Summer Bruschetta (with recipe)

We love summer!  Fresh fruits and vegetables are available everywhere you look and organic produce is so easy to come by locally!

If you've never made bruschetta ... it's sort of like the Italian version of chips and salsa!  So of course, Jen is a huge fan.  Chips and salsa is a must-have staple in the Brownifer household!

We're still working on using up leftovers from our Cuban Sandwiches so instead of using pita chips for a quick and easy bruschetta fix, we toasted some of our leftover Cuban Hoagies to make this one.  Normal we'll buy a baguette and slice it, but we work with what we've got!  Whatever bread you have, I guarantee it will work.

Ingredients:

• 3-4 Heirloom tomatoes - the more colors, the more fun!
• 2/3 Cup chopped fresh basil
• 2/3 Cup chopped onion (as fine as you like)
• 5-6 cloves garlic, minced (however much you like - we go crazy with garlic)
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• Sliced bread for toasting
• Olive Oil
• Garlic Powder

Directions:

• Mix tomatoes, onion, basil, garlic in a bowl and salt/pepper to taste
• Let mixture sit for 30 minutes or so for flavors to combine, stirring periodically
• Slice bread and place on a cookie sheet, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with garlic powder
• Put bread in the broiler or oven until crisp and browned to your liking
• Spoon tomato mixture onto bread and serve!

Brownie likes to sprinkle his bruschetta with romano or parmesan cheese - I prefer it light and fresh.  You can vary this recipe in so many ways, its a fun one to play with and a simple side to so many summer dishes! 

Garden Veggies over Rice

Brownie likes to create beautiful food and play with flavors.  I tend to be more practical and rely on the foods I grew up eating.  I have a deep love for zucchini and this week, we had THREE zucchini ripen in the garden.  Two yellow and one green.  We also had two beautiful tomatoes ready to eat.  So tonight, I took over dinner duty.  

Now, when I cook, you can bet it's going to be something simple.  Every time my mother and I went to a potluck of any kind, my vegetarian mother would bring this dish with us and people would absolutely devour it.  It was one of the first things she taught me to cook as a teenager.  I still love it.

So in the spirit of sharing actual recipes, I will write down what I used and how I put this together.

Ingredients:

• 3 Medium Zucchini (or a mix of zucchini and yellow squash)
• 1 Large Scallion (Or onion, whatever is on hand)
• 3 Medium-to-large Tomatoes
• Basil (dried or fresh - either way)
• Garlic
• Salt
• Olive Oil
• Cooked Rice

Direcitons:

• I cook rice ahead of time and when my rice cooker beeps, I start the veggies and let the rice warm.
• Heat olive oil in a saute pan and begin cooking Scallion and freshly minced garlic - whatever your tastes are!  I use a LOT of garlic, we love the flavor.
• Chop Zucchini to desired size and put in the pan with garlic and scallion.
• Toss and add salt to taste
• Chop fresh basil and tomatoes while you're waiting for the zucchini to soften.
• Stir your zucchini or toss it in the pan every so often - don't neglect it or it will cook unevenly.
• If you're using dried basil, add it at this point so it has time to re-hydrate
• When they start to soften, I throw in the fresh basil and toss with veggies.
• When they're the texture you prefer, turn the heat off and stir in your chopped tomatoes so they can warm with everything else.  You don't want to COOK the tomatoes, just warm them.
• Scoop some rice into a bowl and add veggies on top!

You'll notice your veggies are a bit watery in the bottom of the pan - that juicy goodness is DIVINE scooped over your rice!  I love to eat this all stirred together in a big mashy mess - it's perfection!

This time around, I decided to use some of our freshly harvested Nasturtium leaves as well.  They have a peppery, radish-y flavor that I wanted to play with.  I didn't really use enough to flavor much, but when I got some in a bite, I could definitely tell they were there and they were a nice addition.  Not always available, but if you want to try them ... it does work with this recipe pretty well.

Enjoy the summer veggies while they last!  As usual, if you try this and put your own spin on it, we'd love to see what you come up with!  Come back and post pictures for us! :-)

Baby Tomatoes!

Our tomato plants have baby tomatoes!  And so it begins ..... our imaginations are already running wild with how to use them, what to can, what to make ..... the possibilities are endless!!!!!

Homemade Marinara

We spent a very long day making this marinara!  We got 30 lbs of tomatoes from a local farm and threw in our latest garden harvest for measure.  We kept it simple:  tomatoes, basil, onions, garlic and a little salt.

We cooked it down for 2 1/2 hours and after trying it on an omelette this morning ... I think that may have been a bit too long.  Next year, I want to leave more of the juices in the marinara when we can.  But the flavor?  You won't find ANYTHING in a jar on the grocery store shelf that is even CLOSE to this sauce.

I can't recommend making and canning your own enough!  We will make so many delicious things with this!  We got 9 quarts .... I'm thinking we better double that (at least) next year!

Canned Tomatoes

Gorgeous tomatoes out of the garden, waiting to be canned!

Being a Foodie is always about quality ingredients in our opinion.  We grow tomatoes, we can the tomatoes.  They're delicious straight out of the jar over pasta in the fall and winter and they are the perfect base for sauces when we want to make Italian food!

If you don't have a garden or you don't produce enough in your garden to can in jars, I suggest finding a local farm or market selling tomatoes by the pound and getting 30 - 60 lbs and canning them!  You won't regret it.  In fact, you may become dependent on them and panic if you run out of jars.  No need for a pressure canner, these babies use a simple water bath.

Home Canned Tomatoes, cooling.

For the record:  no, this really wasn't enough jars for this past winter :-)  We'll be doing more this year!

Tomatoes Four Ways

I love summer!  I especially love the fresh tomatoes!  I love planting them, growing them, canning them, and eating them!  We are blessed with an abundance from our garden right now with not quite enough to can yet, so ... we're playing with them and having a night of tomato appetizers! 

I'll start with my favorite:  Tomatoes and Cottage Cheese.  I ate this simple pairing my entire childhood and it's still one of my favorite summer comfort foods! If you've never had it:  try it!  You'll love it, I'm sure.  Brownie drizzled balsamic on these but .... I like mine plain.  No salt, no pepper, no drizzle. Just creamy cottage cheese and fresh sliced tomatoes!

Caprese salad is also one of our favorites around here.  My daughter as a chocolate cherry tomato plant that is going insane with fruit!  So I picked up some mozzarella and we made a different version of this delicious salad:  Cherry Tomato Caprese Salad! Delicious!  I think I still prefer the classic, but this was a fun creative way to change things up!

We put two of our other favorites on one plate because we were running out of room :-)  I like to buy Willamette Valley Cheese Co. Creamy Havarti and melt it over fresh sliced heirloom tomatoes .... it's divine!  Again, the drizzle made it too sweet for me but Brownie loved it.

And of course, Heirloom Bruschetta!  Brownie likes to melt cheese over his bruschetta, but it looks like I won today and got nice and fresh!  Tomato heaven!