Anel’s garden has been flourishing all season and it’s not slowing down. One of the biggest harvests we’ve had is baby tomatoes. We have them coming out of our ears! My favorite afternoon snack is to slice them in half with a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkle of sea salt, and a few basil leaves from the garden. I eat that almost every day.

I don’t want any tomatoes to go to waste so we’ve given some to friends, made tomato sauce, a tomato pie, and countless salads. Then we had the brilliant idea to whip up Bloody Mary’s over the weekend and they were AH-maz-ing. I’m not a big day drinker (not a fan of evening hangovers) so I just had a virgin which was so so so good.

We were able to garnish with tomatoes from the garden and flavor them with fresh dill from our herb section. We also used the tiny cucumbers Anel grows for garnish. You can see one on the top of the left skewer in the photo. It’s so tiny and cute! The garnish of a Bloody Mary is half the fun, right?

This is the Bloody Mary recipe we loosely follow with some tweaks below. It’s absolutely delicious. Serves 4.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups tomato juice
• 1/2 cup dill pickle juice (yep. So delish)
• 4 sprigs of fresh dill
• ¼ cup fresh lemon juice
• 2 tsp horseradish
• 1 Tbspn hot sauce (I skip this in mine)
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 cups vodka
• 4 small stalks (for serving)
• lemon wedges (for serving)

Directions:
Combine tomato juice, pickle juice, lemon juice, horseradish, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper in a large pitcher. Cover and chill at least an hour.

Just before serving, stir vodka into tomato base and pour into tall ice-filled glasses. Garnish each with a celery stalk and a skewer with any salty/pickled veggies.

Let me know what else I should do with our ever-growing collection of baby tomatoes!

Photo by Julia Dags.