Cherry Tomatoes with Fresh Herbs over Pressure Cooker Polenta

Cherry Tomatoes with Fresh Herbs Served over

Pressure Cooker Polenta

 No, these sweet beasties did not get any cooked tomatoes with herbs served over polenta.  However, the one on the far right in the photo is the biggest tomato thief in the history of all dogs!  If I allow her into the garden with me she will walk right up to the tomato plant and pick off the juiciest reddest most ripe tomato in the whole garden.  And then she'll help herself to the next one.  Almost as bad as a gopher but much much cuter!

Tonight we had the easiest and most lovely summer dish... Sauteed cherry toms with fresh herbs.  Easy peasy.

Sauteed Cherry Toms

with Fresh Herbs

List of ingredients:

 -  About 2 cups of cherry tomatoes (red or orange), rinsed and stems pulled off

 -  1 or more tablespoons of olive oil

 - 1/2 cup or more chopped fresh herbs (I used mint, basil, and parsley)

 - salt and pepper

1.  Put the olive oil in the saute' pan and heat over low.

2.  Add the cherry toms and cook until they begin to burst and split apart.

3.  Add the fresh herbs and stir to incorporate.  Add some salt and pepper.

4.  Serve immediately over warm polenta. (See polenta recipe below)

 Here's the pan of orange and red cherry tomatoes with olive oil and salt cooking over low heat while I get the polenta started.

A pile of fresh herbs to be chopped and added to the tomatoes near the end of cooking time. Mint, basil, and parsley. I usually buy my mint at the Farmer's market and I always have some left over.  I used the extra mint in an amazing super green smoothie with watermelon, strawberries, almond milk, cashews, parsley, cucumber, and kale.  This is a smoothie you will love!

Pressure Cooker Polenta

(from "Recipes from an Ecological Kitchen" by Lorna J. Sass)

List of ingredients:

 - 4 1/2 cups water

 - 1 teaspoon salt

 - 1 cup yellow corn grits

 - 1 tablespoon olive oil

 - 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary or Italian herbs

1.  Bring the water and salt to boil in the cooker.  Gradually sprinkle in the corn grits while stirring with a long handled spoon.  Stir in the oil and herbs.

2.  Lock the lid into place and bring to high pressure.  Lower the heat enough to maintain high pressure and cook for 5 minutes.  Allow the pressure to come down naturally for 10 minutes or so.  Quick release any remaining pressure.  Remove the lid, tilting it away from you to allow any excess steam to escape.

3.  Stir the polenta well to incorporate any liquid on top.  You can continue to cook and stir if it is too watery.

4.  Serve polenta in bowls with cherry tom mixture dumped on top.

Now, listen, some of you are afraid of using a Pressure Cooker... I was too and I have even have a bad pressure cooker experience in my old tiny little kitchen in the Seabright house.  There were yellow split peas decorating my entire kitchen - all the cabinets, the counters, the sink, the frig.  It was awful and a total mess to clean up and I had a new born baby at the time so I was totally absolutely sleep deprived (which may have been the reason I had the pressure cooker issue?????)  At that point I decided to spend the money and buy a good well made reliable pressure cooker and I have never looked back.  If you love to make soups, stock, polenta, grain, or risotto you really need to get yourself one of these fine kitchen tools!

If you want to make polenta the traditional way, please feel free to do that, as well.  The cherry tomato dish could be served over pasta or rice but it is pretty freakin' amazing over polenta.  Well worth it!

We had the cherry tom saute' over polenta with a side of baked yam and a bowl of Potage St. Germaine soup ( lettuce and pea soup - yep - lettuce and pea amazing soup!)

Totally delicious!

 And the labs were perfectly content with the fact that they didn't get any polenta.  Really. (not)

3 Bean Crock Pot Chili with Corn Dumplings

3 Bean Crock Pot Chili with Corn Dumplings

I woke up yesterday morning with the whole day ahead of me.... it was one of those rare mid week day off summer mornings.  I put the ingredients together for a crock pot chili and cornmeal dumplings. This left me the rest of the day to do what I wanted -

Yep, that's what I wanted.  This is my wonderful road bike.  She and I spent the morning cruising the hills of Santa Cruz with another friend while the chili cooked!

Three Bean Chili with Cornmeal Dumplings

(This recipe is inspired from "Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker")

Chili:

 - Olive oil (1 - 2 tablespoons)

 - 1 large onion, chopped

 - 1 red bell pepper, chopped

 - 2 or more cloves garlic, chopped

 - 3 - 4 tablespoons tomato paste

 - 1 or more tablespoon chili powder (I only use one because our daughter still lives with us and if I use more than 1 it is simply too spicy for her)

 - One 28 ounce can of chopped fire roasted tomatoes (now listen, it's the summer so you can totally roast your own fresh toms and dump them in.... it just takes a bit longer and the crock pot is supposed to make everything take less time! I used canned this time)

 - 1 can black beans

 - 1 can pinto beans

 - 1 can kidney beans

 - 2 ears fresh corn, corn cut off the cob (when fresh corn is not available, you can use frozen or canned)

 - 1 1/2 cups water or vegie broth

 - 1 teaspoon salt

 - pepper to taste

Dumplings:

 - 2/3 cup all purpose flour

 - 1/3 cup cornmeal

 - 2 teaspoons baking powder

 - 1/8 teaspoon salt

 - 1 ear of fresh corn, corn cut off the cob

 - 1/2 cup soy or nut milk

 - 2 tablespoons olive oil

 - optional teaspoon or two of fresh chopped herbs like chives, parsley, etc.

1.  Heat the oil in a large skillet over low to medium heat and add chopped onion, garlic, and red bell pepper.  Cook until softened.  Add the chili powder and the tomato paste and mix it all together.

2.  Transfer the mixture to the crock pot.  Add the tomatoes, beans, water, corn, salt and pepper.  Cook for 6 hours or so on low.  It can totally cook longer on low without any problem so those of you with an 8 hour job, no worries!  Just leave it in the crock pot while you work and it will be ready when you get home!

3.  To make the dumplings, combine the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, and fresh herbs (if using).  Stir in the fresh corn, milk, and oil until just combined.  Don't over mix or it will stiffen and the dumplings may be dense and hard when cooked.

4.  Turn the slow cooker to High and drop the dumpling batter by the spoonful onto the top of the chili.  Cover and cook for about 30 more minutes - on high until the dumplings are cooked through.  This gives you enough time to make a big big big green salad!

Onions, garlic, red bell pepper in the saute' pan with yummy olive oil.

My good friend, Laurie, made me this chili olive oil.  I used half regular olive oil and half chili olive oil for the saute'.

If you have time, I highly recommend roasting fresh tomatoes in your oven at 400 degrees.  If you are feeling at all rushed or trying to throw this together in the early morning while drinking your coffee and getting ready for work, then use canned.  These were actually really yummy.

You can see my cookbook behind the crock pot filled with beans.  This is a well used recipe - the pages are all bent, warped, and spilled upon!  Look at all those beans.  Think fiber, folks, think fiber!  Oh, and protein!  Lots of delicious plant based protein.

Here's how the chili looked prior to me putting the lid on and forgetting about it for the next many hours.

Dumplings dumped on top of chili.  It only takes about 30 minutes on High to cook these puppies!

I think it would be marvelous to add chopped kale, chard, collards, broccoli, carrots... any vegetable to this chili if you are looking to add even more veg to your diet. I would just put it  all in at the start of cooking.

We each ate at least two servings of this chili.  We paired it with a fabulous salad of butter lettuce, lemon cucumbers, fresh garden tomatoes, strawberries, and sunflower seeds with a dressing of flax oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper.  Everyone was SUPER satisfied.  There's enough chili left over for lunch today!  Yay!

Summer Tomato Cucumber Salad

Summer Tomato Cucumber Salad

This year my tomato plants are looking MARVELOUS!  Last summer wasn't the best  season in my garden for tomatoes.  Some years are simply great and others seem to suck.  The only thing really SUCKING about my garden this year is the damn gopher who is now eating my tomato plants.  Well, actually, he doesn't eat the plant. He, or she,  gets up over and into the gallon gopher cage - yes, the gopher cage that I have had to add to the gopher wired planting box - and cuts through the bottom vines.  Thanks, you stinking little varmint.  Why?  You don't even eat the tomatoes? You just ruin the whole thing for us.  Ah, country livin'.

I have one really beautiful Paul Robson heirloom tomato plant and I thought it was safe.  This afternoon my husband found it mutilated.  This is such sad news because it is my favorite of the season so far.  Luckily I had a really big juicy ripe Paul Robson from that plant sitting on the counter waiting to be used for dinner.  (And now I have about 2 dozen really beautiful unripe green Paul Robson's that the gopher gave us...... what do you do with a bunch of really big beautiful green tomatoes???)

For dinner tonight I made a delicious Tomato Cucumber Salad.

Tomato Cucumber Salad Recipe

feeds 3 - 5 hearty souls

4 Lemon Cucumbers

1 Large ripe beautiful tomato

Small bunch of fresh parsley

Small handful of black kalamata olives

1 avocado

Olive oil

Red wine vinegar

 Sea salt and pepper to taste

1. Chop the cucumbers into bite sized pieces.  I like mine to be a bit chunky.  I really love lemon cucumbers and my cucumber plants are producing like crazy but you can use any type of cucumber.
2. Chop the tomato into bite sized pieces.  Again, I like my bites to be a bit chunky.  
3. Chop a handful of parsley.  I used Italian and curly parsley out of my garden.  I would say about 1/4 cup chopped parsley. Really, though, any fresh herb will work in this salad - mint, cilantro, some rosemary, sage?
4. Chop or slice a small handful of kalamata olives without the pits.  Again, probably 1/4 cup.
5. Add 1 or more tablespoons of olive oil and pour some red wine vinegar in.  Stir the bowl of cucs, toms, parsley, olive oil and vinegar gently to coat.  Add sea salt and pepper to taste. Let sit  for a bit (if you can!) to marinate.
6. Chop an avocado into bite sized pieces and add to the salad after it has marinated.

Here's a photo of the beautiful colors inside a Paul Robson heirloom tomato.  Almost a maroon purple red with tinges of green.  Super delicious, juicy, amazing!

Organic red potatoes cooking up.

My wok full of sesame oil, chopped shallot, chopped garlic, carrots from the Farmer's market, and tons of chard and kale from our garden.

I paired the fresh summer tomato cucumber salad with our most favorite go to plant based comfort food dinner:

Mashed potatoes

Vegan gravy

Sauteed greens

and Seitan 

As a disclaimer I want to say.... we just got back from backpacking in Yosemite where we had very limited food, carried heavy packs, hiked at high elevation, and did a loop of over 25 miles and nothing we ate was fresh.  So let's just say that we enjoyed ourselves immensely and ate platefuls of food tonight!  All bellies are happy at this house (even the dogs who ate the kale stems while I was cooking)

Fresh Summer Tomato Soup

 Fresh Summer Tomato Soup

I have about 15 tomato plants in my garden this summer.  There are lots and lots of beautiful green tomatoes but nothing is red yet.  Yet.  Soon there may be so many I don't quite know what do to with them!

I've been hankering for a fresh tomato soup and I had my short list at the Farmer's Market on Wednesday - tomatoes and basil.  Ok, ok, I also bought lettuce, cabbage, red bell peppers, corn on the cob, fresh spring onions, peaches, a flat of strawberries and lots of lovely cucumbers!

 I bought several pounds of beautiful red, yellow, and purple tomatoes. 

I used only 7 ingredients in this soup:

fresh organic heirloom tomatoes

fresh basil

garlic

onion

olive oil

salt and pepper

1.  Layer the following in a Vitamix or high speed blender:

---1 yellow onion, quartered

---3 - 9 cloves of garlic (I will use less than 9 next time)

---Several handfuls of fresh basil leaves

---3 - 9 tablespoons olive oil

---Chopped fresh tomatoes, with the skin, piled to the top of the blender container (I actually added a few more after I blended)

2.  Blend until smooth.  Taste and adjust.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

3.  Put this fabulous concoction into a pot and heat slowly for 10 minutes or so.  Absolutely delicious!

Here's the soup in the pan.  You can see the mixture of yellow and red tomatoes.

 The bowl of soup!

We ate it with huge slices of sourdough whole wheat (from the Farmer's Market), baked yams, and a huge green salad.

And if you are interested.....

 Look at the peaches I bought at the Farmer's Market.  They are absolutely amazing!

And I don't spend all my time working out, cooking, and gardening.....

 Here's a messenger bag I made for one of my daughter's best friends.  It was a graduation gift.

It's lined with a delicate polka dot cotton!

Happy eating everyone!  Enjoy the summer bounty!