courgettes, potatoes, garlic and pumpkins. No tomatoes as we don’t have a greenhouse. Envious.

On a similar note, @sune posted this photo a few days ago on social media.

I’m shocked that it’s still considered acceptable to sell devices designed to kill insects. Living in a rural area with over an acre of land that we returned to nature four years ago, we’ve become a sanctuary for bees, butterflies and other insects. However, this year, we’ve seen a significant decline in the number of insects compared to previous years. It’s appalling that businesses like BP are promoting “Bug zapper lanterns” when we should be doing everything possible to protect and preserve our insect populations. Disgraceful.

Sungold cherry tomatoes, loads yet to come. Borlotti runner beans and blueberries have done better this year than ever. Sadly my some of my hops have suffered mainly the chinook with a black mildew which has not affected the others thank goodness. Yes I'm a brewer 😀 

Love the toms, @jancold.

@editor, we’ve had a ridiculously slug-filled year too, even in the greenhouse. Spids are doing well, though, along with the aforementioned alliums and some reasonable broad beans. We’ve had a few brilliant cabbages alongside several absolutely decimated ones and this year seems to be the year of the cucumber. Rubbish for carrots, though.

@editor Nature in the UK is in a somewhat desperate situation. Insect splatters on number plates reduced by 78% between 2004 and 2023. Overall abundance of species has declined by 19% since 1970. Some examples of previously common species are Cuckoos and Nightingales which have both crashed. Hedgehogs really aren't doing much better. This isn't just confined to land either.

And it's not as if the 1970s is the benchmark we need to aim for - nature had already been depleted back then. Compared to mainland Europe the UK is fairing poorly - because of intensive agriculture, lack of habitat, lack of true nature reserves, exacerbated by climate change, and the fact we're an island.  

One of the reasons these large declines are hard to appreciate is because of Shifting Baselines: the changes, whilst fast on ecological timescales, are very gradual on human timescales, and so we adapt what we consider to be normal for the environment.

However our gardens combined are bigger than all the national parks, and can be an important refuge for wildlife. Hedgehogs are doing okay-ish in towns for instance because gardens are more welcoming to them than the countryside. So whilst it's not a whole solution there's a lot we can do in our gardens to make them more welcoming to nature, more welcoming to us, and to make delicious, healthy food!  

Here is a link to a recording of a Gardening for Wildlife event I helped organise for our sustainability group a while ago. It gives guiding principals so that people can then make their own decisions - perhaps it might be of value to some reading this.

@majordennisbloodnok you should be pleased with your bountiful greenhouse, impressive! I'm jealous of your tomatoes, and far superior to bought.