One tomato, two tomato...

Three tomato, four. Pounds, that is. I had a ton of tomatoes ripening on my counter, waiting for me to forget about them so they could spoil. Tonight I foiled their devious plan and conquered the heap of red, yellow, and orange beauties. I dug out my tomato press (bought from a garage sale for much less than that Williams-Sonoma price) and cranked a bunch through. The press is a pretty sweet piece of hand-powered machinery, but it tends to get clogged with the skins, so I scored, boiled, and blanched the second half of the batch to get rid of the pesky things. The liquid looked like a gorgeous sunset when I was done, as I put in the red tomatoes first and then the yellow and orange. Now I've got at least a quart of tomato goop, ready to be turned into soup, sauce, or whatever else sounds tasty.

While I had the press dripping liquid into a bowl, I took another pound of tomatoes and squelched their guts into the press, then diced up the flesh into a separate container. Next I chopped up a couple of small cucumbers, mixed a portion of them with some of the tomatoes, dumped in some feta cheese, and topped the combo off with some Greek yogurt, dried dill, and dried minced toasted onion.

Damn, that was one tasty salad. I think I'll mix another batch up for lunch tomorrow - if I don't raid the fridge for it tonight.

The heat was brutal again today; my raspberries are drying up almost faster than I can harvest them. I'm surprised animals haven't been chomping the tomatoes for their juice, but I'm glad at least that crop is being left alone.