Super-simple, ridiculously yummy baked tomatoes

Today for a lil TV news cooking demo we did on WLTX, one of my fellow tomato festival planners, Ryan Nevius of Sustainable Midlands, passed along her grandmother's ridiculously easy, amazingly delicious recipes for baked half tomatoes, topped with parmesan, garlic, salt + pepper, breadcrumbs and a pat of butter. 350/400 degrees, 30-40 min til brown.

OMG.

I think I just inhaled my dinner. So good.

The tomatoes? Plump, red, heat- and disease-resistant Amelia tomatoes from Richland County and gorgeous "Eva's Purple Ball" heirlooms from Cross Farms via Rosewood Market, where Kevin (who runs the produce dept) tells me that the variety is originally from the Black Forest of Germany.

He told me that Eva's Purple Ball tomatoes are also remarkably resistant to wilt, disease, fungi, and the scorching Carolina heat that has killed off many a home gardener's tomato crop, including most of mine. (Except some of my Supersweet 100 cherry tomatoes, my Paul Robesons, and a few intrepid others which shall remain nameless til they start putting out again!)

Bonus: If you're only doing a couple of tomato halves, you can pull this off in the toaster oven! Important for hot summer weather and not heating up your kitchen unnecessarily. 

SQUASH UPDATE: Yeah, all my squash plants are dead, except for *one* surgeried black zucchini that is all dead and sad except for a few hopeful little sprouties. Ah, we'll see. Oh well!

Oh, and about that Tasty Tomato Festival:

Half-price advance tix here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/118638

Big ups to the very stylish local design/print studio, The Half and Half, who took time from a rush job (custom designing and printing a huge order of posters for the Dave Matthews Band) to design this sucker! Thomas Jennings, the designer tapped by studio owners Nick Wilson and Sara Thomas to do the job, is also a chef at one of the absolute best restaurants in SC, the new Southern mainstay, Mr. Friendly's Cafe.

In fact, the owner of Mr. Friendly's, Solstice Kitchen and Cellar on Greene, Chef Ricky Mollohan, is going to be one of the celeb judges at the festival!

WORD UP, Y'ALL!