Backyard Farms is a 38-acre greenhouse located in a very small, central Maine town that raises the best tomatoes in New England! I have the good fortune to cater their important board meeting luncheons and dinners. They are all great eaters and a few are real epicureans. I love to dazzle them. My motive is always to show them all the possibilities of the fruit that they work so hard at making perfect. Every course is created around the tomato and sometimes it gets very challenging to top the last meal that I have created for them.
Last spring I wrote tomato tarts for dessert into the menu without having a clear idea how that would happen. I had 5 varieties to work with, all colors and shapes to inspire me. I ‘slept on how I would create this’ every night for two weeks until it was show time. The night before I slowly baked ½ thick slices of all five varieties of tomatoes on buttered parchment paper-250 degrees, slow enough to dehydrate them but not too long that they became leathery. It took 2 hours and I let them sit in a cool room overnight because refrigeration would make the texture change for the worse.
I gathered my French tin tart pans out of the back of my kitchen cabinet, buttered them and preceded to take this dessert from the drawing board of my mind to the dessert table. I imagined that every component of this dessert should be seamless, meaning - not any part would dominate the other. So, I made a pastry crust with homemade tomato paste, finely ground and toasted pine nuts and dried basil. Why, dry basil? It is dried already, stable, not over powering and perfect. I know, a bit too much thinking, but this dessert was going to rock!
You meet the most interesting people. If you have a farm stand in your back yard, that is. The farm stand didn’t start out as close to the house as it is now, but there were a couple of little problems that forced our decision to move it down the driveway. On a positive note, now when people get out of their cars, they get a great view of the garden, and some even wander over to take a look at the chickens and Cocoa bunny. Also, since I am often outside working, I get to meet more of them now.
For one week, I had an apartment in south Minneapolis. It was listed on a 
Summer makes me want to grill everything, it makes dinner so simple to execute. Picking a protein is the biggest decision. Once that's settled it's easy street.
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