Friday, August 24, 2007

Tom-ay-to, Tom-at-o...

Either way you say it, it's great having a whole pile from the backyard garden!



I made a whole whack of stuff - first, I made Black Bean Ratatouille with Red Sauce from Tracy's copy of 150 Vegan Favourites by Jay Solomon. The recipe called for canned tomatoes, but I just used fresh instead since I had many on hand:



Next, I made a twist on my favourite Panzanella from the normally butter-laden recipe-making Martha Stewart. I added in black beans for protein and was out of fresh basil, but it still tasted great with dried basil. I love how the bread (in my case, I toasted it first to make it drier) soaks up the marinade. It was great served with fresh corn with a new topping that Kyle's dad suggested - soy sauce and lime. I didn't have any lime, so we tried it with lemon instead, and it was a great alternative to Earth Balance. Although it didn't really 'stick' to the corn, I didn't mind rolling the cob around on my plate after each row, as the eaten row sucked up the flavour!



With loads of juicy tomatoes still leftover, I made a tasty homemade spaghetti sauce...with a side of garlic bread! I sprinkled some fresh rosemary on the bread before broiling to add more flavour.



Finally, completely unrelated to tomatoes, I made a Blueberry Bake from Loblaws' site using Earth Balance and Sucanat to replace margarine and brown sugar. It was great, although I have now learned to check boxes of cereal that I save for a couple of months for recipe making - the box was infested with revolting little brown beetles! I was so grossed out, especially when at first they looked like flax seeds...but I quickly realized that flax seeds don't crawl! In case you're wondering, I used a fresh box of cereal for this recipe, so this pic is beetle-free. It was so vile and I feel so dirty! To anyone reading this who will actually eat food that I have prepared - I can assure you that my kitchen is not infested and unsanitary!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

the food looks great, those tomatos looks perfect!

Anonymous said...

I love tomato season. They're so great just sprinkled with a little salt and a few drops of oilve oil, or on toasted bread with some garlic. Yum!

Judy said...

While cleaning out my kitchen recently, I came across a box of Red River cereal...so old I can't even remember buying it! With all those little seeds, who would even know if it had bugs? Into the trash it went!

Love the tomato recipes - the very best thing to come out of a garden!

Tofu Mom (AKA Tofu-n-Sprouts) said...

Ahhh... bugs in cereal. I can so relate!

I just freaked myself out and went on a huge cleaning spree in my cupboards... I thought I'd discovered mouse droppings... eeewww... but it turned out to be a bag of black rice that had spilled. Whew!

Anonymous said...

Did you like the Black Bean Ratatouille with Red Sauce? I haven't tried that recipe but it's been earmarked for a long time.

I'm sorry about the bugs. That kind of thing really creeps me out. Ugh! I try to keep everything in air tight containers but I ran out of them so I have a lot of stuff stored in my already over-filled refrigerator.

Unknown said...

Judy - one of my boxes that I threw out was Red River, and I too had no idea how long I had it! That was probably what contributed to the infestation!

VV - I should have written that I like the recipe - it's not too complicated and tastes pretty darn good. I've made it about a dozen times. You should try it!