More Tomatoes

If you come to my house right now, you'll smell two things: sunscreen and garlic. The boys and I stayed at the pool as long as possible, and when we got home we were starving. As soon as I walked in the door I started cooking. There's a pile of cherry tomatoes on our counter that's been growing larger every day. And I can see more out there on the vines, ready to be picked; cherries, Romas, the works.  Makes a person a bit panicky. I'm happy to say that our indoor tomato pile just became a little sauce, simmering on the stove. This is a tomato sauce with the barest essentials: cherry tomatoes, garlic, basil and oregano, salt and pepper, crushed red pepper. (I've mentioned that my husband has a thing for peppers. He made the crushed red pepper with last year's batch of peppers.) I heated a pan, poured in some olive oil.  Just threw everything in at once. The result: a little taste of summertime.

We had a jar of Alfredo sauce too. I stirred this into the fusilli, and topped it off with the tomato sauce. Kind of Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade of me. But addictively good. An achievement for someone who  maybe got a little too much sun today. 

A Frittata

Somehow we ended up with too many eggs this week. I thought we were out of eggs and bought some, but it turned out there were a dozen in the fridge bought by Josh the day before. Sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and we both buy things we're out of. Then my friend Amber, who raises chickens, gave me a dozen fresh eggs. I'm so jealous of my friends with chickens. But the house, yard, kids--are all pretty overwhelming right now, so we'll hold off on introducing any feathered friends to the mix.

So what to do with all the eggs? Breakfast for dinner comes to mind first, and the boys had no complaints. Miles is pretty much obsessed with fried egg sandwiches; Willem likes his scrambled, with toast.

But for the adults: a Frittata. We had some Yukon Gold potatoes in our box this week.

Also from the box, an onion. And some fresh herbs from the garden.

No, we didn't eat the Black-Eyed Susan. I just noticed them blooming when I went out for the herbs, and had to pick one. 

I sliced the potatoes into circles, then fried them in a big pan with some butter and canola oil. Josh had just fried some bacon, so he suggested I add a little bacon grease. I did. The thing I've learned about frying potatoes is that, once they're in the pan, you need resist the urge to stand over them and stir them around. So I left them alone, and went out to pick herbs and look at the tomatoes. (Our cherry tomatoes are going wild, by the way.) 

Once the potatoes browned up, I added diced onion and salt and pepper. I scrambled up some eggs, and poured them over the potatoes. Then added crumbled bacon, shredded cheese (cheddar, dill Havarti and Gouda), the herbs (chives, dill, basil), and some cherry tomatoes. The pan went into the oven until the egg was cooked and the cheese was melted. 

Garden fresh, simple. Divine.

Two Summer Salads

There's so much great produce around right now that I couldn't resist making not one, but two gorgeous salads for last night's dinner.

My friend Maggie gave me a bag full of cucumbers (this is what people do with cucumbers, right? There's no ducking it.) Her farmer neighbor had given them to her, since they were too big to sell at the market. She suspected maybe they'd be seedy. I peeled a couple of them, and cut them open and scooped out the seeds.  With some sliced red onion, cherry tomatoes and dill from our garden, olive oil, rice wine vinegar and salt and pepper, I thought they tasted just fine. 

This beet salad had me up during the night thinking about it. In a good way, of course.

It's roasted beets with diced red onion and crumbled bacon over steamed beet greens with vinaigrette. You can find the recipe here. 

We ate the salads with breaded pork chops and roasted red potatoes. Pretty much stuffed ourselves silly.