Week eleven- I'm down with O.P.V.

I did get beans this week, but I also made a trip up to Fort Wayne. My CSA beans were parboiled then pickled in the quick pickle recipe I posted earlier this summer. The beans I got from my mom's paired wonderfully with the fresh corn I got from my blog buddy MSG. I love green beans prepared pretty much any way, but this is a really, really good way.

Make some bacon, parboil some beans, dice a couple of potatoes. Cook the potatoes in some of the bacon grease, when they are almost done add the beans. Put a lid on it, let it steam and cook, add the bacon back in and use whatever seasoning you like. I used to use part of a packet of Good Seasoning Italian salad dressing mix, I've used Greek seasoning, but this time I think I just used salt and pepper.

Week eleven- pizza

I walked into my Dad's house one evening and an incredible aroma threw it's arms around me. My step-mom was making pizza sauce, and I refused to leave that night without the recipe. Like a year and a half passed, and I finally made the sauce.

The sauce works best with roma tomatoes... I've made it a couple times lately and had to add a little tomato paste at the end when I used other-than-roma tomatoes.

Combine 2 lbs quartered tomatoes with 1/2 c. chopped onion (in this case CSA shallots), 2-3 cloves garlic, 1 t. salt, 1/2 t. crushed red pepper, 1/2 t. sugar. Mix it up with 1/4 c. olive oil and bake at 450 for 40 minutes.

This smells a-mazing! Add 1/4 c. fresh basil and puree using a stick blender or old-fashioned blender, and it smells even better.

Put it on a pizza and freeze the leftovers.

We use a 450 degree oven, Trader Joe's pizza crust, and a pizza stone. In about 15 minutes, we have dinner!

Week Eleven

It's getting to be autumn!

Tomatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, beans, and acorn squash!

Week ten- roasted peppers

It's hard to use all this fresh stuff sometimes, so I look to my mom for advice on how to store veggies for the winter. I've seen her roast peppers and have done it once myself, but this time I was trying to be careful and keep track of the steps.

First I set the oven to broil, placed the peppers on a cookie sheet, and turned them so all sides got nice and black. Then I put them in a bowl, covered the bowl with a towel, and let the whole thing sit for 20 mintues or so, till the skin was loosened and the peppers were cool enough to handle.

The skins peel or rub off easily, then I used a spoon and my fingers to clean out all the seeds. This is what they looked like then:

Packed them nicely in freezer bags, and I have roasted red peppers for the winter!

Week ten- tri-colore pasta

Is this kind of a rut? I dunno, but I really love to just cook tomatoes with olive oil and have it with pasta. Look how pretty this variety of tomatoes is.

And after cooking for a little bit, this is what it looks like. Look at all the garlic!

And this is what it looks like in the bowl. Fresh pasta from the local fresh pasta place, sprinkled with flat leaf parsley from the share. I'm running out of things to say about cooked tomatoes with pasta. It's good!

Week Ten

Week ten is a beautiful week. Various heirloom tomatoes, bright red peppers, vibrant flat leaf parsley, coppery little shallots.

The little yellow tomatoes are kinda fuzzy, like a peach. As soon as we got them we had to slice one up and marvel at it's uniqueness.



Phil declared them wonderful.