saying goodbye to the tomatoes

Today I made this picture for a local autumn-leaf themed photo contest. My arrangement of the leaves was inspired by an "art experiment" I recently took part in for one of my fellow grad students. I decided to do tomato leaves because I figured that everyone else in the contest would send in pretty pictures of orange and red and yellow leaves (and I also figured there would not be many staged photos like this). This fall for me has been much more centered around my garden (although I appreciate the changing leaves too). Last year I did not get to enjoy my garden in fall, because I moved away from it at the beginning of September. This is my first time to have fall tomatoes, and I wanted to show the transformation of the tomato leaves. I am feeling a resistance to let the garden die, as that means winter is on its way, and I just don't feel quite ready for snow and cold yet.

creamed chard, recipe searching, and paper sacks

This is the fourth new recipe I've tried this week, and I still have a few days left. You might be rolling your eyes and asking, "Does she find recipes anywhere else!?" when I say, it's from Smitten Kitchen. The answer to that would be...it's where I look first, and often I have no reason to look elsewhere. It's just that, the Smitten Kitchen recipes seem to coincide with the groceries I already have, while other recipe sources seem to insist on a trip to the store just for one recipe.

No matter. Yesterday, I decided to make creamed chard and onions and serve it over spaghetti. The original recipe called for actual cream. I used plain soy milk (unsweetened would have been better) and it worked out fine. The good news is that I was able to find a use for some of the swiss chard in the garden (my plan when I sought out a recipe to make), which is quickly approaching the size of elephant ears. It was so easy to grow, and it's beautiful, and everyone tells me how versatile it is, but help, I just don't know what to do with it! I throw a few leaves in stir fries here and there, but other than that, I'm lost.

Here is everything cooking on my tiny stove. One pot was to soften the chard. A skillet to make the roux (butter + flour--I used Earth Balance) and toast the onions and garlic. And finally, a pot of spaghetti. The dish was simple and delicious.

Okay, so let's talk recipes some more. I've been bookmarking recipes like mad lately and not all are from Smitten Kitchen (but the ones that are will be amazing!). Let me share what I've found:

Pinterest - I think most internet-savvy people have heard of Pinterest by now, but basically users "pin" things they find on the internet to different categories, and people "re-pin" things they like. You can search for a particular ingredient or dish, or use broad categories. Searching "vegan" seems to bring up a lot of things.

Food Gawker - I hadn't heard of this until yesterday. If you like to photograph things you cook, you can submit pictures that link to recipes, and possibly get published here. They do reject a lot of photos, so the ones that make it are really top notch. It seems helpful for finding recipes and I would love to try to be published there.

Tastespotter - Same as above. There seem to be more vegetarian recipes here, but it could just be what is up right now.

Healthy Happy Life - A favorite new find, this food blog features all vegan recipes and beautiful photographs. I've bookmarked quite a few things here to make ASAP.

Finally, I leave you with this. These are all the green tomatoes I had to cut off of the tomato plants last weekend because of damage to a few branches. I put them all in a brown paper sack, closed it up, and forgot about it for a few days. One has turned red and a few more are on their way (some might be too under ripe to ever turn red)! The ethylene gas that they naturally give off helps them turn red faster when trapped in the bag.

panzanella - a tasty use for stale bread

I can't believe that after having lived in Florence, Italy, for almost three months, I did not know what a panzanella salad was! Apparently, it is a Florentine specialty. At any rate, I now know how to make it, thanks to Shari over at Tend. Tend is a collective blog of five ladies who love gardening. I have learned a lot from reading it regularly and I never grow tired of seeing beautiful photographs of others' gardens!

Panzanella is a lettuce-free salad which features stale bread, tomatoes, and a vinaigrette. Shari's recipe was this traditional version (some scoff at adding other ingredients--not surprising given Italian food customs, but humorous given the fact that this salad was invented before tomatoes were introduced to Italy), but I had some other veggies in the fridge to use up so I got a little inspiration from Smitten Kitchen and added bell pepper, onion, and cucumber to mine.

The results were delicious, of course! Do yourself a favor and make a panzanella with some leftover bread and fresh summer vegetables.

the most wonderful time of the gardening year

My apologies to anyone reading who doesn't share my love for tomatoes...I promise I will post about something else soon! It's just so exciting that they are finally ripening.

I bought a miniature vintage postage scale for 30 cents a few months ago to weigh my produce on! I thought it would be a fun stat to make a record of. This tomato was five ounces and ended up on a pizza inspired by this Smitten Kitchen recipe.

Here is this morning's tomato harvest. We had to pick a lot of green tomatoes because we are still finding branches that were damaged in some storms we had a few weeks back. The damage on some branches remained unnoticeable until the tomatoes started weighing them down. I think we'll fry some of these, and try to let the rest ripen. I believe I was just too impatient before.

Today I'd like to use a couple of the ripe ones to make this eggplant, zucchini, and tomato tian. This recipe is layered and baked like lasagna, but the layers are slices of the vegetables + bread crumbs and parmesan (will probably use nutritional yeast) and vegetable broth.

photo shoot with the ugliest tomato

Seven tomatoes ripening in various shades of red--

Of course this one would be the first to finish,

Because I wanted to photograph the occasion

Of the first big tomato of summer.

My tastebuds would not discriminate, so neither would I,
And that is why I had a photo shoot with the ugliest tomato.

green tomatoes

What's a girl to do when she finds herself with a stockpile of these when all she really wants is a tomato sandwich? Because of a handful of storms over the past two weeks, we've had to prune back the tomato plants more than usual. There is still an impressive crop beginning to ripen on the vines, but a few branches were severed from the heavy wind and had to be removed, resulting in a bowl full of unripened tomatoes. I tried putting them in a brown paper sack to ripen them, but they were not mature enough when they were picked, I suppose, because after five days there was no progress.

I've been looking for ways to use them. Of course, they can be fried. Or pickled. Both of those sound tasty, but I wanted something a little simpler, so I decided to make a green salsa. I was worried that maybe they weren't mature enough to use for anything at all, but the salsa tastes great.


Here it is. I came up with it based on what was available in the garden and fridge. It has a tangy flavor with a hint of mint and lime in the aftertaste, sort of like a certain chutney I particularly like, but don't know the name of (I've heard it called mint chutney as well as cilantro chutney...perhaps those are two different things...I've been unable to locate the right recipe).

5 small green tomatoes
10 mint leaves (I used lime mint)
generous pinch of cilantro leaves
3-4 small chard leaves
1 slice of onion, chopped
1/2 Tbsp cumin
2 Tbsp liquid from a jar of jalapenos, + 5 jalapeno slices
1 tsp lime juice
1/2 tsp minced garlic or garlic powder

Chop the tomatoes into small pieces. Throw them along with everything else into a blender or food processor, and blend until smooth. This could be tweaked in a number of ways. Salsa is easy to adapt to your liking!

this week in the garden: tomatoes

My dad & me in my family's garden, circa 1991-ish.

For this week's garden tour, I decided to divide my post in half and focus one part entirely on tomatoes. Since that first picture was taken, and even before, I have had a love for tomatoes. I remember going in the backyard with my parents and eating cherry tomatoes right off the vine. Lovely!

For me, my spring/summer garden would not be complete without tomato plants. This year Corey and I have ten of them in one of our square foot gardens! There is one brandywine, two yellow pear, one white cherry, one red delicious, one pineapple, one Cherokee purple, one German striped, one I am forgetting momentarily, and one unknown variety (I like a good mystery--and it was given to us, unlabeled, by Corey's boss).

I love going out in the backyard and looking for new tiny, green tomatoes! There are so many flowers. I watch them each day, trying to calculate when a tomato will appear. I love finding tomatoes growing in little corners I had not noticed before. Having ten plants in such a small space requires a lot of pruning, and even then, I refer to it as the "tomato forest"! I think next year we will try more determinate varieties, since they stay a little smaller.

I find them so beautiful, and I love the aroma of tomato leaves, even if they are poisonous to eat.

To celebrate my Southern roots, I think a good tomato sandwich will be in order once these tomatoes ripen. Everyone here seems to think that tomato sandwiches sound awful, but I think they taste heavenly. My grandmother and mother always make them on warm biscuits, with mayonnaise, a pinch of salt, and several thin slices of fresh tomato. I think I'll try them with the biscuit recipe from the Chicago Diner vegetarian cookbook (my new favorite biscuit), and some vegenaise.

I also love making homemade salsa and other tomato sauces, and cooking them up in a spicy chana masala, as well as all of those other delicious things which require tomatoes. That's not to mention that they are amazing raw on salads and sandwiches and in pasta salad and just by themselves! I can't wait for these tomatoes to ripen. In the meantime, share with me your favorite tomato recipes, please?

tomato ceci bread

Today I found myself getting really ambitious after looking for a recipe for tomato bread and finding nothing that appealed to me. Instead of giving up and making my usual loaf of tried and true wheat (delicious in its own right), I decided to step out on a limb and heavily modify that recipe to suit my tastes. The results are terrific! I changed up the recipe so much (the Betty Crocker wheat bread one) that I felt I had to rename it for this variety...and so I deemed it Tomato Ceci Bread (ceci is Italian for chickpea, and this bread has many Italian flavors in it).

Tomato Ceci Bread
5 oz tomato sauce (I used canned--smooth, no chunks)
4 oz water
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp soy milk (regular milk is fine too)
1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
1 tsp minced garlic
2 c whole wheat flour
1/2 c chick pea flour
1/2 c all-purpose flour
1/4 c brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 yeast packet (or equivalent--I believe that would be 1 1/2 tsp)

Combine tomato sauce and water and warm in the microwave or on the stove to around 90 degrees. Add the tomato mixture along with the rest of the ingredients, in the order listed, to the breadmaker and bake on the whole wheat setting for a 1 1/2 lb loaf (around 4 hours, 20 minutes). Also! You can make your own chickpea flour by grinding dried chickpeas in a food processor, coffee grinder, or Magic Bullet (you could buy it too). This recipe would work without the chickpea flour (substitute the same amount of all-purpose or wheat), but I really love the flavor it added.

And I'm going to be honest, I really hate the taste of butter (or any equivalent to butter) so sometimes I have a slice of warm bread with a smidgen of Vegenaise! What do you put on your bread?

And, aww, check out this pup.