Easy Summer Pasta Recipe: Linguine or Bowties with Cherry Tomatoes, Fresh Basil, and Sun Dried Tomato Artichoke Pesto

A simple and delicious way to celebrate summer's bounty (recipe here)

Despite planting several different varieties at several different times, this isn't turning out to be The Year of the Tomato in my kitchen garden.

At least I have the ravenous, tomato loving blister beetles under control, thanks to my trusty food grade diatomaceous earth. (You can read more about the many ways we use this wonderful stuff—which is 100% organic and totally safe for people, pets, and the environment—around the farm, house, and garden here.)

My beloved Arkansas Traveler tomatoes are finally starting to ripen, and I'm hopeful that the first sorry specimens are just a fluke, and this heat and humidity tolerant, crack and disease resistant pink heirloom will perform as well as it has in previous years. (I list more of my favorite heirloom tomatoes to grow here.)

In the meantime, the three volunteer cherry tomato plants I allowed to stay in my new little perennial bed now cover over 100 square feet of garden space (I think the perennials are still in there somewhere), and I've been picking lots of tiny red, pink, and orange tomatoes every day.

Sometimes I think we'd starve if it weren't for the volunteer vegetables.

The gazpacho and homemade tomato vegetable juice I've been craving all summer will have to wait, and I don't think I'll be needing my Seven Second Tomato Glut Solution anytime soon.

But the basil is also going gangbusters, which means it's time to feast on Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes, Fresh Basil, and Sun Dried Tomato & Artichoke Pesto!

Adding fresh tomatoes to the pesto made it even better (recipe here)

Two summers ago I discovered this dish and lived on it for most of a month. I even ate it for breakfast. While mixing up the third or fourth batch of  quick and easy pesto, I took a cue from my favorite basil pesto recipe and added some fresh tomatoes to the mix. Yum. This version is a little thinner than the original, with more tomato flavor and fewer calories.

Both versions, which also taste great spread on hunks of crusty bread (either plain or mixed with cream cheese and more romano), are hard to stop eating.

Are there cherry tomatoes in your garden this year? What's your favorite way to enjoy them?

© FarmgirlFare.com, getting redder and riper all the time.

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