It was a long way to a grocery store and I had a lot of homegrown tomatoes and cukes. That’s when I discovered that Bloody Mary mix makes a pretty decent gazpacho base.

When we vacation at Greer’s Ferry Lake in Arkansas, we get boxes of homegrown Arkansas tomatoes along with cucumbers, okra, [...]]]>

It was a long way to a grocery store and I had a lot of homegrown tomatoes and cukes. That’s when I discovered that Bloody Mary mix makes a pretty decent gazpacho base.

When we vacation at Greer’s Ferry Lake in Arkansas, we get boxes of homegrown Arkansas tomatoes along with cucumbers, okra, peppers, and squash delivered to us courtesy of Bill and Rosie McBroome. The retired couple live just outside of Conway, Arkansas, and they maintain a quarter acre garden that Bill plows by tractor. Bill told me he had harvested around 400 pounds of tomatoes so far this year and his vines would be producing through the summer. Rosie makes tomato juice, canned tomatoes and salsa out of some of the overflow. Bill gave us a box with around 35 pounds of tomatoes in it, neatly stacked with layers of newspaper in between.

We ate sliced tomatoes, BLTs, fried tomatoes, and heaped tomatoes in our salads, but still we couldn’t keep up. So I finally used the ones that got squishy in a giant batch of gazpacho. We ate the cold tomato soup with every meal for a week. I think it’s fair to say we ate our share of homegrown tomatoes this year.

Thanks Bill and Rosie! See you next summer!