This time of the year is my favorite (just in case I haven’t said it enough already), and one of the reasons I love it so much is the produce. Namely, the exquisite tomatoes.
As I’ve already said, I do not have fortune of having the green thumb possessed by my mother, aunt, and cousin. I planted 3 tomato plants this year and ended up with a meager 5 tomatoes. My mom, however, planted 2 tomato plants and has produced enough tomatoes to keep all of us in caprese salad for a couple of weeks now, with no indication of slowing production.
There are times that I find myself with more tomatoes than I know what to do with. When this happens, I worry that these lovely homegrown tomatoes will go bad, as one can only eat so much tomato salad.
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One thing you may not know about me yet: I have a completely black thumb. I can’t grow anything. I have had a pot of live basil in my kitchen that I have had to replace no less than eight times in the two years I’ve lived here. All I have wanted is to get this stuff to grow and flourish. But I just can’t get myself to step up and take good enough care of it. I did ok for a few months this year, but only because I had two weekly reminders on my phone to water it. A few moths ago, something happened with my phone, it glitched and lost the reminders, and the basil bit the dust (again).
Whatever day this recipe walked off the Turbinado Sugar package and into our family was a really good day. Honestly, this was sortof the first thing I ever liked that had actual Cayenne Pepper in it! Not only did I like them, I actually REQUESTED them from my mom whenever the Autumn leaves started changing. In law school, I made these for my roommate one year, and forever-more, they will be deemed “Yum” because that’s what he and all his friends called them.
My mom makes the best flavored martinis. For some reason, she’s just super good at it. I’m always a bit shy to try a new cocktail recipe. I think it’s probably because liquor is so expensive that I’m afraid of messing it up, so I seem to get one right and just stick with it for long periods of time. Haha. My mom is awesome at it though. She finds a flavor she likes, adopts it, adapts it, and it comes out tasting delicious!
Work/School/Week night dinners, as you all know, are often my hardest. I know most people feel this way. But one person who was always great at this was my mom. Most of the recipes I share with you guys on Tuesdays are hers. There was nothing better than coming home from rehearsal, or dance class, or studying to a nice home-cooked meal that, thanks to my dad’s high cholesterol, was also always super healthy.
About ten years ago, I worked for a catering company here in Reno that seriously had the most amazing food. Mind you, this was before I actually cooked at all. But they had three dishes that were my absolute favorites, and two were cookies. I loved this cookie so much that I asked the owner for the recipe and I have used it ever since.
I have to say, the Fall is probably the one time a year I actually have an easy time coming up with recipes for “Meatless Mondays.” The harvest is abundant and I love the produce which comes out of it. Tomatoes are no exception. A good tomato can seriously make me fall in love. I had an acquaintance in law school who found out I loved food. He offered me a bag of fresh, home-grown tomatoes from his family’s Napa garden, and I’m not sure I would be exaggerating if I said this was the moment I knew we had to be friends. He brought me so many tomatoes that year I had to make pasta with tomatoes three times just to make sure I didn’t let any of the beautiful, multi-colored fruit go to waste–and that was with eating salads and raw tomatoes almost every day for approximately 2-3 weeks in the interim.
I have to say, I’m sortof impressed with myself that The Hungry Dater already has so many Chicken recipes: i.e. two. There are two. After months of posting, I have two recipes for the most consumed meat produce in America. Hahaha. Here’s the big secret: I don’t like chicken. I think it’s dry and stringy, and honestly, I just feel there are so many better things to eat that I just don’t like it. I think I probably ate so pre-frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts back in college that I got seriously burned out. Not that that’s a good excuse, those are often gross. But also, I don’t make it often because I seem to have a fear of making it incorrectly and getting sick–even after all these years of learning to cook. Hahaha. I’m sure that’s left over from college as well.