ElainaA

If you are using Romas I would chop them. And if using rosemary in place of the basil I would use less - rosemary can easily be overpowering. What about oregano?

I am glad to share it once I am home. The "recipe" that Karen (Dano's wife ) gave me is very vague but I think I came up with a good approximation. I'll be home 8/1 and can post it then .

Very simple dinner tonight as we (me, my husband and my daughter's cat, Izzy) leave tomorrow morning for a 2 1/2 day drive to Arkansas, my daughter's new home. I remembered that I had several containers of roasted tomato and basil sauce in the freezer from last summer. Somehow they got buried and forgotten. Now I am really sorry because it is very excellent sauce that we could have enjoyed all winter. So, fettuccine with roasted tomato and basil sauce and a salad.

I grow shallots every year. They are huge - much bigger than the ones I see in supermarkets. Also with a stronger flavor. Usually there are 2 or 3 lobes to a plant. I usually grow from started seedlings. This year I couldn't find any in local nurseries so I am growing from sets - I'm not sure how big these will be.

Tonight the first corn of the season! Fresh corn has a relatively short season here so while it is available we only pretend to eat anything else for dinner. (Tonight we pretended to eat small steaks and a salad, There was steak and salad left over. But no corn.) It is still not strictly local - from Ovid, over on the edge of Cayuga Lake, But close enough. And very good.

I suspect I have posted this exact meal before. Grill-smoked steel head trout, beet and horseradish salad, potato salad. And a green salad that didn't make the picture. A replica of a meal I ate some years ago in Vienna and since then in a Viennese Heuriger here in the Finger Lakes area. (My husband's company installed and takes care of their plumbing/HVAC. He emailed the owners asking for the beet salad recipe and they sent it to us. (Always be nice to your plumber!) Very vaguely. A list of ingredients with no amounts given. I used it as a stepping stone. I like the result. It is very simple.)

No pictures - family is visiting and I get distracted. Tonight: Pasta with purple snow peas (from the garden - (I am so glad they kept their color when cooked unlike purple string beans) (I have only a very few of these since the trellis they grow on has 4" square openings and the deer are very bold since we have no dog - they evidently push their noses through the mesh and eat the tops of the plants as soon as they get over the small mesh fencing.) also with asparagus, shelled peas and sausage. And a salad. Last night was chicken thighs with a honey-garlic marinade in the CSO with mashed potatoes and skillet green beans.

So sorry - I have not had time to be here much . The mistake is mine. The 18 (more or less in my opinion) get shredded and roasted with the tomatoes. The addition 1/4 cup of basil ribbons are tossed with the pasta before serving. I will edit the recipe if I can. (Sometimes I find i am not allowed to edit posts after awhile.)

They are very close to identical. The NYTimes recipe has lemon juice and cinnamon and no vanilla. That's about the only difference. If the recipe I have is a rip-off adaptation of Burros' that could explain something that has always bothered me - why is this called a 'tart'? In no way is it a tart - could 'tart' be a typo for 'torte'? I was able to track down my source - I got this version from Chowhound at least 4 years ago - probably longer ago than that. Now I will have to make this with plums.

Another issue is power outages. This doesn't effect me - and I freeze veggies rather than canning them - but if you live in a place with possible serious power outages due to hurricanes or tornados or other disasters you can lose the contents of a freezer while your canned goods are perfectly safe.

And here it is. I am not sure where this came from - I think the Harvest forum on Garden Web.The original recipe is for a pear tart but it works with almost any kind of fruit. I have made it with sour cherries, sweet cherries, blueberries, raspberries, pears. It's a handy recipe to have when you have too much of something or just when you need a simple, fruity cake. I'm giving the recipe as I got it, for a pear tart. Just sub what ever fruit you have. And I have no idea who Laurie is. Laurie's Pear Tart 4 oz butter 3/4 c. sugar (increase to 1 cup if using sour cherries) 1 t. vanilla 2 eggs 1 cup flour 1 t. baking powder 1/2 t. salt Heat oven to 350 degrees (F). Grease an 8" spring form pan. Cream butter with sugar. Add vanilla. Add 2 eggs, beating well after each. Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Gradually beat into butter mixture. Spread batter into spring form pan. Add fruit - cram in as much as possible. If using pears, peel, core and slice thin. Bake about 1 hour, until a skewer comes out clean. "If you have any doubts, UNDERBAKE. If it dries out it is just a cake." (That is quoted literally from the original recipe.)

The only things really ready for picking in my garden are garlic scapes and salad greens. I'd grow garlic scapes purely for their weird decorative value - but they do taste good.

Breakfast for dinner tonight - an homage to M.F.K. Fisher- Am Omelet and a Glass of Wine. (It is not my favorite of her books but I love the title.) The omelet is filled with sautéed onions and tomatoes and grated cheddar.

My cucumber plants are about 4" high!

I picked cherries. Too many cherries. I love picking cherries. 4 jars of Sweet and Sour Cherry Jam with Kirsch. (from Ferber's Mes Confitures - her recipe is called Morello Cherry and Black Cherry with Kirsch but the farm where I pick simply has sweet cherries and sour cherries.) Also 7 jars of Cherry and Orange Conserve. This is more like a sauce for ice cream rather than a jam. It was supposed to be all sweet cherries but i didn't have quite enough so I used some sour cherries too and increased the sugar just a little.