Friday Food Craft: Tomato Salad

The Winter weather finally arriving has made me long for tastes of Summer. I found these cherry heirloom tomatoes at the store, and knowing they won't taste half as good as the ones I get in the Summer, I made myself some tomato salad. Oh August Farmers Market, how I do miss you...


To make your own yummy tomato salad you will need:

1 pint of cherry tomatoes
1/4 cup of mozzarella cheese, cut into bit sized pieces
1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 an avocado, cut into bite sized pieces
salt and pepper to taste


Cut your cherry tomatoes into halves or quarters, depending on the size you want. Toss them into a bowl, seeds and all. I generally use a bowl with a lid that seals tight, as I shake my salad up with the oil and vinegar dressing all in the same bowl. Plus, easy storage for leftovers :)

Add in your cheese, avocado (or any other yummy veggies you have sitting around, cucumbers and zucchini are also pretty tasty) oil and vinegar. Cover tightly and shake to evenly distribute the dressing. Add salt and pepper to taste.

I typically take my cheese out of the refrigerator and let it come to room temperature before making this, and I never refrigerate my tomatoes (it kills any flavor they may have). Serve salad room temperature. Enjoy!

Friday Food Craft: Easy Bruschetta

It's time for another easy entertaining food craft, with ingredients out of the garden! I love Summer if only for it's abundance of tomatoes (and the basil is in full swing now as well)! This recipe is great if you lack time and have to make an appetizer for a big group. You can even prepare your topping ahead of time and allow it to set overnight if needed.
Also, while I once again made my French Bread from scratch, don't feel bad about going to the local grocery store bakery or another bakery around town and grabbing a ready made loaf of bread, or baguette (or two or three).



For this version of bruschetta you will need:

1 loaf French bread, or Baguette
1 pint cherry heirloom tomatoes
2-3 oz. Chevre (you can substitute your favorite cheese, or leave it altogether)
4 leaves fresh Basil
1 Tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 teaspoons Balsamic Vinegar
1 clove garlic, peeled
salt and pepper to taste


Start by slicing your bread into pieces about 1 inch thick, and arranging them on a baking sheet. Broil for 3-4 minutes on the top rack of your oven, until golden brown.

While your bread is toasting, slice up your cherry tomatoes and basil and toss them in a bowl with your oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. To cut up my basil, i generally roll the leaves up together and slice through to make long strips.

Once the bread is out of the oven, rub each piece with your garlic clove (you now have some yummy garlic bread--try not to eat it just yet).

Top each slice with a spoonful of your tomato mixture. Break up your goat cheese and sprinkle some onto each slice. Enjoy!

Garden + Croutons = Salad.

The sun is out in full force, and thanks to that we had lots of ripe tomatoes and lettuce this weekend for our first garden salads! Add in some croutons (insanely delicious) that my husband whipped up with the end from my French Bread from Friday and it was maybe the best salad I've had in a long time.

While this is more of an "OMG look what I ate this weekend!" post than a food craft, feel free to make some yummy croutons and enjoy a salad of your own. Here is how the husband whipped these up (if you made the french bread and have some that is day old, I really can't recommend using it to make these croutons enough).

You will need:

About 3 slices of french bread 1 1/2 inch thick (we used the last 5-6 inches of a loaf)
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 clove garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a saute pan on your stove top over medium/ medium high heat and cut up your bread into bite sized cubes. Add your butter and garlic to the pan, then once the butter is melted toss in your bread cubes and stir them around to get them evenly coated.



Saute your bread cubes about 5 minutes, or until they are a a delicious, buttery golden brown perfection. Add salt and pepper and place onto your salad, enjoy!

My First Signs of Summer

As I have mentioned before, the husband and I have decided to challenge our normally black thumb's this year and started an indoor garden. I'm excited to say, it doesn't appear I have killed anything yet, and were it not for our weather only warming up today, I feel many of the things I started from seeds would be much further along now than they are. I bought my tomato starts at the farmer's market, mostly because I really love tomatoes and I wanted to make sure they were started on the right track. This picture shows the first of my little Sun Gold tomatoes starting top turn orange! Yum! I can't wait to throw these onto salads and bruschetta!

Speaking of salad, here is some of our Little Gem lettuce. I have to say, if you are a novice gardener like myself I would highly recommend starting out with lettuces. All of mine sprouted quickly and have been doing just great. One of my co-workers is from Hawaii and has even given me some seeds for a Hawaiian lettuce variety, I believe Manoa. Once it is bigger, I'll be sharing that with you as well, I'm pretty impressed with myself to be making all of this grow. We even have some yummy basil getting bigger by the minute.

To really Impress you all, I may take a photo of the whole garden in front of out window. Our tomato plants are freakishly huge, the Sweet 100's are about 8 feet tall. Had I known they would get that large, I wouldn't have done tomatoes, my poor little apartment barely has room for me to move anymore.

Are any of you gardening? Are you lucky enough to have something outdoors or are you limited to indoor containers like me? I'd love to hear what kind of things you are growing and if they are having much luck this year.