Hi everyone! Welcome back from all your Labor Day weekend adventures. Can you believe it is pretty much the end of summer and fall is around the corner? I’m excited for Theo to experience fall as it’s my favorite season! Anyway, sorry for my absence last week. Theo and I both caught ourselves a little cold bug. Unfortunately, you can’t call in sick as a mother – but you can call in sick as a blogger… so the dish was sacrificed for the week.
Meanwhile, after a few months of ordering delivery and takeout every night, then a couple months pretty much half cooking (buying pre-marinated chicken and pre-made salads and prepared stir-fry kits from Fresh Direct), I’ve finally started cooking cooking again. It helps that Theo goes to bed around 6:30, which leaves me time to have some fun in the kitchen before my new bed time of nine-thirty rolls around.
I started off nice and easy a couple weeks ago with homemade guacamole and sauteed mushrooms. Our upstairs neighbor moved out so we had a goodbye dinner up on the roof to mark the end of our time together. Our downstairs neighbor made these amazing brown sugar burgers with blue cheese (I opted for no cheese… sniffle sniffle). I thought some sauteed mushrooms would add excitement to my burger… a naked burger is no fun. I started with this recipe using white wine and shallot instead of onions, but I felt like the mushrooms didn’t have enough flavor so I added some elements from this recipe - a little soy sauce, some sugar and some lemon juice. They came out super tasty! The soy and lemon gave them some saltiness and brightness, which complimented the sweetness of the burger quite nicely.
A couple nights later, I tried this Shrimp Scampi recipe from Saveur Magazine (I’m on their email list so I get yummy recipes sent to me weekly – good for inspiration in the kitchen). Of course, I used the Earth Balance fake butter instead of real butter and it still came out DELICIOUS! It’s got a little kick from the pepper flakes and some zing from the lemon. Adam was flipping out. He’s very enthusiastic about my cooking – thus very fun to cook for. PS – I’ve made this recipe again since and added some chopped baby portobello mushrooms, which added a nice new layer. I’m a major mushroom fan.
This weekend I went to the Fort Greene Greenmarket and picked up some goodies. One of the vendors had a table set out with samples of about twelve different heirloom tomatoes. After tasting purple ones, yellow ones, multi-colored ones, striped ones, white ones, red ones and green ones, I found heaven in the Green Cherokee tomatoes…
Image from http://www.thelifeingreen.com
They are sweet, juicy, not mealy… tomato PERFECTION. Inspired by another Saveur recipe for Pan Con Tomate and these amazing tomatoes, I picked up a few of these beauties and headed home to indulge. I decided to make a cross between the Pan Con Tomate and bruschetta. I sliced up some good bread, drizzled it with olive oil and put it under the broiler to get nice and toasty. Then I diced up the tomato, put it in a bowl, drizzled some olive oil and hit it with some sea salt and pepper. It created this beautiful tomato liquid (I cannot lie… I drank some straight out of the bowl). Then I cut a clove of garlic in half and rubbed it on the bread and spooned my tomato mixture onto the bread and voila… total yumminess. Adam even enjoyed it and he sort of hates tomatoes. If they are still around next weekend, you must pick up some tomatoes before the season ends. I have never tasted a tomato so luscious in my life.
That’s all for now. Theo’s about to wake up from his afternoon nap and I want to get this baby posted! (blog baby… not Theo baby). Hoping to get more foodie again in the coming months. I’ve got some ideas brewing for the blog so stay tuned.
xo
