Adventures with Tomatoes

Once again we managed to be busy, busy, BUSY during the peak of tomato season. This means several pounds have sadly gone to mush on the vine, but earlier this week I went out and picked pounds and pounds. I've been hearing all about people drying them in the oven ("sun dried" for Portland) and thought I'd give it a whirl.

Several of the "Roman Candle" paste-type tomatoes sliced into quarter wedges (the long yellow ones) along with the larger cherry types and some small plum types.

A whole roasting pan full of cherry and grape type tomatoes cut in half and put face down.

Hours and hours and HOURS later the yield: 3 cups of dried tomatoes.

The verdict: I think the oven is very inefficient for dehydrating food. We've been pondering an Excalibur model and this experiment has moved it up in priority a bit. This project took over the oven for quite a while and it would be preferable to be able to turn on a dehydrator and let it run.

Balsamic Tempeh & Quinoa

More Food Porn - really, this is just my way of gloating about something delicious I made so I can figure out the recipe later. Is that obvious?

Tonight was a discussion at the Dharma Center and we include some potluck food to share for our dinner. I've been trying to make something fairly hearty so we don't end up feeling hungry during meditation afterward. Plus if no one else remembers to bring anything vegan Christie and I have something for us.

She made chocolate chip cookies earlier today. I was in charge of "dinner".

First was to chop up all the cucumbers in the fridge and add in some vinegar. This was really was to get them out of the fridge to make way for the 1 "boothy blonde", 1 suyo, and 7 lemon cucumbers that Chrsitie picked yesterday!

For the real meal I thought of using the last of the leftover red qunioa. In the afternoon I grilled up all the summer squash from the garden on the cast iron, let it cool and diced it up. In went thinly chopped up Italian parsley and the last of the slightly limp looking basil.

I sauteed half a sweet onion and diced tempeh, added a little red bell pepper, and when that was all fried up nicely I roughly chopped up a large, over-ripe, heirloom tomato the neighbor had brought over yesterday. This immediately turned into a thin sauce coating the temepeh. All of this went right into the qunioa, squash and herbs.

For a dressing some balsamic and white wine vinegars whisked up with raw tahini, rice milk, and a little whole-grain mustard.

When the Garden Gets Going...

...the Going Cook Creative.

Uh, yeah. Or something like that.

This week I've made gaspacho and tonight something I've dubbed "tabouli-esque" in response to the ever increasing amount of produce coming out of the back yard garden. Tonight I forced cucumbers on the neighbor and sliced up about 2 quarts worth of them to put into rice vinegar before they got all mushy.

I haven't even been able to deal with what's in the fridge and Christie asked me, "Did you go pick some more?"

The gaspacho involved a quart of veggie juice, about a half cup of little pieces of all the cherry & grape type tomatoes that are going crazy, 1 long cucumber ("Suyo", a fave of mine), 2 cloves of garlic, 2 stalks of celery, half a red bell pepper, some sweet onion, white wine vinegar, sea salt, pepper, and olive oil.

Then I forgot that it is a Spanish dish, or ignored it because the basil in the fridge was wilting, and tossed in about 1/3 cup basil cut into thin ribbons (chiffonade). I thought it was awesome and then recalled the whole Spanish Dish thing and decided to garnish with smoked parprika. Wow, was this good!

Tonight's dish involved more tomatoes and was topped by the cucumbers I chopped up then put into seasoned rice vinegar. I had leftover red quinoa and decided to try that out in place of bulghur wheat for tabouli. I had a lemon and some Italian parsley on hand in addition to the tomatoes, so it seemed perfect. To make it even a little more hearty & filling for dinner I cooked up some green lentils and tossed those in there as well (which reminds me of an Ethiopian dish that reminds me of tabouli with brown lentils in place of bulgher).

Kind of went a little off the track with the tabouli, aside from the quinoa & lentils, and added a little balsamic vinegar to the mix in addition to the lemon juice, sea salt & black pepper. Sliced up the remaining grilled summer squash from last night (also from garden) and topped it with some diced avocado (because there was some of that leftover too).

The garden's been pretty exciting this year. I suspect this is the first of many posts about creative dishes. We're a little scared of all the winter squash looming at the back of the garden, trying to push the fence down. Be prepared for all kinds of creativity around that crop! Types of winter squash planted: spaghetti, delicata, sweet dumpling, and hubbard. We may also get a watermelon and will have a few cantalope too!

I'll write down the actual recipes and post... sometime this month, maybe (lots of travel).

Christie's Quick Late Summer Veggie Pasta

Yummy!  I should let her post about it!  Lots of Trader Joe's stuff in tonight's dinner!    I believe everything came from TJ's unless it came from the garden.

We had sprouted wheat parpadalle pasta tossed with some artichoke antipasto stuff, topped with a Middle Eastern zucchini from our garden sauteed with garlic paste, spinach, and lemon juice.  Add some diced tomatoes from the garden and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and that's dinner!

Dinner was very quick, hence Christie's name for the dish, and a lovely way to appreciate more of the tasty things we planted this summer.  I especially enjoyed her use of "quick" and "late" following one another in the dish name.