Roasted Tomato Soup

The last tomatoes of summer are starting to make their way to the market and I want to eat as many of them as I can. As it started to get colder tonight I decided to make some soup and use up some of the multitudes of tomatoes on the counter.

The soup was essence of tomato - roasted with a bit of red pepper, a hint of garlic, a handful of onion and lots of freshly chopped basil. Drizzled blue cheese cream sauce leftover from our pasta lunch and reheated the bread sticks from the day before. Simple but so incredibly delicious and lovely.

No recipe, just tasted and balanced.

Chicken Fingers & Cheese Bread

The other night I stumbled home from work and looked in the fridge. Nothing with which to make dinner, so I dragged my tired self to the grocery store with no clear intent. I left with a lemon, some chicken pieces and four limonata.

When I got home I STILL had nothing with which to make dinner.

So I made plain white bread and filled it with random bits of leftover cheese and green onion. Voila! Cheesebread. Remarkably delicious.

Then I threw the chicken pieces in some spiced yogurt (I wonder if leftover raita would be good for that?), then breaded and fried them up. We ate everything off of one plate with two dipping sauces.

Joyous.

Ode to a Blueberry

Photo by Kevin Lawver

I haven’t been cooking much. It’s been too hot to turn on the oven, despite the recent purchase of a saucepan that goes from stovetop to oven (how exciting). So lately dinner has consisted of a pile of salad greens on a plate with some simply cooked protein thrown on top with lemon wedges. It’s been remarkably satisfying but nothing to blog about.

What is worth blogging about is the lovely delicious and perfect blueberries we’ve been eating by the handful after (ok, and before) dinner.

Blueberries can be prohibitively expensive. Last year I didn’t eat a single one, even though they are my favorite berry, because I couldn’t bring myself to pay x amount of dollars for blueberries in a plastic container shipped from California. They didn’t inspire any confidence what so ever that they would taste like summer like the ones I used to pick at Toby Elliot’s place.

This year though I found them at the farmer’s market at the St Lawrence market. Great piles of berries freshly picked from a place I could drive to, if I had a car. And cheap enough that I didn’t feel the least bit indulgent buying them and taking them home to pop into my mouth and savor.

Why are they called bilberries in some places? Are they different? Why are they called blueberries when you bite into them they are white and rather alien eyeball looking?

Last Saturday they weren’t any blueberries. Maybe we were too late to the market that day and they’d all been gobbled up. Or maybe the season is over. Which is sad, but oddly satisfying, to know that my favorite food of the season can’t quite be reproduced by hydroponics gardens in California. I find that comforting.