tomato days

So I finally had enough tomatoes to make homemade tomato sauce.

I found a recipe on digginfood.com (tomato gravy) and waded in. Fourteen roma tomatoes later and a few hours simmering on the stove

yielded 1 small jar of sauce.

That was Saturday. The sauce looks really yummy so I'm saving it...don't know what for yet but I'm sure it will speak to me!

I tried again last night - had some larger tomatoes from the garden and the market so I did the recipe again. I didn't simmer it as long so it was not as thick. But I used it in a veggied up version of my vegetarian moussaka - I added roasted carrots, roasted mushrooms, spinach and spicy sausage to the middle of the casserole, mainly as the produce needed to be eaten and I had picked up eggplant and potatoes from the market again. If I didn't love the moussaka so much, I might actually go looking for another eggplant recipe just for some variety!

So the garden is producing beans and tomatoes at a fair clip right now, and a really fat zucchini is growing - the rest are all looking a bit lean. I've never really been a green been fan, as I don't like boiled beans but on Saturday night I decided I had to do something with the beans I got (at the market as D had eaten all of ours picked that day raw). I was going to do a green bean, potato, arugula salad from smittenkitchen.com but didn't have any potatoes or arugula at that point so I made a plain risotto (well it doesn't taste plain) with lots of parmesan and between stirrings I threw some sticks of red and yellow peppers and the beans into the oven with some olive oil to roast. Once roasted I added a splash of balsamic vinegar and feta cheese. It was delish served with the risotto - at least D and I enjoyed it. T didn't touch it - preferring his cucumber and turkey dog - although he did parcel out beans to both of us.

Sunday night I made butter chicken with brown basmati rice and spicy corn cakes (from eatmakeread.com) - I made them according to the recipe but changed up the jalepeno pepper with chipotle pepper. The corn pancakes were yummy so we'll be having those again.

I think I've decided that cheddar is pretty much a winter cheese. Lately my go to cheeses have been parmesan and feta. I've only given cheddar a break from the fridge for T's snacks and for the corn pancakes lately. Of course, I also go to goat cheese, camenbert, brie, stilton, bleu, etc.