Tomato's ---Using the whole plant

In a few days I'll try to dredge up my thread from last year about the uses of the Green Tomato and the recipe for the famous Green Tomato Cake! But, I came across this today from the NY Times.

“I started using the tomato leaves to punch up the flavor of my quick tomato sauces at Chez Panisse around 1987,” Mr. Bertolli recently explained in an e-mail message. “I found them very effective in offering up that just-picked, viney, tomato taste.”

:wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow:

So it seems like that commonly held belief that the leaves of the tomato are deadly is just wrong. We really can add a few leaves of the tomato plant to our basil when me make Pesto! Just not too many! I am so gonna try this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/dining/29curi.html?_r=2&hpw=&pagewanted=all

but I can see how one or two leaves in a tired tomato sauce can pick up the flavor.

Ripe tomatoes still contain solanine, the poisonous chemical in the leaves and stems. Enough of it will be fatal, but it's difficult to eat that many tomatoes. Wilting the leaves and eating them as a vegetable might make a person pretty sick.

and I don't know what to do with em.


:hi:


Adding tomato leaves to pesto - cool idea, as well!