You Say Tomato-

I say-

Oven Roasted Tomatoes

and

Fresh Tomato Salsa

Last summer was our first attempt at a garden. It went so well we decided to upgrade this year and go bigger and plant more veggies!

We did several varieties of tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, several types of lettuce, radish, sweet onions, red & green peppers, banana peppers, pickling cukes, slicing cukes and lemon cucumbers along with a couple different herbs. Our bounty this year has been amazing!

All summer long we picked fresh lettuce for salads, snacked on fresh cukes, grilled zucchini and waited for the tomatoes to start turning red!

Over the last couple weeks we got what we wished for and then some...the tomato crop is BOOMING!
So many tomatoes it was time to get cooking.
I made 3 bean chili. I made homemade marinara. I made basic tomato base to freeze for future use.
Then I needed to get a little more creative.
Then it hit me-I'll make SALSA!! This was my first attempt at making salsa and I am glad I gave it a go.
So delish!! We tested it out with a small batch and liked it SOOO much, we decided to make a giant batch. And everything (except the limes) came directly from my back yard.

Fresh Tomato Salsa

3 cups chopped tomato
1 cup chopped onion (we used sweet onion)
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
1-2 hot peppers* such as jalapeno, Serrano, habanero, banana peppers, etc. (we used banana peppers)
*the variety and amount of hot peppers you use depends on how hot you want it
1/4 cup chopped cilantro

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

combine your chopped veggies and cilantro.
Dissolve the salt, pepper and cumin into the lime juice.
Mix everything together and enjoy!
Store in the fridge.

This salsa is soo good topped on grilled chicken, over brown rice or even just by itself!
I cannot tell you how many blue corn chips we sacrificed to the salsa gods this weekend!!
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The second tomato preparation I tried was
Oven Roasted Tomatoes

Another first for me. I love roasting veggies--Roasting brings out the natural sweetness of any vegetable and it is a great way to bring variety to your regular rotation of veggies.
Not a fan of steamed asparagus? Try roasting it.
Sick of baked sweet potatoes? Chop some up and roast!
It really makes any old veggie taste completely different.

If you are a fan of sun dried tomatoes, you will certainly love this cost effective and easy alternative.

Preheat oven to 325*

All you need is a bunch of tomatoes, some olive oil, salt, pepper and maybe even some garlic cloves.

You can use any variety of tomato for roasting-
Cherry Tomato-cut in half
Roma Tomato-cut in half
Regular large Tomato-cut into quarters

Cut the tomatoes accordingly and toss with a generous amount of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. If using garlic, add a bunch of cloves to the mix.
Toss well so each tomato is coated in the oil and seasoning.

On a cookie sheet, place each tomato skin side down. You can use parchment paper or even foil to line the sheet if you desire.
Pop in the oven and roast for 2 1/2 hours.
They will shrink down in size and look a bit shriveled. The edges may brown and this is just fine.
Perfection!!

These are great in sandwiches, tossed with pasta or rice or just by themselves.

Eating in the Cave

Here we are in week two of cave dwelling (aka eating paleo for the athlete) and these are some of the yummy veggie eats we have been enjoying!

Roasted Cauliflower

This dish so simple. Chop the cauliflower, put into a glass dish, drizzle with your favorite oil, add a little pepper and roast for about 35-45 mins on 425.

The base of the slaw-shredded veggies!

Shredded carrots, cabbages, broccolli. Mix with the juice of 1 lime, some lime zest, 2 tbsp paleo mayo, a handful of cilantro, a dash of cayenne. Mix and let sit in the fridge for a while.

Spicy Slaw

Tuna stuffed avacado

Cut an avacado in 1/2-stuff with tuna or salmon, a teaspoon of another easy paleo mayo, lemon juice, chopped onion, red pepper, celery. I topped it with pea shoots and a lemon wedge.

Green Monster Salad

This is my new favorite. Mix your favorite green lettuces with baby spinach,
top with some pea shoots and cilantro dressing. 
To make the dressing mix a big handfull of cilantro, the juice of 2 lemons, a dash of pepper and a little drizzle of oil. Whiz in your blender or food processor.  

Sauteed Italian Squash with mushrooms

Small Italian squash (aka zucchini) sauteed with coconut oil and mushrooms.
I added a dash of crushed red pepper flakes to add a little zip!

We have had lots of grilled chicken, roasted chicken and then making soups and stews from the roasted chicken bones. We have been making all kinds of chili and soup recipes.

I picked up some beautiful wild trout so had that last night for dinner. YUM! and tonight is Very meaty chili with steak, ground beef, ground turkey and veggies chopped up in there (shhhhh-don't tell hubby!) 

I have to say, I am not really feeling like I am missing anything here. I feel good and my energy is just fine.

Oh, did I mention that the scale dropped a pound and a half?? Yeah. Happy about that too! Who knows, maybe I will have abs like EMZ this summer (ya, right!)

Vegging Out & an Organics Challenge!

I love to cook (and eat!) and I don't classify what I eat or my eating style into a "group" or "type"~I eat a variety of foods and try to just keep it as clean as I can (meaning not processed). I will try just about anything from Paleo to Vegan that sounds good and is good for me.

The last several weeks I have been participating in the Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge and one part of the challenge is to get in a minimum of 7 servings of fruits and veggies per day. I love veggies so this is certainly not a problem in this household BUT it has been a (fun) challenge to come up with some new dishes since I can easily find myself eating the same things over and over.



I have been reading lots of cooking website, my collection of cookbooks and magazine, vegan blogs, paleo blogs, and clean eating blogs looking for ideas. To my surprise, I have even found many delish dishes on Twitter! (Yeah, I'm on Twitter now too~you can find me here).

I discovered this Slow Cooker Smoky Pumpkin Chili recipe on Twitter.
I found this Kale Salad recipe on Sonja's blog (a side for din-din tonight!)
I stumbled upon this recipe for Bedtime Blueberries at Everyday Paleo.
Can't wait to make Eggplant & Portabello Lasagna from Jason's blog (scroll down to find this dish).
Veggie & fruit love at Marni's blog with Pineapple Spinach salad.

I even went meatless last night and just enjoyed the veggies-baby red potatoes, parsnips, carrots & fresh string beans from the pot roast I made and left the roast to hubby and Lola. Paired with a big salad it was plenty satisfying.

in my search for new veggie recipes, I read about a very interesting challenge-

Sonja has home delivery of organic veggies right to her door from-you guessed it-Door to Door Organics! Well Megan thought it might be a little cheaper to just do it yourself and went on over to her local Whole Foods to meet that challenge.

Sonja's Door To Door Organics box cost: $38.66
Megan's Whole (Paycheck) Foods trip cost: $51.18and this started the fun little challenge The Great Organic Basket Challenge or The Real World Food Challenge trying to compare prices of organic produce all over:



 
Here is the challenge-
Buy these things and total your bill.

I thought it would be fun to try and play along. But the challenge would be getting it all in ONE STOP. I usually make several stops at several different places to get what I want and save money. I shop at Trader Joe's, Hannaford, Shaw's and my local health food store-New Morning and my local Asian Market. Yes, this is lots of stops!!

I opted to try this challenge at my local Asian market, Tran's. They always have the best produce prices and some days I can get organic pears and apples for as little at $1/lb. I knew that Hannaford would have everything on the list but it would be close to $80.00 there and even more at Shaw's.




Produce List (ALL ORGANIC):
 -Roma Tomatoes – 5
- Avocados – 2
- Collard Greens – 1 bunch (don’t worry we’ll post recipes)
- Fennel – 1 LARGE root
- Golden Sweet Potatoes – 3 small
- Zucchini – 4
- Cucumber – 1
- Pomegranate – 2
- Anjou Pear – 2
- Kiwi – 2
- Pinova Apple – 2
- Pink Lady Apple – 2
- Navel Orange – 4
- Pea Sprouts – 1 box (also called Young Pea Greens, near the sprouts)
- Lemon – 5
- Lime – 2

How did I do??

My Bounty

-Roma tomatos- Fail. They only had vine, cherry & grape tomatos. I got a box of grape tomatos for $2.99
-Collard Greens- Another fail. But I got Kale instead. $2.99 for this as well.
-Fennel- Fail. Nothing!
-Golden sweet potatoes? ummm, not golden. Only regular-$1.49/lb= $2.56
-Zucchini-done-kind of...I only got 2. Ooops! $3.99 for the 2
-Cucumber-done! (although today it looks kind of sad) $1.89
-Pomegranate-fail. None.
-Anjou pear-I had to get 4 at $3.99 so 1/2 of that is $1.995
-Kiwi-again, had to get 4 at $2.50 so 1/2 of that is $1.25
-Apples-no Pinova or Pink Lady. I had the choice of Granny Smith, Red Delish or another variety I can't recall. I went with a bag of Red Delish at $4.99 for a 3lb bag.
-Navel Oranges-fail. Nothing organic citrus. Even the regular citrus looked kind of sad but I did get a crate of clementines and they are awesome. $5.99 for the box
-Pea Sprouts-fail. Nothing even close.
-Lemons-I got 5 but I used 2 last night for dressing! *lol* $0.79 each = $3.95
-Limes-came in bags of 4 at $2.99 per bag so 1/2 of that = $1.995

My total for the challenge was $34.60 (not including tax)
BUT
I did not get 5 of the items on the list.
AND
the most expensive thing (the crate of Clementines) were not organic.
It's looks like Sonja's Door to Door Organics won this hand-big time!

If time allows, I am going to try this challenge again at Hannaford where I know I will be able to get all the produce listed!

If you are interested in participating in this little challenge yourself it is running until 12/20-and to sweeten the deal, Sonja is throwing in some awesomely delish Justin's Almond Butter for the blog post she likes best.

I would like to know, what great fruit and veggie dishes are you lovin'?
Share the links and the veggie love :)

Happy Thursday!