Fresh Tomatoes!

Updated 8/25/2010:  If you've landed here from $5 Dinner's Grow Eat $ave bit on Tomatoes- welcome!  I'm still waiting for the arrival of my 2010 tomatoes - they're getting really close!  Here are some of the ways I used tomatoes last year and plan to repeat this year.

I love fresh tomatoes and all the possibilities they hold for storage and meal options.  Between the unseasonable weathar and a nasty tomato blight, we're among the few in our area that may even get a harvest of fresh garden tomatoes this year. I'm planning to enjoy our tomatos fresh and not worrying so much about storing them this year.

If you're blessed by an abundance of tomatoes, one of my favorite recipes for fresh tomatoes is over at A Year of Slow Cooking: Restaurant Quality Tomato Soup.  Stephanie did a great job with this and it is one of the very few recipes that I don't tweak to make my own.   Very easy and VERY yummy!  Last year when I had buckets and buckets of tomatoes, lots of this soup made it to the freezer.

Here are more ideas to bring your fresh tomatoes to your salad plate, soup bowl or dinner plate.  What are your favorite tomato meals in the summer?