Tuesday, 21 September 2021

Revisiting Flash-fried Cherry Tomatoes

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summary: we have cherry tomatoes galore thanks to our neighbours; tomato sandwiches are great; flash-fried tomatoes are equally great; happily, the back lane garden is flourishing; reminder about when to pick tomatoes

[O]ur brilliant neighbours have planted cherry tomatoes!! Red and gold ones! […] In spite of having been caught red-handed (errmmmm… red/gold-juiced-handed and pocketed) a few weeks ago, look what our very forgiving neighbours gave us the other day!
 
– me, blog from OUR kitchen | Delving into the archives: Flash-fried Cherry Tomatoes, 25 August 2020

This spring, our lovely neighbour planted cherry tomatoes again in her raised garden beds and found she had an extra cherry tomato seedling. She gave it to us to plant in our back lane garden – because of us being caught last year stealing cherry tomatoes from their garden. (In our defence, only one of them even likes tomatoes :!: :!: so really, we were doing them a favour to take them, weren’t we?)

This little basket may look a little sparse. However, this is from just one day’s picking – how the basket looked AFTER we had removed several to make flash-fried tomatoes for dinner.

Cherry Tomatoes 2021

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Thursday, 16 September 2021

Wild Wool Roll Bread (BBB September 2021)

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BBB: Let's Keep Baking summary: recipe for Wild Wool Roll Bread; Nailed it; chickpeas to the rescue; Blablablabla; information about Bread Baking Babes;

Baa baa, Black Sheep, have you any wool?

Wool Roll Bread

Bread Baking Babes (BBB): Wool Roll Bread

Here it is the middle of September, when the evening light is golden and the nights are getting cool. You know that wonderful feeling you get from getting out a favourite sweater, all soft and warm and fluffy?

That’s what I thought this month’s bread should be like.

Ha. It turned out to be more like reaching up to the top shelf into the closet and pulling down that heavy, scratchy, oily wool sweater – the one with the unfortunate random holes on the back, sides and sleeves – the one that you wish had been completely consumed by the moths’ children. (How could moth larvae even want to eat such a harsh substance?! Is it because their mothers telling them they need the roughage?) (continue reading →)

Friday, 10 September 2021

Summer Squash with Bacon (bookmarked)

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Summer Squash and Bacon summary: Katie’s (Thyme for Cooking) Summer Squash with Bacon; bookmarked recipe; who knew that other summer squashes were so fabulous? …maybe we should try growing this kind instead of zucchini; bounty from the neighbours, including the sweetest corn; edit: and spider….

Thanks to excellent neighbours, we were suddenly given stunning perfectly ripe field tomatoes, a yellow flesh(!!) watermelon, a red pepper, beautiful corn, and two yellow summer squashes!

Summer Squash and Corn

(So sorry, we neglected to photograph the tomatoes, red pepper, and watermelon. Silly us. Especially the watermelon that looked quite normal on the outside but was a beautiful golden colour inside. I’m afraid that, as usual, we were too busy eating them.)

Bookmarked RecipesBookmarked Recipe: Summer Squash with Bacon

Having never seen yellow summer squash like this, we looked around on the internet to find out what we should do.

There were recipes for ribbons salad, roasted rounds with or without parmesan cheese, grilled sliced squash, casseroles laced with cheese, stuffed squash, and STOP RIGHT THERE: Summer Squash (Courgette) with Bacon ⟸ recipe

A bit of salty bacon and sweet red onion adds big flavor to simply sautéed summer squash.
 
– Katie, Thyme for Cooking | Summer Squash (Courgette) with Bacon

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Tuesday, 7 September 2021

Grapes aren’t just for pie…

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summary: Coronation grapes are in season; grape sauce is wonderful on grilled chicken; local carrots and corn; garden herbs galore; nasturtiums are finally blooming;

We had a few too many grapes to put into the best pie in the world. Of course, we could have just eaten those last few grape treelets as is; coronation grapes are wonderfully sweet/tart.

Coronation Grapes 2021

But instead, remembering the amazing grape marinade we made in 2015, as well as this past July’s sour cherry sauce for grilled chicken, T decided to make grape sauce from reduced chicken stock, red wine, and grapes.

Grapes and Chicken (continue reading →)