Since I have the very nice wood pellet grill and a counter full of tomatoes, I decided it was time to do some roasting.
I chose fire roasting over smoking because I was looking for the sweet/charred flavor vs. smoky. Smoking is at a lower temperature for a longer time. Worth the time if you want a deep smoke flavor.
For fire roasting: Continue reading
Around here this cucumber and tomato salad with sweet onions is almost always in the fridge. I added some blanched broccoli to this batch as a change of pace. It’s in a simple vinaigrette of seasoned rice vinegar and oil with a sprinkle of garlic powder, onion powder, and thyme.
We’re trying to do a vegetarian night a few times a week. This was one of my favorite creations.
Creole Vegetables with Black Beans and Rice
The green tomato relish has been a huge success! Yay!
Chunky tuna salad sammich on white toast with a side of tomatoes in vinaigrette with fresh thyme.
We stripped all the tomatoes from the vines in the back garden and pulled them from the ground so there won’t be any more fresh tomatoes coming on. What was on the bush yesterday is what we have. I’m going to make some green tomato relish today,
Pasta photo by JeffreyW
Pasta w/Spinach Cheese Marinara Sauce:
2 saucepans
Bring water for pasta to a boil in large saucepan, add pasta and cook according to directions to al dente.
Meanwhile, heat oil in the other saucepan; sauté onions, mushrooms & peppers until onions are golden. Add remaining ingredients (except pasta) bring to a low boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to med-low, cover and let simmer until pasta is done cooking. As the pasta finishes up, add a ladle or two of pasta water to the sauce.
Drain pasta well and toss together with sauce. Serve with additional Parmesan & Romano cheeses if desired.
*you can freeze the remainder in an ice-cube tray and store in a freezer bag.
This poor thing was brought in with two broken legs, the one appears to be less of a problem than the other, going strictly by the casts. I have no other info but he is in good hands at St Francis.
Made some mayo from scratch. The other day I roasted a bunch of garlic cloves in olive oil and used a 1/4 c of that oil in this. The recipe for the basic mayo is easy – put an egg with 1/4 c oil in the bowl of a processor, add a pinch of salt and 1/4 tsp of dry mustard and give it a spin. Start drizzling in more oil until you’ve used about a cup, total, or until it gets to the consistency you are going for. I added canola oil for the drizzle. This turned out very garlicky.
I used it on this sammich – very good! I assembled it after the photo, and went sans lettuce. That’s more of my maple pepper bacon. Yum!
Now here comes Bitsy, slowly, a step at a time. Head on a swivel, looking for threats. She finally made it all of the way in. Yay!
This was Taco Tuesday for us. I’m torn between piling on the goodies or going sparingly with them for a better picture. These white corn tortillas are smeared with refried beans, layered with smoked pork, cheddar, shredded cabbage, and pico de gallo.
This looks like a short loaf of banana bread but it’s actually made with figs. We had a fairly good batch we weren’t quite sure what to do with.
I quartered them and stuck them in the dehydrator overnight – too long, alas. They were barely pliable and too tough. We dropped them into a stout blender and whirled them with water to break them up. The result looked much like bananas that had been pureed so they went into a banana bread recipe.
This is one of those soups that come from what I think of as a “bottomless” soup pot – I keep adding to it as we eat out of it. Those diced potatoes were not in there yesterday and I added more carrots. The beef will get scarce after a few iterations, but right now there’s still plenty.
I’ll wind this up with another shelter kitteh. This one looks like our own Ginger Boy.
We are down to one tomato bush, it had a dozen or so ripe tomatoes when I looked yesterday, and there were enough poblanos to make it worth roasting them for a nice rotel copycat recipe. I chopped several small sweet onions, the roasted green chilies, and a couple of jalapenos and added them to the tomatoes to simmer for a while. 
I had enough for six pints. This stuff is great for chili or mixing in with cheese for a nice dip. There are a bazillion recipes for soups that include it – just plug rotel and soup into your search engine, rev it up, and pop the clutch.
