ElainaA

About once a month I go to a local diner for breakfast with some friends. Typically we all order cinnamon toast. It is available in every local diner i have been to. (And I love diner breakfasts.) I always have a shaker of cinnamon sugar for toast in the pantry,

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/cheesy-vidalia-onion-and-tomato-pie-recipe.html As I said, I think it could use a thickener or binding agent to hold it together. And I also increased the cheese a bit.

My brother and his wife are here for several days so it was dinner for 4 rather than the usual 2. (Actually 5 rather than 3 - I always think of my husband's lunch as another serving.) A tomato, onion and cheese (fontina, mozzarella and parm) pie from a recipe by Emeril. The crust included a spice/herb blend he refers to as "Essence" - paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, thyme, cayenne, salt. The amount of crust seemed not enough for a 10" pie plate - I was correct - it was so thin it crumbled, as you can see. The pie tasted good but was very wet - it needed something to absorb the moisture or bind it together, I think. Also chicken spiedies and a (slightly out of focus) salad of red and golden beets, apples, celery and pecans. The salad was served over endive and chicory with a lemon vinaigrette.

This is fun Shelby! Thanks for doing this. My Italian husband does the same. He cuts the eggplant quite thin. Sometimes he adds bread crumbs after the egg. I love it.

Thank you. I'm heading to the farmer's market tomorrow - then a stop at the liquor store for gin. (Maybe I better get some tonic too, just in case of leftovers. ) Concerning the question of yellow tomatoes in chutney - I almost always use a mix of red and yellow tomatoes for my chutney - and it always ends up dark red. I once made a batch using almost entirely yellow tomatoes - and it still came out red. My yellow tomatoes are actually a deep gold (BHN 871) so maybe that is significant. I've always found it rather mysterious. I don't think green tomatoes would work unless you use a recipe designed especially for them. There are multiple recipes on the internet. The Ball Blue Book also has recipes for green tomato relish and green tomato mincemeat. I haven't made any of these but they sound interesting.

@blue_dolphin Both the jam and the liquor look beautiful. I love ginger in jam. Is the liqueur recipe available on line?

As long as they are sealed now you will be fine. I have never had a jar come unsealed once it sealed.

Thanks for the ideas! The problem is actually making a place for it in my kitchen - things are going to have to be moved and something might have to go. Right now it is sitting in the living room.....

Guess who just had a birthday? (And whose husband really listens to her.) I have family arriving tomorrow for several days stay and then a crazy week next week so I won't be experimenting with this for some time. But i can sit and stare at it.

Several meals: Grilled chicken breast with tomato chutney, grilled veggies (zucchini, tomato, onion, red bell pepper) and white/wild rice pilaf with leeks, topped with fried leeks. Grill smoked steel head trout with golden beet/horseradish relish, potatoes and salad. Grilled pork chop with creamed leeks, apples sautéed in butter and finished with brandy and garlic mashed potatoes. Not the best plating. It isn't something I usually think about.

Pita Gourmet. I love it for lunch - we rarely go there for dinner. It was highly recommended to us many years ago by a good friend whose father, who was born and grew up in Lebanon, ate lunch there every day up to the day before he passed away at age 92. (He was always - up to that day-on his lunch break from work.) Like @Lisa Shock I dislike beans with pasta - it tastes sort of redundant to me. @Anna N You have no more reason to feel bad about disliking beans than I do for my dislike of brussels sprouts and anchovies. And if you really think you need intervention consider the advice of my favorite t-shirt " Gardening - it's cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes." And you only grow things YOU like.

I like cooked dried beans but for me they are an occasional food. Since I started (4 years ago) growing my own beans for drying I just can't eat super market beans. I have never had the fabled Rancho Gordo beans ( and, due to cost probably never will) so perhaps they would be acceptable. If the texture is a problem, try refried beans. Or hummus as @blue_dolphin suggested. Or, simply say -"I don't want to eat these" - That is the nice part of being an adult. You get to make your own choices.

I somehow forgot to take a picture but it would have looked like generic pasta with red sauce - which it certainly wasn't! The sauce was plum tomatoes (Plum Regal) , red sweet peppers, onions and garlic, all roasted at 300 degrees with a little olive oil for 6 hours, seasonings (salt, pepper, oregano, lots of fresh basil, red wine) added and pureed with an immersion blender. I made about 4 quarts of this - most going into the freezer. It should help us get through the winter. Served with a salad. (Tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic. basil, salad ingredients: fennel, tomatoes, green pepper, bitter greens - all from the garden. I will so miss the garden soon.)

That's not "just" pizza - that's PIZZA - and a beautiful specimen too.

@Okanagancook I love the pasta. I get such great ides from this place. I also have more basil than I know what to do with. Time to get out the pasta machine. Thanks!

@rotuts I agree with Anna - really delicious looking. Hmmm - I just bought a package of bacon, I still have LOTS of tomatoes and the scallions are just about ready.........

WOW. I look away for just a couple of days and I'm 4 pages behind! What amazing meals. Life has been very busy here but I do take pictures. On Satueday we spent the day at a (relatively - an hour drive. When you live out in the country that is "relatively near") art and music festival. (Colorscape , at Norwich, NY - if you live anywhere near I recommend it.) After a sun soaked day I didn't want to cook so dinner was left overs and stuff hanging around. Some left over steak, a few spears of left over asparagus, the usual tomatoes ( I have about a bushel on the kitchen counter) with some cucumbers and some potatoes that I boiled and tossed with a vinaigrette. Bitter greens (endive and chicory and some fennel) from the garden. Monday: slow roasted cherry tomato sauce with penne. Probably the last of this year as the cherry tomatoes are almost done. i guess I could make this with purchased cherry tomatoes but I never have. Tonight- Grilled lamb tossed with a dressing of pureed tomatoes, roasted mustard seeds, ginger, basil and a little vinegar (the vinegar was not in the recipe but I thought it was needed) over bitter greens, roasted potatoes and a tomato and cucumber salad. If you notice that Sunday is missing - we went out for pizza. Our favorite local place where somehow everyone there (and the place was full) connected somehow to each other. That's Cortland.

@Thanks for the Crepes I love that quote! And I especially identify with "the enemy is everything". I think of gardening as, at best, a prolonged adversarial discussion with nature. Often, a war.

I always feel sad that the beans (fresh or dried) lose all their color when cooked. Black beans are the exception. But they all taste really good.

Distance is such a relative thing! My nearest grocery store is almost 7 miles away. I've been know, occasionally, to drive that far for ice cream.

@JoNorvelleWalker Is there a Wegman's near you? They usually have quince paste and also quince. I don't know where you are in NJ but I know there is a Wegman's in Princeton. It is possible, I guess, that quince is a seasonal item but I have seen them regularly in Wegman's here.

The only recipe I have done this with is for zucchini bread where, following a suggestion I found on line with the recipe (at GardenWeb's Harvest board) I replace half the oil with applesauce. In that case I think it improves the end result. But in brownies? No. I lived through the 70's in northern Vermont - it was the era of everything 'natural', 'back to the land' - and therefore 'healthy'. Some of the food was good but the baked goods were generally awful.

I don't think you need to cook them anywhere near that long, Fresh shell beans cook quickly. My dried tongue of fire beans cooked in about 25 minutes after an hour's soak. Here's a post from David Liebovitz's blog: (I love his blog.) He does say about 20 minutes - that surprises me. http://www.davidlebovitz.com/fresh-shelling/

@Okanagancook I have no idea what variety they are but they look great! No, they don't have to be dried. You can harvest them fresh. The pods in the picture look very fresh - I tend to wait until the are shriveled and dry looking. Fresh shell beans are considered a delicacy in Italian cooking (and probably other ethnicities as well) but I never seem to get to harvest mine when there are enough still fresh. You can't really mix dried and fresh beans. I let mine dry because they are so much better than store bought beans ( and cheaper than expensive varieties - about $1.50 for seeds gives me about 4 cups of dried beans, which equals 4 meals.) I actually like the taste of beans that have been dried over those cooked fresh but that's just me. If you can easily puncture the shell with your fingernail then they are 'fresh' - either cook them right away, freeze them or dry them. If the skin of the bean gives resistance then they are getting dry. Your dry beans look a lot like pictures I find of appaloosa beans. Whatever they are I bet they will be delicious - SO much better than store bought beans.

Garden dinner: Tongue of Fire Beans cooked with tomatoes, garlic, onion, sage and parsley, a salad of bitter greens and lettuce (endive,chicory, romaine) and red onion, bruschetta with seasoned ricotta, oven roasted tomatoes, red onion and oregano and a salad of fennel and apples. The beans,tomatoes, garlic, onions, endive, chicory, onion, fennel and sage all picked just before they were cooked.