Shrimp Quesadilla

shrimp quesadilla with spicy mayo

We have lots of chili peppers yellow grape tomatoes in our garden, so for a quick dinner, we decided to make quesadillas.

I grilled a few shrimp, then chopped them, onions, tomatoes and peppers, and tossed everything (with cheese) onto a flour tortillia. We mixed sirracha (spicy chili paste) and mayo to make a spicy mayo topping.

Simple and delicious.

Bruschetta Take 2

heirloom tomato bruschetta

About a month ago, I shared the bruschetta Pat made, where he used our ninja food processor to chop raw veggies and then baked the whole thing, but I didn't like the look of it as much, and we have a way better selection of tomatoes in the garden now, so I decided to make another go of it.

I bought fresh bread from the grocery store (it was still warm!), cut it in half and grilled it to give it a crunch.

While the bread toasted, I chopped garlic and onions and sauteed them in a little oil, until the onions started to soften. Then I chopped my heirloom tomatoes and tossed them in the pot for about a minute.

I put some parmesan cheese right on the warm bread, then put the tomato mixture on top. I finished with just a little ghost pepper salt.

This had such a great roasted, rich flavor, where the one from last month had more of a bite from the more lightly cooked onions and garlic.

Green Beans

best green beans

Today I'm keeping it simple. I picked about a pound of beans from the garden, and while I'm sure there are plenty of ways to prepare them, I always believe simple is best.

Just steam them until they are almost cooked, then toss them in olive oil, salt and pepper until they start to turn brown. This gives them a nice roasted flavor, but without turning the oven on.

Cheese Plate

cheesy dessert

So, I usually try to first eat from my garden, and second, eat local, but sometimes I can't resist. These cheeses are all from Trader Joe's, and are from all over western Europe. But, I figure, they know what they're doing when it comes to cheese, and its ok to bend the rules occasionally.

So for dessert, we decided to have a trio of Goudas. I know, yum. From left to right, its a 1,000 day aged Gouda, a honey goat milk Gouda, and a three year aged Gouda. I love the sweeter goat milk honey Gouda, and Pat loved the crunchiness of the three year aged Gouda (it's like candy!)

To stick with my ideal locavore diet, I added some local honey, peaches and jam. (See, I try.)

Corn and Roasted Red Pepper Soup

corn, roasted red pepper and tomato soup

I know that summer and hot soup aren't always synonymous with one another, but soup is so easy to make, and makes great leftovers to take to work, so I decided to crank up the AC, and pretend it was soup weather.

To start, I took two red peppers and cut each into four, flat pieces. Skin side up, I put them in the broiler for a few minutes, until the skin was blistered and black. Besides adding a nice roasted flavor, doing this makes it easy to get the skin off (which can leave a weird texture in a puréed soup.)

While this cooked, I put on a small pot of water for the tomatoes. Then I coarsely chopped one medium onion, and three large garlic cloves, and set them aside. I then cut the corn kernels off of three ears of corn, and set that aside separately.

By now, the peppers were done, so I carefully (they are very hot) peeled off the skin and added the pepper flesh to the bowl with the corn.

Now, I prepared my tomatoes concassé by cutting a shallow X into the bottom of each tomato, and dropped them into the boiling water. This lightly cooks the tomato, and also makes it easy to get the skin off and seeds out. Because the smaller heirloom tomatoes in my garden are getting ripe, I used a variety of grape and cherry tomatoes, with the largest one just bigger than a golf ball. Using this method, smaller tomatoes will float when they are ready to be peeled. Once the tomatoes were done being peeled and seeded, I added them to the reserved corn and peppers.

In my soup pot, I heated about a tablespoon of olive oil and added my chopped onion. Once the onion started to turn translucent, I added the garlic and stirred for about 30 seconds, then added the corn, peppers, tomatoes, about six cups of vegetable stock, salt and pepper, both to taste. (For a thinner soup, feel free to use more vegetable stock.)

I turned the heat to low, and cooked for about an hour.

Once the corn was soft, I scooped out some of the corn and vegetable mix, trying to mostly get the corn, and set it aside while I used my immersion blender to blend the soup as smooth as I could. After the soup was puréed, I added the reserved corn back in to give the soup some texture.

This surprisingly delicious vegan soup made about four servings.

Caprese Salad

caprese salad

I know its super simple, but its so good. The mozzarella is made fresh at the local grocery store, and the basil and tomatoes come from the garden.

I used purple, sweet and lemon basil.  I use just a little bit of lemon basil, and it adds such a nice hint of citrus.

We have around 12 different types of heirloom tomatoes in the garden, and I love that each variety tastes a little different.

Finish with salt, pepper, olive oil, balsamic, and enjoy.

Pepper Poppers

stuffed hungarian wax peppers

We have a pretty good variety of peppers that are really starting to grow in the garden. I like hot peppers, but can only take them in small doses, so these Hungarian Wax peppers are perfect for my taste. They are similar to jalapenos on the Scoville scale, but I've noticed that there seems to be a pretty large variance, one being much hotter than the next. (Or at least for the ones growing in our garden.)

So when I was trying to decide what to have for a snack, I decided that stuffing a few peppers was a great idea.

I mixed up some low fat cream cheese, pecorino romano, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Then I cut one side of each pepper, so I could take a few seeds out, and put the stuffing in.

At this point, I was planning on dipping the peppers in egg and breading them, but we were out of eggs, so I switched course.

I skewered all of the peppers together, cut side up, put them in a pan with cooking spray, covered them (which helped to steam them and make them softer faster), and cooked them for about five minutes.

When they came out, the bottoms were a little dark, and the cheese was starting to melt out, but the peppers were tender, delicious, and easy to eat. I topped mine with some bread crumbs to give it a little crunch, but they didn't stay on very well when I actually ate the peppers, so that isn't really necessary.