As I mentioned in my last post posted a few weeks ago (Ow!), one of my favorite summer foods is fresh tomatoes right off the field, and one of my favorite ways to have those fresh tomatoes is sliced and topped with fresh basil, mozzarella chcese, a shot of olive oil, a good shot of balsamic vinegar, and a good crunch of freshly ground black pepper (or chopped fresh jalapeños – yah!). Terrific!

Here’s a slight twist on that combination made with what you see below: heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil, feta cheese and more. Regarding the tomatoes, you don’t have to use heirloom tomatoes, like the big yellow one you see here, to make this. Any tomatoes will work fine. If you’re curious about heirloom tomatoes – I was when I first learned about them, there’s a brief About Heirloom Tomatoes write up just a few lines below that I got from heirloomtomatoplants.com.Click any picture on this page for a complete, easy-to-follow step-by-step heirloom tomato, fresh basil and mozzarella cheese picture book recipe.

About Heirloom Tomatoes

According to (and copied from) heirloomtomatoplants.com, which had about the simplest and best definition I could find, heirloom tomatoes fall into the following four categories.

1. The commercial heirloom tomato. Open pollinated tomato varieties more than 40 years old, introduced by seed companies before 1960. (“Open pollination” is pollination by natural mechanisms: wind, insects, birds & other as opposed to self-pollination.)
2. The family heirloom tomato.  Favorite tomato varieties whose seeds have been  saved and passed down from generation to generation.
3. The created heirloom tomato.  A tomato that’s been crossed deliberately using two heirlooms, or an heirloom and a hybrid, to have certain characteristics. Initially a hybrid, it becomes dehybridized through saving and replanting the seeds for about 5 seasons, until it grows consistently true to what the grower has in mind.
4. The mystery heirloom tomato.  A tomato which arises accidentally from natural cross-pollination or mutation in the garden. This is the way most heirloom varieties originated.

To see more pictures of the tomatoes described above, just click this link to heirloomtomatoplants.com.