One of the wonderful things about warmer weather is the appearance of lovely ripe heirloom tomatoes at my local produce stand. It is on my way home from just about anywhere, so I can stop in easily to see if the tomatoes have come in yet. She has fresh eggs and goat cheese too, so every visit will yield something yummy. Recently, I got the first early pickin’s and made several salads and sandwiches with them. Heirloom tomatoes just have more intense tomato flavor than the hybrids usually in the grocery store, bred for ease of shipping instead of taste.
Heirloom tomatoes have a different look to the inside. I can almost smell the fresh tomato aroma from this picture. Heirloom tomatoes usually are not as pretty as the modern hybrids, but the flavor is just so much better.
I’m sure many readers have made a caprese salad, using tomatoes, fresh basil and mozzarella like this one, and I like mine with multiple colors of heirlooms. The purple ones aren’t in yet, but soon will be!
Sometimes the tomatoes are so big that making a stack and then cutting it in half is enough to serve two. Fresh mozzarella is placed between the layers, with fresh basil leaves from the garden.
Heirlooms are also wonderful on a turkey sandwich. They are so good that sometimes it is yummy to just have a tomato sandwich, spread thick with real mayonnaise.
I wanted to expand the stacked salad idea with something a bit different. I had an avocado that was ready to be eaten, so I decided to use it.
I sliced up an heirloom tomato and the avocado, and started on the cheese.
Here is one of those great kitchen gadgets that is just the thing when you need it, a cheese slicer. I get mozzarella in blocks and slice it medium thick for salads.
I just stacked the avocado slices with the tomato slices and the mozzarella.
Then a second layer.
This salad actually was already so moist with the tomato and the creamy avocado that it didn’t need any dressing.
Just a sprinkle of bold smoked salt and some cracked black pepper finished it off. Yum!
I made another one the next day to use another avocado, and this time made a Cranberry Vinaigrette for it, just for the extra flavor and sweetness.
On another day, nothing better than a BLT with thick sliced, applewood smoked bacon and fresh heirlooms!
Topped with cracked black pepper, yum!
Add a generous layer of lettuce, on whole grain bread with sesame seeds, and those thick tomato slices make a filling sandwich that will keep me quilting all day. No chips needed.
So good! That wonderful tomato aroma as the tomatoes are sliced, bursting flavor in your mouth as you eat. It is summer on a plate to me. Are you a fan of heirloom tomatoes? What do you like to do with them?
Sharing Foodie Friday and Everything Else, Pieced Pastimes, Share Your Cup
From My Carolina Home 
Yes, we like them, esp the purple cherokees, but I am sensitive to nightshades..they make my finger joints hurt, so I mostly avoid. Pretty yummy with cottage cheese, and of course scrambled eggs. Sigh.
Oh, do these look yummy. We are at least 6 weeks away from homegrown tomatoes. I can’t grow them because of the deer. And many of the local growers are now using the huge greenhouse operations. While the tomatoes are better than those tasteless things, they’re still not the same as field grown heirlooms.
Pat
Oh Carole, yum.
Wegmans carries local Heirloom Tomatoes and I will have to check for them now that I see you have procured yours
I love all of the food photography. I love tomatoes and bacon and avocado very much.
Mozzerella is yummy, but my favorite cheese is swiss.
Happy Sunday
Summertime and freshly grown tomatoes just go together. YUM!
Ohhh, you’re making me hungry! I’ve never heard of caprese salad before. It all looks delish!
I envy you, fresh heirloom tomatoes! It is too early to set our tomatoes in the garden yet but soon it will be time. My favorite heirloom is the pineapple tomato, a lovely blend of yellow and red. I shared with our son last summer and loved them too. You never find these in a store, too delicate.
Try eating one like an apple! Soooo good.
Good morning,
It’s a beautiful day today, the sun is shining and it rained just about all night and we are to get rain just about every day this week, so glad, its great for all the plants. I have eaten heirloom tomatoes but haven’t recently, yours look so great they would be worth driving up there to have a bite with you if it weren’t so far and gas so expensive. Having avocado sounds like a winner too. My next BLT is going to be a green tomato fried with the bacon and lettuce, got the idea from a site I go to a lot, its called closetcooking.com he has so many great sandwiches, lots of grilled cheese made with anything you can imagine. Check him out when you can, you might like him.
Phyllis
That BLT looks absolutely delicious! I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for heirlooms.
Cherokee Purples are my favorite! Not grocery store pretty, but the taste is wonderful.
If my green thumb would work, I would live on tomatoes alone. There is nothing better than homegrown!
It will be quite some time before I get tomatoes from my plants, but they are worth waiting for.
We grow Brandywine and , of course, Arkansas Traveler!! Also, Ox Heart, Amish Paste, and Marglobe are good producers. The taste of summer is a vine ripened, sun warmed tomato right off the vine!!
Fabulous, mouth-watering photos, Carole! I’ve been slipping sliced tomatoes into my grilled cheese sandwiches. The warm juicy goodness is hard to describe!
We grow our own, and I have had tiny yellow ones, this year round purple ones, and huge red ones, So much tastier then anything from the shops. Love your stacked slices. I can see quilt colours combining in the same way.
These look so yummy my mouth is watering!!!
That’s it! When the chips are down, get heirlooms. Your photos are mouth-watering, or at least make my mouth water.
We don’t grow heirloom tomatoes, because they don’t come on fast enough, but the Roma and Early Girl plants we buy produce fabulous tasting tomatoes, even though Early Girl is a hybrid. The cardboard tomatoes at the grocery store are picked way too green, and are often hydroponic, which I think eliminates taste. I envy you tomatoes already, my poor little guys are only 6 inches tall! We often get our first tomato around July 20th, with most coming on in mid August.
Good white bread, mayo, fresh tomater, and salt and pepper is my FAV! Gosh those look so good! I’m waiting impatiently for our first harvest. The avocado and mozzarella tomato stack made my stomach growl!
Oh how nice to be able to eat a fresh tomatoes. My hubby can’t eat them because of the potassium in them. But I am drooling!!!!!! Nancy in Alaska
Those tomatoes look so good, your photos are making me hungry!!! Our season has finished here, but there is nothing better than a tomato home grown.
Will be at least 30 days before can harvest tomatoes . But grilled cheese and avocado always good fixings for sandwich. Your pictures made me hungry .
My mouth is watering. The tomato, avocado and cheese salad looks yummy. I’m always on the lookout for new ways to incorporate avocado into our meals. Pinning this.
How delicious! I’d like to eat heirloom tomatoes at your house. BLT, please! Hahahaha!
Well now that you have me starved and craving a good tomato sandwich… I’ll go outside and tend to my little 12 inch plants that do have blossoms on them 🙂 I only do heirlooms in my garden and always have. I grew up in an organic gardening household and it’s all I’ve ever done. My Dad grew up on a farm during the depression and organic was the only way back then. He never left that practice and to this day still does it and he’s 88 years old.
Mmmm… I can’t wait until we get tomatoes… fresh from the garden… it is always a highlight of summer. 🙂
I’m not even hungry, but my mouth is watering! I love heirloom tomatoes!! I tried growing them last year and they did not do great. I guess I’ll stick to buying them and plant the ones that do well here. Can’t wait to pick my first one! Thanks for sharing with SYC.
hugs,
Jann