Sometimes naked fresh is the best

What could be better than freshly sliced cucumber on a just-baked piece of bread smeared with your favorite spread and topped with a salt and herb mixture? Having just finished eating that for lunch, I can’t think of anything more satisfying for a light meal. Of course, if I hadn’t eaten my just-cut salad greens yesterday, I could have added that as a side dish. 

As gardening season winds down, I’m reminded of how much I love certain fresh produce when it’s eaten “as is” or only minimally prepared. All of the raspberries never make it into the house as I snack when I pick. Sometimes I just walk to the garden and eat straight from the vine for dessert!  Strawberries, grapes and blueberries are the same; I have to at least taste them as I harvest. Jim loves plucking the warm peach and demolishing the fruit before he bring it inside. He’ll even eat an ear of corn as soon as he picks it.

Some people savor the tomato sandwich. I really don’t care for them freshly sliced in salad or on a sandwich, but I do love making the simple Baked Caprese Salad that puts the reddest slice of a Costoluto Genovese on top of oven-toasted bread then melts mozzarella on the tomato, finishing it with a fresh Basil leaf. I feel the same way about peppers, especially yellow and red ones, in that I lightly saute them in oil, sometimes throwing in greens as well.  

A gardener and cook should always taste the labor of love at as many stages as possible to see how you like it best. Following recipes to the final instruction can result in a fabulous product. But if you taste along the way, you might find a new option for making the dish even better. 

So here’s to enjoying the last harvests of the season. Savor and commit that taste to memory. When February comes, that will be your motivation for another season of gardening.

When the tomatoes need to be cooked now

We all have busy lives so we don’t always get into our gardens the minute something is ready to harvest. This week when I filled my basket with tomatoes, some of them needed to be cooked immediately. If a tomato is split or has a soft spot and it sits in the kitchen window too long (that’s where I keep them until there’s enough to can) they will attract fruit flies. The same is true of any other fruit or vegetables left on a counter. To avoid that problem, I decided to make a batch of pasta sauce.

By the time I had picked the tomatoes there wasn’t time to complete the sauce. What follows is a very rough two-day recipe for making a simple sauce from fresh produce and herbs. You could, of course, make it in one day but sometimes sauces deepen their flavor if left in the refrigerator overnight.  I apologize in advance for not being more exact with the recipe; it leaves lots of room for creativity! You’ll want to use the proportions of ingredients that are right for the amount of tomatoes you have.

Easy pasta sauce

Day 1 (takes 1 hour or so)

Chop ½ onion and 2 carrots. Sautee in olive oil in a large skillet or pot (that has a lid) that will hold all of the tomatoes you have. Smash two cloves of garlic then chop and add to the pan.

While the onion and carrots are slowly sautéing, chop 12 or so ripe tomatoes. Add them to the pan. Lightly salt and cook. Add ½ cup of red wine. Bring to a nice boil then turn down to simmer. Taste to see if you need to add sugar. I sprinkled just a little (no more than ¼ cup) over the top then stir it in.

Chop a big handful of fresh basil and add along with other herbs you like. I added dried marjoram, rosemary, thyme, black pepper, salt and a sprinkle of red pepper to give heat.  Turn off, cool then put on lid and store in refrigerator.

Day 2 (takes 30 minutes)

Warm the sauce base.

In another pan, brown ½ - 1 pound sweet Italian sausage. Chop green pepper and add to sausage. Chop 2/3 cup zucchini and add. Salt lightly. 

While that is cooking, boil salted pasta water and add pasta.

Drain fat from sausage pan, add to sauce and stir. Add ½ cup fresh parsley. Taste and adjust seasonings. If you have a leftover rind of Parmesan, chop it and add it. That will give you wonderful little bites of Parmesan in your dish.

When the pasta is done, spoon it onto the top of the sauce. Grate Romano cheese onto the pasta then stir. Grate more cheese onto the top of the dish and serve.

By the way, I know this might be some sort of sacrilege to the Italians, but I had a little bit of two different types of pasta leftover from earlier meals (bowtie and penne) so I mixed them for this dish. You can see that in the photo.

Tasting Summer in January

One of the beauties of preserving garden produce is that you have the opportunity to enjoy a bite of the season gone by even when your garden is resting. That’s what we did last night with a group of friends.

I decided it was time to start digging into the freezer to see what I had preserved to add some summer sunshine to a winter day. I found frozen yellow squash and pawpaw puree that I wanted to use. I also pulled a jar of our canned tomatoes from the shelf, garden carrots from the fridge, sweet potatoes from the basket and fresh parsley from under the grow light and went to work. Here’s the menu I came up with.

Italian Squash Soup
European Peasant Bread
French Lentil Salad
Sweet Potato Fries with Avocado Dip
Panko Crusted Salmon
Pawpaw Sour Cream Pie

I prepared the pie the night before so it could sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours before serving. The bread, which mixed white, whole wheat and rye flours, I put together during my Friday lunch break. Everything else I began preparing 2 ½ hours before I expected our guests.
The result? The smiles around the table and the requests for seconds told me the meal was a hit. Here are two of the recipes you can try.

Italian Squash Soup (adapted from Neal Brown’s recipe)
2-3 cloves fresh garlic
1 lb. cubed, frozen squash that is thawed
1 lb. cubed potato
1 small sliced carrot
1 jar tomatoes, crushed
16 oz. vegetable broth
¼ cup olive oil
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. dried parsley

Prepare potato and carrot. Heat olive oil. Add potato and carrot and sauté 5-10 minutes, until they begin to soften. Chop garlic and add to oil for one minute. Add remaining ingredients, cover and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

Pawpaw Sour Cream Pie (adapted from Moosewood Cookbook, 1977)
Note: Most pawpaws are quite sweet so when cooking with them it’s important to taste them then decide if you should lessen the amount of sugar you add. This recipe has less sugar than the original. In addition, this pie is similar to cheesecake but not as firm; it’s very creamy.)

Crust:
1/3 lb. (1 package) crushed graham crackers
8 Tbs. melted butter
¾ tsp. cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
½ cup chopped, slivered almonds
Combine all ingredients and press into pie pan.

Filling:
¾ cup pawpaw pulp puree
12 oz. softened cream cheese
1/3 cup loosely packed brown sugar
t2 TBS fresh lemon juice
½ tsp. vanilla extract
¼ cup sour cream

Beat together well. Pour into crust. Cover and chill overnight.

Enjoy!

Exclaiming over pond-raised prawns

“This is the best shrimp fettuccini alfredo I’ve ever had!” my husband, Jim, said as he ate his meal last night. He then went on to list the Italian restaurants where he had learned to love the dish, saying he couldn’t order it at any of those places again after being spoiled by the taste of what we made at home.

Although I would like to take credit for preparing an out-of-this-world alfredo sauce, the difference was in the shrimp.

Two weeks ago when a local farm, Kemper Lane Greenhouse, harvested their prawns (the name for freshwater shrimp), Jim was there to buy some. He even got down in the mud to get some of them. Then he removed their heads and pulled out the mud vein, put them on a tray in the freezer to flash freeze, then bagged them up. He had been asking for the fettuccini alfredo since then.

I obliged with a 15-minute recipe I’ve been using for years, preparing a salad with greens from Rolling Meadow Farm and a margherita pizza with tomatoes from our back yard. Since I’m not a fish eater beyond tuna and salmon, I roasted vegetables for my pasta while Jim boiled his shrimp and removed the shells. When we put it all together, he exclaimed about the flavor, realizing he had never eaten shrimp so fresh, sweet and all-together delicious.

I have heard stories regarding health concerns about farm-raised fish. I’ve also listened to explanations about why it isn’t an environmentally sound way to raise fish. My research on the topic yielded results that pointed to both the pro and con sides. I must say that knowing we supported a local farmer and hearing Jim exclaim over the meal make it hard for me to say anything against it, especially since Jim urged me to write about how good the shrimp was. So here it is, an opinion from one seafood lover. If prawn harvests in your area aren’t finished, you might want to check it out for yourself.

Sunday is garden feast day

I know Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest but it’s especially hard for me to do that during gardening season. I don’t feel a big Sunday obligation to weed and harvest (that was yesterday; more about that in tomorrow’s post) but I so love to cook that it’s hard for me to stay out of the kitchen, especially when my husband presents me with freshly dug carrots, a beautiful head of cabbage and apples to go with the tomatoes I picked the day before.

I began the day with the apples. I wanted to make chutney to can but still had a few apples left. Those I turned into applesauce, one of the easiest things you can make. Simply chop the apples, almost cover them with water, bring to a boil then turn down to simmer until they are soft. Keep an eye on them in case you need to add more water. When they are soft, I mash them then season with sugar and cinnamon. This simple method yields a chunky applesauce that you know is homemade and if you begin with flavorful apples, it will be much more satisfying than jarred apples sauce from the store. If you prefer it to be smoother, put it into your blender or food processor to finish.

With apple chutney and applesauce complete, I turned to the chicken I purchased from Marksbury Farm Market. Jim and I both took a gardening break on Saturday to watch Lidia’s Italy on public television and saw an easy and appealing preparation for Chicken Catanzaro-Style. I went to work on the stuffing while Jim removed the necessary bones. I do want to point out that when we watched her prepare it, Lidia appeared to use more herbs than the recipe called for. In addition, she used wine for cooking liquid after she had browned the chicken on both sides.

Another of our favorite Saturday cooking shows is America’s Test Kitchen. I had a recipe from them for Roasted Smashed Potatoes so I started on them while Jim made cabbage wedges wrapped in bacon. Next, I began the Maple Roasted Carrots (recipe below). While those three items roasted in the oven and the chicken continued to cook on the stove, I prepared bread, tomatoes and cheese for Baked Caprese Salad.

I love arranging the food on a platter when I have so many pieces to play with! I saved the beautifully green carrot tops for a vegetable bed. (They taste like carrots so make a nice addition to a meal.) With everything on the table I decided I should also put out the Concord grapes I bought at the farmer’s market to round out our meal.

When Jim walked in and saw all the food, he wanted to know who else was coming to dinner. Although I love to have friends and family here, this week it was just the two of us enjoying the Sunday garden feast—an apt reward for the sweat we put into growing most of the food on the table.

Maple Roasted Carrots
(With apologies for my vague instructions—it’s how I often cook!)

Fresh carrots
Olive oil
Maple syrup
Salt

Chop off carrot tops. Remove skin. Cut into whatever shape and size you prefer. I made our carrots into sticks about ¾” wide.

Put into pan with nearly ½” water (don’t cover them completely). Cover pan with foil and roast 15 minutes at 450 degrees. Check carrots for doneness. When they are nearly as soft as you want them, drain any remaining water, drizzle with olive oil and maple syrup. Toss. The carrots should be coated but not swimming in the oil and syrup. Sprinkle with salt. Return to oven 10 – 15 minutes until you can easily pierce them with a fork. Serve on a bed of carrot tops.

Three easy meals in two days

My schedule has been so packed with writing and editing assignments this month that it’s been difficult to find time to cook. So I was thrilled to look through my favorite recipes and a stack of ideas to try to find three meals that were quick and easy to prepare.

I often spend two hours in the kitchen preparing a meal. That’s because I enjoy it and because cooking from scratch rather than a box takes longer. I was able to put these meals together in 30 – 60 minutes, a record for me. I also noticed I had fewer dishes to wash after cooking. That’s never a bad result!

Here’s what I did.

Breakfast: Baked Egg

1 egg
1 TBSP Salsa
¼ cup unthawed spinach
1 TBSP cheese

Mix ingredients and put into a single-serving sized baking dish. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes or so until firm.

Lunch: Tortilla Tomato Soup with Beans and Rice and Quesadillas

We like Ellie Krieger’s Tortilla Tomato Soup and it’s one of those easy-to-prepare soups that reminds us of why we put so much work into canning our tomatoes during the summer.

While the soup cooked, I put on a pot of white rice. We had leftover pinto beans and knowing that rice and beans together make the perfect protein encouraged me in that direction.

As the two pots simmered on the stove, I sliced half an onion and a green pepper from the refrigerator. After sautéing them I put them on half of a whole wheat tortilla in the skillet, sprinkled with cheese and made a quesadilla.

Yes, it was a big lunch. And it all tasted good!

Supper: Asian Salmon with Stir Fried Vegetables

Lunch was so filling that I waited to make this supper until the next day. It fit in perfectly to my easy to prepare plan.

For several years I’ve been making the Barefoot Contessa’s Asian Salmon. Again, it’s quick and pleasing to the taste buds. I often bake it in the oven instead of grilling, which was true this time.

To go with the salmon I pulled vegetables out of the freezer to stir fry and serve with soba noodles. I prefer vegetables with a little crunch and of course since these had been frozen I didn’t get that. However, the taste of the dish, that I topped with a handful of cashews, was very good.

The lunch and supper both gave us leftovers for the next day when I wouldn't have a minute to spend in the kitchen.

Pay homage to your end-of-season tomatoes

Thank you David Lebovitz.

This past weekend I was invited to a party and asked to bring something to eat. As is my habit, I first looked at what I had in the house before deciding what to cook. Across my blue kitchen windowsill sat a row of our final ripe tomatoes of the season—red and yellow. They were such a pretty sight and in need of using before they spoiled. I wanted to make a dish that would show them off.

Tomato quiche? I searched for a recipe but didn’t find any that I thought would pay adequate homage to the tomatoes.

Tomato tart? I don’t really know what defines a “tart” except that it is made with pastry dough. So I did an online search. That’s when I found David Lebovitz’s website. Lebovitz is a chef whose site is subtitled, Living the Sweet Life in Paris. He not only includes beautiful photos of dining in France, but he also has a simple recipe for a French tomato Tart.

I should have taken a photo of my creation because it truly was beautiful. And the taste? Exquisite. It was truly a fitting salute to the end of the 2010 tomato season.

Collaborating with a restaurant chef

I’ve eaten out at restaurants far too often this month. My birthday was in the middle of the month and my September birthday friends all seemed to want to get together for a meal. Just when the birthday meals were concluding, there was a business luncheon then a weekend writing conference. Whew! I feel like I have to re-introduce myself to my own kitchen.

One thing I have learned about eating out is that I don’t have to consume everything put before me in one meal. Instead, I can collaborate with a restaurant chef right here in my own home.

Often, I bring home a box of leftovers. That’s what happened over the weekend when we ate at Amerigo in Nashville on Saturday evening. I wasn’t very hungry when we arrived so I ordered Cuattro Fromaggi pizza with pesto sour cream sauce drizzled on it. (That, by the way, was quite pretty and added a wonderful aroma.) I usually prefer pizza with some vegetables but I didn’t see any combinations that appealed to me. So, I stole veggies from Jim’s plate to top the four cheeses and the thin crust. Then I ate half of my plate of pizza.

The other half, I prepared for lunch today. I sautéed garden red peppers, Swish chard and tomatoes to top the leftovers. Yum! I had quite a satisfying lunch.

Try it yourself sometime. Take home the leftovers then dress them up with whatever you have from your garden. You’re sure to create a unique dish that will be a one-time wonder.

Developing a taste for tomatoes

I’ve moved most of my seedlings outside to be nourished by this unusually warm sunshine that we’re having in April. They stand happily, toughening up and growing before it’s time to put them in the ground. I’m always especially happy to see the tomato plants growing slowly into their promise of strong stems that lead to abundant fruits.

I used to hate tomatoes—couldn’t stand the texture of a fresh tomato in my mouth. I ate catsup, spaghetti sauce and a number of other foods made from cooked tomatoes. But most of my friends knew I wouldn’t put into my mouth even a cherry tomato topping a green salad.

Then I went through nutritional counseling with a holistic nurse while I underwent treatment for breast cancer. She advised me to eat tomatoes daily so I could absorb that all-important lycopene that is a powerful antioxidant. The good news she gave me was that tomatoes develop more lycopene when they are cooked, so the sauces I already liked would give me what I needed. But because of her encouragement, I also made a new attempt at eating fresh tomatoes. Here’s what I discovered.

While I was recovering from cancer, Jim and I took a trip to Ireland and Italy to celebrate. On our first day in Italy, we stopped at an outdoor café near the Vatican. Jim ordered tomato salad, fresh tomatoes with fresh mozzarella and basil on top. Because I love cheese, I decided to try one. Much to my surprise, I actually liked it! Perhaps the cheese disguised the slimy texture of the tomato but I think it also had to do with the fact that this tomato was sweet, not acidic.

So when I came home, I went on a mission to find a sweet Italian tomato to grow in my garden. Then I searched for the ideal sauce tomato. Here’s what I’ve come up with that I grow every year.

Constaluto Genovese—a sweet, slicing tomato that pairs beautifully with cheese or anything else.

San Marzano—a paste tomato that always grows a little larger in my garden than the typical Romas.

Cherokee Purple—an heirloom tomato that grows into a pretty color. I primarily use these for cooking but Jim likes them fresh on his sandwiches.

Oxheart—another heirloom that my friend Angela introduced me to a few years ago. They get really large and, again, they’re pretty.

There is something to be said for being tempted to eat something because of its beauty.

I don’t find these tomato plants to be available locally which is why I order seed and grow them myself. Give one of them a try this year. I hope this year’s babies will keep maturing so we can look forward to plenty of ripe fruits once again.

West African Sweet Potato Stew

One of the things I love about having a kitchen filled with last year’s vegetables is that I have the ingredients I need for many dishes without a trip to the grocery store. That was the case yesterday when I tried a recipe a customer of my husband’s sent home with him. While he was working on renovations in her home she was cooking soup and making a copy of the recipe for me. It turns out to be a good one.

Kathleen sent over a recipe for West African Sweet Potato Stew. I can always use another way to utilize those nutritious sweet potatoes, so I immediately scanned the ingredient list and was surprised at the variety of vegetables it uses – cabbage, green beans, tomatoes, tomato juice and onions. I had everything I needed from our garden except the onions. I slightly adapted the recipe to use fresh sweet potatoes instead of canned, so I had to cook it a little longer to be sure they were soft all the way through.

Add to that a little ginger and red pepper flakes plus half-a-cup of peanut butter and you have a rich, vitamin-packed stew. I ate it as a soup yesterday but I have a feeling that after that red pepper has had time in the refrigerator to further infuse throughout the soup, I might need to eat it over rice to cut the spice. It will definitely warm me up on another gray winter day.

Spring will actually arrive!

We had beautiful spring-like weather here yesterday. I think it hit 64 degrees. Even though it’s too early and wet to do anything in the garden, I wandered around the yard picking up limbs and sticks. Then I gathered up dried leaves to mulch the daffodils that have broken through the soil. They don’t know it’s going to get cold again this week!

I also found the first flowers of spring – snowbells (see photo). The plant is the height of my index finger. A friend gave me some of her snowbells a few years ago to plant in my flower garden and they are a delightful sign that winter is ending. Unfortunately, I’ve pulled some of them up during my weeding frenzy of warmer days (they look like long grass when not blooming) but there are a few, including these in my Marian garden, that survived. Now I need to mark them so I don’t pull them up, also!

The sun also inspired me to plant my first seeds for my “indoor greenhouse,” which is the window in my office. Every year I like to try something new so this year it’s leeks, which need to sprout and grow inside for several weeks before they are ready for transplanting. It was so nice to see dirt under my fingernails.

Before I knew it was going to be so warm, I made a pot of butternut squash chili with one of final two squashes from last season. I love the recipe not only because it tastes so good, but I can also use our canned tomatoes in it. So we have a good pot of soup to carry us into this week.

Preservation Lessons Round #2

One of my great pleasures when the snow is on the ground is to open a jar of our tomatoes. We can tomatoes whole, make juice and prepare salsa and Lucy’s Basic Fresh Tomato Sauce. We use the sauce on spaghetti, pizza, lasagna, anything that calls for a jar of spaghetti-type sauce.

My friend Lucy gave me this recipe nearly eight years ago and I began freezing it then. But we began to have increased tomato gardening success and to realize we could use more of this yummy sauce, we started to can it. Just add a little lemon juice after it’s in the jar and it will keep with no problem.

One thing I’ve learned in making this sauce is that it cooks more quickly and more thickly if I remove the liquid from the tomatoes before throwing them into the pot. To prepare the tomatoes, we rinse them, score the top, drop them into boiling water for 30 – 60 seconds, then drop them into ice water. That makes it easy to peel the skin. Then I chop them, removing the seeds and inner jelly-like liquid, then put them into a mesh colander in the sink where more liquid will drain from them before I add them to the pot. My favorite type of tomatoe to use (although we use whatever we have) is the San Marzano, which grows larger than a Roma in my garden and has strong pulp but little liquid.

Lucy’s Basic Fresh Tomato Sauce

2 med. onions, chopped finely
4 cloves of garlic, minced or crushed
5 pounds (about 12 med.) firm, ripe tomatoes
1/3 c. olive oil
½ c. minced green onions, include some of green tops
1 green pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1 to 1 ½ tsp. salt
¾ tsp. pepper
½ tsp. anise seeds, crushed (optional-they have liquorish flavor)
1 Tbsp. oregano or Italian seasoning
¾ tsp. rosemary leaves, crushed
1 tsp. paprika
about 1 ¾ c. dry red wine, or to your taste

In large kettle, cook onions and garlic in olive oil over medium heat until golden, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, cut the tomatoes into eighths, or smaller if you like a finer sauce, and add to the pot along with the rest of the ingredients. Bring to boil and stir to break up tomatoes. Cover and reduce heat to simmer and cook for an hour. Remove cover and continue to boil gently until mixture reduces and thickens to your preference.

Using the tomatoes, potatoes and greens

This week’s Lexington Herald-Leader food page included a good article about making soup along with a few recipes. It emphasized the importance of sautéing some ingredients to begin the soup. It also pointed out the broth you use is crucial to the taste.

I decided to try the Potato Tomato Soup since we still have plenty of those ingredients, plus the frozen greens the recipe calls for. Those ingredients also make for a nicely rounded nutritional dish. When I was searching through the chickens and bags of veggies that still fill the freezer, I found the greens I needed and some turkey stock. So, being the improviser that I have learned to be in the kitchen, I decided to keep the soup truly homemade by using my own stock.

I think it was a mistake. Although the stock smelled good, it wasn’t very flavorful. Thus, I seasoned and seasoned, but I still wasn’t thrilled with the soup. The next time around, I’ll remember the advice to be sure your broth is extra-good.

Potato Tomato Soup ratings

Jim: 10 (He added red pepper to his soup which might have helped.)
Beth: 7

I will say that as is usually the case, the soup was more flavorful the next day.

Rating the tomato salmon

When I had accumulated about five slowly-ripened-in-the-windowsill tomatoes, the last from this year’s garden, I decided to try a new recipe. Jim, who is my harshest critic since he lives with me and knows if he gives something a good rating he’ll have to eat it again. This time around?
Jim’s salmon rating: 9+
Beth’s salmon rating: 9

Jim said he might have given it a 10 if the salmon had been fried instead of baked. The recipe is below so you can try it for yourself. My guess is that it would work with any kind of fresh tomato that you like.

Tomato Salmon

Olive oil
½ onion, diced
1 garlic clove
4-5 San Marzano tomatoes
Small bunch fresh parsley
Salt and pepper
2 6-ounce salmon fillets

Warm olive oil in small skillet. Dice onion and cook on medium until soft. Add chopped garlic. Add chopped tomatoes. Cook until soft. Stir in chopped parsley. Season with salt and pepper.

Put the salmon fillets on a cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle sparsely with salt. Pile cooked tomato mixture on top, covering every bit of the salmon flesh.

Bake at 400 degrees 12 – 15 minutes.

Using the last tomatoes

Yes, it’s December, far too late to be using fresh tomatoes, yet I am. Our weather this fall was a little bit different than usual and I picked my final red tomatoes from the vine last week. Today it’s snowing.

I’ll be using those final tomatoes this evening, with some onion, garlic and parsley, as a topping for baked salmon. I’m also experimenting today with butternut squash cupcakes. Just don’t tell my students, who asked for cupcakes for their writing celebration, what the secret ingredient is. I’ll let you know tomorrow if they pass the fifth-grader taste test.

Monday’s leftovers: Jim’s Chili

It does take time to preserve fresh vegetables and cook from scratch, but one way to free up your week is to cook batches of foods on the weekend that you can munch on all week. That approach can save time and money while still providing nutrients you need.

With that in mind, I enjoyed the chili Jim made on Sunday for supper last night. For him to prepare the chili, I bought from the grocery canned kidney beans, chili seasoning and onions (unfortunately we used the last of our garden onions last week). From the freezer, he pulled packages of ground beef we had bought with our portion of a local, grassfed cow. Then he gathered tomato juice and whole tomatoes we had canned.
Last night, his tasty combination satisfied my hunger and warmed me from the inside out! It took only a few minutes to warm it up and to wash the dishes afterwards.
Health note: Tomatoes provide lycopene, an important cancer preventing phytochemical. Although many people enjoy tomatoes fresh from the summer garden, studies have shown that people who eat cooked tomatoes actually absorb more lycopene. So add chili to your list of health-supporting dishes.