Garden fresh tomatoes, black beans, and bacon swim in deliciousness in this tasty summer marinated salad.

Marinated Black Bean and Tomato Salad

By Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime

This is one of those kind of things that gets thrown together when there are lots of garden tomatoes sitting around. While normally I might put up some marinara sauce in jars, I have been cutting back on pasta overall, at least until I take a few more pounds off.

An overabundance of love and tomatoes…

When  I was growing up, Mom’s favorite thing was just doing slicer tomatoes on a plate with lots of raw veggies- usually whichever ones she grabbed out in the garden with tomatoes.  My thing is doing a marinated salad. I like keeping one in the fridge at all times if I can during the summer. Cukes and onions are the obvious first choice, then a number of other things, like bean salad, mac salad, potato salad.

So this one  is sort of a weird love child between a tomato-cuke salad and a bean salad, just to change things up. And get rid of some of those tomatoes, which as I speak, another huge bowl is in the kitchen waiting for me, along with a boatload of peppers. The peppers have done very well this year and take the prize for production, along with a Thai  basil  plant that thinks it is a tree.

 

Looking forward to future tomatoes…

I wish I had grown more pepper varieties, but you know it is hard to tell in advance which ones are going to shine. My snap peas were horrible this year. And my eggplant were small and mostly unproductive.  I blame it on the weather. But as summer is winding down,  there is no use crying about it. Just plan for next year. As far as tomatoes go, I am not going for the “Early Girl” and “Early Boy” tomatoes (I wanted them  for the shorter time to harvest) especially after the heirloom tomatoes beat them by a long shot. I do love the flavor of heirloom tomatoes, if not their weird shapes. Last year I had cherry tomatoes that did remarkably well, but I felt overrun. I kind of wish I had one of those plants. Next year. Yep.

Retro touches…

You might notice some Catalina dressing in this which is a retro move for tomato salads, but one I like. I prefer a homemade dressing, but until I can get that recipe up, you can use bottled, or perhaps find another recipe for it somewhere. I think there are ten billion  online already.

~s