This picture is showing two of my favorite new discoveries! 1. Sunburst Tomatoes and 2. "Living Basil."
A few weeks ago, my friend Donna and I were walking through the Gardner Price Chopper picking up some lunch when I stopped to look at a carton of yellow cherry tomatoes. Donna noticed what I was looking at and commented that her daughter loves those tomatoes. When I saw the carton was only $1.99. I picked it up. That night I washed them off and popped one into my mouth. Wow! Delicious. They had the flavor that I'm always hoping the tomatoes that I buy will have, but rarely do. The next day I went back there and bought 2 more cartons of these little yellow Sunburst tomatoes. I told Donna I might have to start doing all of my shopping out there- they have nice produce.
Unfortunately my wonderful little yellow tomatoes disappeared from that store, but Donna sent me a text 2 days ago telling me that Sam's Club has them now. I went this morning and purchased a 2 lbs carton of deliciousness. I contemplated buying 2... If you're a tomato lover, and you haven't had them, be sure to give them a try! And FYI, I separately purchased a few red cherry tomatoes from the salad bar just for the variation in color, but they weren't nearly as good.
Okay, let's talk about "Living Basil." I've walked by this stuff a thousand times at my local Price Chopper but I didn't realize the genius that it is until today. I was at the store with basil on my list. I walked right to it and picked up the little bag. I immediately noticed a whole root ball at the bottom of the bag. Now I've only bought basil once or twice, but I buy other fresh herbs fairly frequently and I've never received an entire plant like this before. So, I read the instructions on the bag... basically, you take the stuff home and put it in a cup and keep the root ball covered with water. As the water gets low, you just add to it. Then this beautiful fresh herb lives on your counter for weeks!!! Isn't that nicer than shoving a bunch of herbs into a little Ziploc and throwing it in your fridge? And there's such a great herbacious aroma filling my kitchen now because I get to keep it on the counter!
This made me so excited that I came home and got online to find out a little bit more about it. "Living Basil" is grown hydroponically, without synthetic pesticides, in Basehor, Kansas, at Cal-Ann Farms. http://www.calannfarms.com/ Their website says that basil is the only herb they grow and it's the only one in my grocery store, but when I clicked on their blog link, there's a picture showing a few others. The second I'm done with this post, I'm going to e-mail them and tell them how much I'd love to see their other herbs offered in the store too! I think 4 or 5 little herb plants sitting on my counter at any given time would be a beautiful addition to my kitchen.
My 2 favorite new things (plus a few scallion pieces, salt, pepper and a few tiny blue cheese crumbles) made a wonderfully flavorful lunch today! Ummm ummm!
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