Preamble
My tomato plants have officially taken over the patio. They’re sprawling, heavy, absolutely loaded — and every single one of those tomatoes is still green. Every day I go out there half-expecting a blush of red and every day I get... green. Turns out I picked up Caspian Pink heirlooms at the nursery, a variety that takes a good 80 to 90 days to actually ripen, and nobody mentioned that little detail on the plant tag when I loaded them into my cart. Lesson learned: read the tag before you fall for a plant because it looks healthy. I spent weeks convinced my plants just weren’t going to bear fruit, when really they were just taking their sweet time.
Here’s another thing nobody warned me about: those little plants you pot up in spring do not stay little. Mine started with the flimsy stick that came stuck in the container, like that was ever going to hold anything up. By midsummer I’d graduated to “proper” stakes from the garden center, thinking I’d solved it. The plants outgrew those too. Right now I’ve got a cobbled-together situation involving sign posts and garden twine, and it’s barely holding — these things got top-heavy fast, and I was chasing the problem the whole way instead of getting ahead of it. It’ll get us to the end of the season, but next year I’m doing actual research before planting so I’ve got a real support plan in place from day one, not a patchwork built one crisis at a time.
The tomatoes may be testing my patience, but the herbs are where all that same “growing something yourself” feeling really pays off. They’ve been prolific this year, an absolute embarrassment of riches, and every time I walk out there and see how much they’ve given me, I feel this ridiculous swell of pride. I grew that. So this week’s project isn’t just about preserving — it’s about not wasting a single leaf of something I worked for. Herbs pickled, dried, and frozen in oil, cubes stacked in the freezer waiting for the next soup or sauce that needs them. As for the tomatoes still holding out on ripening — some will go toward next year’s seeds once they finally turn, but the ones that stay stubbornly green by the time frost threatens aren’t going to waste either. Fried green tomatoes, a quick green tomato relish — there’s a plan for those too.
Farm Stand Report
The stand is in that awkward in-between right now — not quite summer, not quite fall. The flowering shrubs and bushes are done for the season, spent and a little sad-looking, and they know it — everything’s marked down. I almost walked right past them until it hit me: this isn’t a clearance rack, it’s actually the smart time to buy. Fall is when shrubs want to go in the ground. The soil’s still warm from summer, the air’s finally cooled off, and that combination lets the roots settle in and get established without a fight — no scorching heat, no drought stress. By the time spring rolls around, anything you plant now will already have a head start. So if you’ve had your eye on something for the yard, don’t wait for the price to be the only reason. The timing’s actually on your side too.
The mums, meanwhile, are just getting going — tight little buds everywhere, not a bloom open yet, but give them another week or two and the whole stand’s going to be nothing but color.
My own patio’s having its own in-between moment. The tomatoes are still green, still taking their sweet time, and I’ve made my peace with that — once a few finally ripen, or go a little past ripe, I’m saving the seeds. Here’s what I’m doing about it:
Want next year’s tomatoes to be this year’s tomatoes? Here’s what I’m doing about it. I pick a tomato that’s fully ripe, maybe even a little past its prime, off whichever plant did best this year — no sense saving seed from a mediocre performer. Slice it in half across the middle and scoop the seeds, pulp, gel and all, into a clean glass or jar. Add a splash of water, cover it loosely with a paper towel or cheesecloth so the fruit flies stay out, and then just... leave it. A couple days to about four, sitting right on the counter. Don’t panic when a layer of white, slightly funky-looking mold shows up on top — that’s not a mistake, that’s the whole point. It’s breaking down the gel coating the seeds are wrapped in.
Once that’s done, fill the jar with fresh water and give it a stir. The good seeds sink to the bottom, and everything else — the mold, the pulp, the seeds that never had a chance — floats. Pour that off. Do it again a couple times until what’s left in the bottom of the jar is just clean seed.
Last step is patience. Spread the seeds out in a single layer — a coffee filter or a piece of parchment works, skip the paper towel or you’ll be picking seeds off it for a week — and let them sit somewhere cool and out of direct sun for a week or two, until they’re completely dry and a little brittle. Then tuck them into a paper envelope, label it with the variety and the date, and put it somewhere cool and dark. Do it right and you’ve got seed that’ll still grow you tomatoes three, four, even five years from now.
Weekend Menu
Friday Night
Rosemary & Sea Salt Focaccia, warm from the oven
Lemon Dill Baked Salmon with roasted potatoes
Rosemary-Garlic Compound Butter for the bread
Saturday Morning
Lemon Lavender Scones with Lavender-Honey Compound Butter
Herbed Frittata with fresh chives, dill, and goat cheese
Saturday Dinner
Garlic & Herb Roasted Chicken (rosemary, sage, oregano under the skin)
Tomato Basil Soup
Watermelon, Feta & Mint Salad
Sunday Brunch
Herbed Omelets with parsley and dill
Lavender Lemonade
Sunday Dinner
Classic Pasta Margherita (basil, garlic, sweet tomatoes)
Herb-Crusted Pork Tenderloin (sage, rosemary, garlic)
Cucumber Dill Yogurt Salad
Featured Recipe
Rosemary-Garlic & Lavender-Honey Compound Butter
Two ways to freeze summer’s herb harvest into something you’ll reach for all season — one savory, one sweet.
Ingredients — Rosemary-Garlic Butter
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, finely minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon kosher salt
Ingredients — Lavender-Honey Butter
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon culinary lavender buds, finely crushed
2 tablespoons honey
Pinch of salt
Directions
For each version, make sure the butter is fully softened at room temperature — this makes folding in the mix-ins much easier.
Rosemary-Garlic: In a bowl, combine softened butter, minced rosemary, garlic, and salt. Mix thoroughly with a fork or spatula until evenly distributed.
Lavender-Honey: In a separate bowl, combine softened butter, crushed lavender buds, honey, and salt. Mix until fully incorporated and streaked through with honey.
Spoon each butter onto a sheet of parchment or plastic wrap. Roll into a log shape, twisting the ends closed like a candy wrapper.
Refrigerate at least 1 hour to firm up before slicing into rounds, or freeze the whole log for longer storage.
To Preserve
Refrigerator: up to 2 weeks, well wrapped.
Freezer: up to 3 months. Slice the log into individual rounds before freezing so you can pull off just what you need.
Notes
Rosemary-Garlic butter is excellent melted over steak, tossed with roasted potatoes, or spread on crusty bread.
Lavender-Honey butter is meant for warm biscuits, morning toast, or scones — start with 1 tablespoon of lavender and adjust up carefully, since it turns soapy-tasting if overdone.
Shoppable List
Unsalted butter
Fresh rosemary
Garlic
Kosher salt
Culinary lavender buds
Honey
Basil
Dill
Sage
Oregano
Parsley
Mint
Salmon fillets
Lemons
Whole chicken
Pork tenderloin
Roma or garden tomatoes
Watermelon
Feta cheese
Cucumbers
Greek yogurt
Goat cheese
Chives
Fresh pasta
Heavy cream
All-purpose flour (for scones and focaccia)
Curious what’s in my kitchen? Shop Nonna’s Favorites →
Nonna’s Notebook: A Blueberry Jam Kind of Friendship
I have a friend I’ve known for years now, though these days our paths cross less often than either of us would like. But there’s one Saturday I still think about every time I see a jar of blueberry jam.
We’d set the day aside weeks in advance — pick-your-own blueberries in the morning, jam-making in the afternoon. Saturday arrived with full summer heat and the kind of humidity that makes you sweat standing still. We went anyway. Picking turned out to be hot, back-breaking work — bent over the bushes, berry by berry, sometimes a lucky cluster at a time, cartons slowly filling while the sun did its worst.
Then we hauled it all back to my friend’s kitchen — in her historic house, which means exactly what you think it means: no air conditioning. Picture that heat, stacked on top of the heat already outside, stacked on top of several extra-large stockpots at a full boil. First, we washed and sanitized every mason jar. Then we washed and cooked down all those plump blueberries with sugar and lemon juice — no added pectin needed, the fruit did the work itself. We filled the jars, fitted the rings and lids, and lowered them back into the boiling water to seal.
Hours of work, start to finish. Sweat equity, literally. But by the end, we had jars and jars of something sweet and fragrant to show for it — gifts for friends and family, and a few jars we allowed ourselves to keep. I don’t remember the heat anymore, not really. I remember the two of us, hot and laughing, surrounded by jam.
Around the House: This Is the Year (Yes, Really)
Something about the weather turning does this to me every year — a burst of energy, a sudden itch to finally do the thing I’ve been talking about doing. This year it’s the closet.
You know the drill: try everything on, keep what fits and what you actually love, pack away the summer pieces, haul out the winter ones and do the whole exercise again. But this time I’m being honest with myself about the “donate” pile. Out goes anything that doesn’t fit me, now — not the me I’ll supposedly be once I lose the 20 pounds I’ve been vowing to lose for longer than I’d like to admit. Out goes anything I don’t even like anymore, the pieces where I look at them and think, “What was I thinking?” And out go the four-inch stiletto pumps — gorgeous things, made your legs look like they went on forever, relics of a shoe phase I’m not even a little ashamed of. These days my guilty pleasure is yarn. Go figure.
I wish shedding those pounds were as simple as clearing a closet shelf. It isn’t, but it’s the next thing on my list, and this time I’ve actually done something about it — I joined the local Y. Partly for the obvious reasons: Zumba, cycling, water aerobics, Pilates, yoga, general fitness classes, all in one place, no excuses about not knowing where to start. But also because it comes with a mahjong group, a knitting group, a handful of volunteer causes I can plug into, all under the same roof. This isn’t about unhappiness — it’s about taking my health into my own hands, doing my part to make sure I’m living my best life, and building the energy for everything else I want to do. And there’s a lot on that list. I don’t love calling it a bucket list — too much end-of-life baggage attached to that phrase for my taste. I prefer to think of it as finally having the time to chase all the things I’ve had a passing wish to try for years: watercolor painting, learning Italian, teaching myself piano well enough to play Christmas carols and a little boogie-woogie just for fun, traveling somewhere I’ve only ever pointed at on a map. Mostly, though, joining the Y gets me out of the house and around new people, and that alone is worth the membership.
Rotating Feature: Nonna’s Tip — Freezer Herb Cubes
Don’t let the last of your herbs go soft and sad in the crisper drawer. This works well beyond dill, basil, and parsley — rosemary, sage, and chives all hold up beautifully too, since they’re the sturdier herbs that are usually cooked into a dish anyway. Mint freezes fine as well, just know it’s better saved for something you’re cooking rather than using raw, since the freeze softens that fresh, bright bite a bit. (Culinary lavender is the one exception here — I haven’t found a reliable answer on how it holds up to this method, so for now I’m keeping mine in the compound butter instead, where I already know it works.)
Finely chop whichever herb you’re using, pack it into an ice cube tray, and cover with a good extra-virgin olive oil. Freeze until solid — a few hours or overnight does it. The oil won’t freeze quite as hard as a plain water cube, which is actually a plus: pop one straight into a hot pan and it melts fast, no waiting around. Once the cubes are frozen solid, pop them out of the tray and transfer them to a labeled freezer bag or container — don’t leave them sitting in the tray, you’ll want that tray back for the next batch. No need to thaw first, just drop a cube straight into whatever you’re cooking. It’s the fastest preservation method in this whole issue, and the one I use the most.
Worth Knowing: The Herb-in-Oil Safety Rule
Here’s something a lot of preserving guides skip over: garlic or fresh herbs stored in oil at room temperature — even in a “pretty” jar on the counter, even in the fridge — can create the exact low-oxygen, moisture-rich environment that Clostridium botulinum needs to grow. It’s rare, but botulism doesn’t announce itself with a bad smell or an off taste, which is what makes it genuinely dangerous rather than just an old wives’ tale.
The fix is simple: any herb-in-oil preparation — those freezer cubes, the compound butters, a marinade you’re not using immediately — needs to go in the freezer, not the pantry. Freezing stops bacterial growth cold, which is exactly why it’s the method I lean on for preserving herbs, rather than the room-temperature infused oils you sometimes see in gift baskets. Pretty jar, real risk — better to freeze it and skip the worry entirely.
Weekend Kitchen Planner
Friday morning: Mix both compound butters (rosemary-garlic, lavender-honey), roll into logs, refrigerate at least 1 hour to firm before dinner
Friday: Bake focaccia; prep and roast salmon with lemon and dill
Saturday morning: Assemble frittata ingredients; get chicken seasoned and into the oven early (longest cook time of the weekend)
Saturday: Simmer tomato basil soup while chicken roasts; toss watermelon-feta-mint salad just before serving so it doesn’t weep
Sunday morning: Bake lavender scones; steep lavender lemonade
Sunday: Cook pasta margherita; sear pork tenderloin; assemble cucumber dill yogurt salad
Any day this week: Chop and freeze herb cubes — no fixed slot needed, good “whenever you have a spare 10 minutes” task
Worth Keeping
“I don’t remember the heat anymore, not really. I remember the two of us, hot and laughing, surrounded by jam.”
Before You Go
Summer’s winding down, and if my patio is any indication, it’s going reluctantly — herbs still going strong, tomatoes still stubbornly green, refusing to let go without a fight. I’ll take it. But the calendar doesn’t care what my tomatoes think, and there’s a lot on the horizon: seasonal projects, indoor and out, plans for the months ahead, and yes, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas all queuing up faster than any of us would like. I’ll admit it: the way retailers start pushing the holidays earlier every year bothers me. But like it or not, that’s the reality we’re planning around, and the truth is, good celebrations take lead time.
So here’s my invitation for this season: make a plan. Get it down on paper — not in your head, not “I’ll remember” — actual paper, an actual list. There’s real satisfaction in crossing off a completed item, and even more in reaching December with room to breathe instead of running on fumes. My goal this year isn’t to do less. It’s to do it all without the physical and emotional stress that usually comes bundled with this time of year — and to leave plenty of room to actually celebrate with the people I love.
See you next Friday. Bring your appetite.
— The Jersey Nonna