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| A sampling of heirloom tomatoes from the Glamorosi garden in Philadelphia |
I have a small garden, but growing heirloom tomatoes is a big part of my life. For me the season begins every year in January when I start my seeds indoors, and runs until the end of October when I take down the plants and winterize the garden. This year I grew twelve varieties of heirloom tomatoes; the photo above shows Yellow Pear, Green Zebra, Black Krim and Roma.
The main reason I’m tomato-centric is tomato salad (aka bread salad). In my family (and in a lot of Italian families) tomato salad is a staple. It’s a huge deal – we eat it every day so we make gallons of it every week, and we always have tomatoes on hand to make more. It's an all-purpose food: it can be a main dish, a side dish, a snack, a topping or a garnish.
It’s a pretty simple recipe – ripe tomatoes, peeled and cut, good olive oil, regular or red wine vinegar (some people use lemon juice), fresh garlic, fresh basil, salt and pepper, some people also include onion – and no measurements are needed, it’s your feel for the ratios of the ingredients that make a superior salad.
Once the mix has marinated for at least a few hours we serve it with hard Italian bread, oven or pan toasted, secret seasoning optional (in my family everyone has their own bread method and no-one tells). I also enjoy it with sour dough bread, and sometimes I have it with mozzarella, or with arugula, or over pasta...
When I'm not making and eating tomato salad, I'm into fried tomatoes, roasted tomatoes, stuffed tomatoes, homemade tomato soup and yummy tomato sandwiches. I also take a lot of pictures of the tomatoes I grow. This summer when I took the photo below of my cherry tomatoes, it reminded me of the fun games we used to play here on this blog, sooooo...
For GlamorInky Friday #20 your task is to guess how many tomatoes are on the orange and silver tray in the photo at the bottom of this post. To enter click on the comment link below the photo and post your numerical guess along with a contact email address. If your email address is accessible through your Blogger profile you can simply write "address in profile" or "email in profile". Comments that do not have the requested email information will not be included or published.
Please do not post any additional text in your comment. I'll be moderating the comments so it may take some time for them to appear on the blog. Comments with URLs or any type of link are considered to be spam and will be automatically rejected and the guess will not be included.
In the event more than one person guesses correctly, the person who answers first wins. If no-one guesses correctly, then the first person with the closest guess without going over wins. The winner will receive a pair of shiny red earrings designed by me, Glamorosi (ARV approx. $24).
No purchase necessary, one entry per person, 18+, USA only. Entries for GlamorInky Friday #20 are accepted from Friday, October 29, 2010 at 8:00 PM EST, and are accepted through Friday, November 5, 2010, at 11:59 PM EST. The winner will be notified and their name (or screen name) will be published on this blog on Friday, November 12, 2010. Please click here to read the complete official rules and privacy policy before you post a comment.
Some hints:
1. Because you cannot see all of the tomatoes on the tray, there is no way to really count them all - this is just a guessing game.
2. In some places the tomatoes are two and three rows high.
3. Make sure you are looking at the right tomato photo – only guess how many are on the orange and silver tray shown below this text.
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