Ingredients:
3 cups halved various heirloom cherry tomatoes
1/4 of 1 red onion, thinly sliced
2 tablespoon nonpareil capers
5 sprigs’ worth of leaves from bush basil*
1 clove garlic, minced
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

Directions:
Toss together the tomatoes and onion in a medium bowl. Set aside. Whisk together the capers, basil, garlic, vinegar, oil, salt and pepper. Pour over the tomatoes. Marinate for at least 2 hours prior to serving.

*or about 3 tablespoons minced basil

My thoughts:

Tomatoes are my favorite vegetable (fruit!) but I refuse to eat them out of season so when summer comes, I gorge. Tomatoes on everything! I have a bunch of tomatoes I could tell were about a day from being too soft to eat so I made something that would take advantage of their soft ripeness: marinated tomatoes! Not quite a pickle, but not quite as salad either, marinated tomatoes are perfect as is or on toasted bread to sop up their juices. The tomatoes release a lot of liquid as they marinate so take care to toss them before you serve. You don’t want to miss out on any of their savory goodness!

I used some bush basil from our garden (If you haven’t tried it, it is great! It tastes a lot like regular basil but with tiny, thyme-like leaves.) but regular basil would work fine. Don’t skip the capers though, they add the perfect pickle punch.