My first harvest...what to cook for dinner?

This is the first year I've ever planted a vegetable garden (most of my previous gardening has been limited to herbs and flowers in pots on the patio). But the south side of my garage seemed like it might be hospitable. I planted early (everyone told me, mostly everything would probably die on me in late April); two tomato plants (romas and some kind of yellow one), green chilies, sweet peppers, Japanese eggplant, rhubarb (mom told me I have to wait a season before harvesting it), swiss chard (I've been picking this for a while now), cilantro and broccoli. I've been watering religiously and and weeding agnostically.

The tomato plants have taken over half the patch (being used to only growing them in pots, I wasn't prepared for how large they would get) and I've had to put reinforcements on the cages to keep them from falling over.

All in all, things look pretty healthy and I'm happy. But now that I'm picking stuff, does anyone have suggestions about what to MAKE using this hodgepodge of veggies? (I'll probably end up canning some of the tomatoes, because if they ALL survive, I'm never going to be able to eat them all!)

ratatouille

nr706 wrote:ratatouille

Totally agree. My first growing season a few years ago, I had the same reaction - "how am i going to use all of this stuff?" I had never made ratatouille before but after I made it with fresh, just picked vegetables - I was hooked. Enjoy.

Eggplant parmesan. Make your own sauce with the tomatoes.

I use a lot of my tomatoes for spaghetti sauce or tomato soup. If you have fresh basil growing you can also throw together a quick caprese salad. I made one with some of my tomatoes and a fig balsamic the other night that came out really tasty.

Caponata

Roast tomatoes, slip off the skins (or keep them if you prefer) and put them into freezer bags and freeze them (lay them flat).

You needn't bother peeling the tomatoes before freezing. I tried Rick Bayless's interesting tip last summer, and merely rinsed off whole, dead-ripe farmers-market beauties, put them in large extra-heavy freezer zip-bags, and popped them into the freezer. When you need them, the skins slip right off after partial defrosting; I usually put as many as I needed into a colander, ran likewarm tap water over them, and the skins slip right off. The flavor difference between this method of preservation and home-canned tomatoes is HUGE - I even them in briefly cooked salsas, like his delicious tomato-habanero hair-raiser.

Bayless is a damn genius. ¡Buen provecho!

Ratatouille is my thought too. I prefer a baked version rather than a stew type. also roasted vegetables too. and you can make sausage and potatoes and peppers and cut up some of your veggies and put them in the pan. I made some nice pork gulash last week and put peppers and tomatoes in there. threw in a baby eggplant too.