Roasted Tomato Basil Soup

Not long ago, I was not a huge fan of the idea of soup during summer. It seemed to boggle my mind as to why someone would want to eat something hot, while it is hot.

Not too long ago, I got the craving for soup and made a recipe for the cookbook and it turned out that I actually loved soup in the summer. I like to eat light in the summer, I hate being really full when it is hot and humid outside, and soup is a great option and a way to take advantage of all the veggies of summer.

And who doesn't like tomato soup? I've always been a huge fan of tomato soup, but I think I have outgrown the ability to eat Campbell's canned soups. Especially with all the gorgeous tomatoes available at the farmer's market. So I decided to try my hand at making a home-made tomato soup and it wasn't bad at all. In fact, it was pretty darn tasty!


(Sorry for the crummy picture.)

The local booty legend (aka revealing my sources):
no asterisk = grocery store
+ = local produce from The Root Cellar
++ = The Peace Nook (will denote whether product is local or just from the Nook)
* = farmer's market
** = CSA
*** = Container or Community Garden
**** = the non-profit buying club, Blue Planet or Purcell Mountain Farms

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup
6 red tomatoes, cored **
1 heirloom tomato (we used a pink variety), cored *
1 yellow onion, skin removed **
1 head of garlic, top removed to expose some of the garlic clove
3-4 tbsp. canola oil
salt
pepper
1 cup veggie broth
1 cup non-dairy or cow's milk
1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped ***

Preheat oven to 400.

Drizzle oil over tomatoes, onion, and garlic. Season with salt and pepper.

Roast for about 30 minutes, turning the onion about halfway through. Be watchful, you don't want to overcook the tomato.

Peel garlic cloves and transfer the veggies and veggie broth to a blender or food process. Blend until very smooth.

Strain mixture through a wire mesh strainer into a small pan on medium heat on the stove. (We fed the left over pulp that remained after straining to the worms, and they liked it!)

Add the milk and basil and heat through.

Serve with crackers, bread, or the classic grilled cheese sandwich.

Yum!

'Til next time!

Sun-dried Tomato Pesto Pasta with Fresh Tomatoes and Sautéed Zucchini and Summer Squash

Well, I took a half day from work. We got all of our gardening supplies, transplanted peppers, an avocado tree, some wheatgrass for the kitties, and sowed a wheat/barley/oat grass mix in a small pot for them. We wanted to transplant the One Ball squash today too, but the pot is huge and we are trying to figure out some sort of "back-up drip pan". Sometimes they get overwatered, even the ones with the little catchment trays, but when you've overdone it, you've overdone it, and since the plants are going to be set on or near carpet, we wanted back up. We'll either think of something or get a different container. That one may have to be strictly "outdoors".

Anywho, after these and some other tasks were attended to, I figured I could try to catch up a little bit and do one of the three recipes I have in "backlog" to post about. In case you've all been wondering where all the basil and pasta were going (and I know how much you have), one word, pesto! This is just one of the variations we've been playing with, nothing special. Simple, fresh, and yummy - you can't beat that.

Just a reminder of the produce legend:
no asterisk = grocery store
* = farmer's market
** = CSA
*** = Container or Community Garden















This is another one of those things that nobody would eat if they only ate pretty things. :-)

Sun-dried Tomato Pesto
Makes about 1 cup

2-3 cups fresh sweet basil *
1/3 cup of walnuts
1 jar of sun-dried tomatoes, drained
1/2 cup good olive oil
6 cloves of garlic, peeled *
a couple of pinches of fresh black pepper

Combine everything in a food processor until smooth and well blended.















Sun-dried Tomato Pesto Pasta with Fresh Tomatoes and Sautéed Zucchini and Summer Squash

penne pasta *
1/2 large zucchini, chopped ***
1/2 large yellow summer squash, chopped **
1 tsp safflower or coconut oil
3-4 large tomatoes, chopped * and ***

Cook pasta according to package directions.

Heat 1 tsp safflower or coconut oil in a small skillet. Add the zucchini and squash and cook for about 10 minutes or until well cooked.

Toss pasta with a few tablespoons of the pesto (or to taste), then toss in the fresh tomatoes, zucchini, and squash.

Yum! I'm glad it is almost dinner time here!

'Til next time.

Weekly Local Booty 8/31-9/5/08

First off, I am very happy to say our oven is fixed! I was really starting to resign myself to the idea of not having one for at least the weekend. It got to be around 3:00 in the afternoon and nobody had shown up to fix it, so we phoned the office who said that they were "pretty sure" that someone was planning on stopping by. The minutes ticked by, and it got to be around 4:30, and I began looking at raw food websites and going through my thumbdrive for easy stove top recipes I have created (I have created far too many recipes, I still need to try most of them!), there was a knock on the door, and about 20 minutes later, our oven was back in action.

I am going to take something from this experience - I rely on the oven quite a bit. Having a grill, especially during the summer, would alleviate a lot of its use, but it made me think I needed to branch out, use the stove top more, and try more (mostly) raw foods - though my oven will still likely be my favorite gadget, we are such suckers for the roasted vegetable.

Anyways, on to the local grub! It's been unseasonably cool here (it feels like late October!), and, as usual it seems, rainy, I think the plants are confused. This is what we got from our container and community gardens this week.















A yellow straightneck squash (and a glass of sun tea). We were very happy that the squash was able to reach maturity considering the squash bug problem.















A jalapeno and bell pepper.















Starting from the right: roma tomatoes, a jalapeno, 3 banana peppers, butternut squash, and a couple of zucchini. I knew there was one zucchini on the plant, but was pleasantly surprised when I went back to "check-in" on the one zucchini that there were two. And the "bonus" one is actually the big one.

Here is this week's CSA quarter share:















Starting from the right: a yellow summer squash, a jalapeno, 2 mystery red peppers, another one of those mystery green peppers (I forgot to ask him what these were so I'm going to email Dan to help me identify them), a cucumber, an onion, lots of little heirloom tomatoes, more tomatoes, a green bell pepper, some apples, and cilantro.

This week's farmer's market booty ran us a whopping $31.















Starting from the right we've got: 4 red bell peppers, 2 red onions, lots of tomatoes (we really love, love tomatoes), 4 small new potatoes, 2 habaneros (Brett agreed to let me save the seeds out of these so long as I promised to mostly use them for my own food, and to use sparingly when I feed them to him - I agreed. I'm dreaming of some dried, crushed habaneros next summer!), 4 sweet potatoes (!!!), 3 cucumbers (we like cucumbers a lot too), sweet basil, locally made penne pasta, and one gigantic cantaloupe - it's HUGE!

I made a pesto pizza last weekend and somehow forgot to post about it, so I'm going to end with it. This was nothing special really, it was mostly a way of trying to use up the remaining organic all-purpose white flour that has been lurking in our cabinet for quite some time. It was really good, and the white flour is almost gone now, I could probably make one more crust with the last of it, and then we're going to figure out how to make a whole wheat (or partially whole wheat) or some other whole grain pizza crust that actually tastes good - you know, not like a slice of wheat bread, and one that has good texture. Any suggestions on recipes or types of whole grain flour to try?

Anyways, I've included my recipe in case any of you out there like white flour or have some that needs to be used up.

Just a reminder of the produce legend:
* = farmer's market
** = CSA
*** = Container or Community Garden

















Using Up the White Flour Pizza Dough
3 cups of organic, all-purpose white flour
1 small package of active dry yeast
2 tbsp olive oil
1-2 tbsp organic sugar
1 tsp salt
(you could add herbs to the dough too, I bet that would be good)
1 cup of very hot water

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Slowly add the oil and the water. It's easiest to use your hands to work the dough.

Spread out the crust on a pizza stone dusted with flour, using your fingers to pinch the dough at the edges to create a crust.

Pesto Pizza
1 Using Up the White Flour Pizza Crust
1 batch of walnut pesto (the basil and garlic were * from the farmer's market)
3 Roma tomatoes sliced ***
6 baby portobello mushrooms, sliced
1/2 a zucchini, sliced into rounds ***

Preheat oven to 375.

Spread pesto on the crust and top with tomatoes, mushrooms, and zucchini.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.

This was really yummy!

It's making me hungry! I'm off to make some sort of Mexican-ish (surprised?) hash using all the goodies we got from the farmer's market.

Oh, and we got most of our seeds in for the greens, herbs, and "kitty fodder" for our attempt at an indoor winter container garden. I'll be starting some of those goodies today, but more on that in the garden update.

'Til next time.

Veggie Sandwiches with Walnut Pesto, Roasted Beets and Walnuts, and Sautéed Beet Greens

I actually made this pesto last weekend when I got fresh sweet basil from the farmer's market. I guess I got lazy, then went off on tangents, posting about other things. I remembered as we had these sandwiches again over the weekend to use up the remaining pesto that I had never posted about it!

This is a very basic pesto recipe, nothing special. This was my first time ever making pesto at home and it turned out really well. I used walnuts instead of pine nuts in our pesto as walnuts are far more abundant in the Midwest than pine nuts and are thus much cheaper. I feel a little silly for buying walnuts though as walnut tress grow all over the place in Missouri, I'm just unsure as I don't know what, if anything, they've been sprayed with. People and their stupid chemicals have to ruin all the wild food out there.

When we had these sandwiches over the weekend, I also prepared some beets as sides. I roasted the beetroots drizzled with a little olive oil at 400(F) for about an hour and a half and tossed them with some chopped walnuts and salt and pepper. I also made Sautéed Beet Greens again, this time I used malt vinegar and it was much better, I will edit the recipe. The roasted beets and walnuts weren't the greatest. We made them better by eating the beetroots with the beet greens. It was worth a shot, but we won't be doing that with the beets again.

Anyways, had I not been lazy, I would have made the focaccia that Jessy posted about awhile back, but alas I was being lazy, so both times we made these sandwiches, we just bought a petite loaf of multigrain bread.

Walnut Pesto

2-3 cups fresh sweet basil

1/3 cup walnuts

3 cloves of garlic, peeled

1/2 cup good olive oil

pinch white pepper

pinch salt

Combine all ingredients together in a food processor.

I slathered some pesto on both pieces of the bread (which was warm), I layered on fresh spinach, onions, artichoke hearts (these are optional, we used them the first time we had these as we had a can lying around, we didn't use artichoke hearts the second time we had these), and tomato.

These were the sides. I really like beet greens a lot. I'm thinking that over the winter, we should attempt to grow baby beets, so we'll still get lots of greens, but won't have near as large of beet roots to work with.

'Til next time.