All These Tomatoes?!

Hi! Part of savoring the height of summer is, for me, enjoying all the beautiful fresh produce at the markets.

I shop at my weekly farmers market, plus one of the large supermarkets has gotten on the ball and has a special "local produce'' section! Nice.

We're fortunate here in that we have not been hit with the drought that has devastated so much of our country's farming regions. The small local farms have fine corn, beans, tomatoes, field flowers.

From the market recently...

...green beans to pickle or marinate with garlic and pine nuts...

Yellow and white local corn...

And lots of tomatoes!
They'll ripen to perfection if left outside in a basket for a few days. I leave them on my deck.
But then what?

I decided to make a cheddar/ tomato pie: here
I liked this recipe because it's a real pie dough, two crust pie, not a rustic pizza thing.

Don't bother with hot tedious peel-the-tomatoes bit. They'll be just fine unpeeled!

I made a simple pie dough. Some recipes call for herbes de provence in the crust, but I kept it basic.

I made a mistake on the filling...

It is supposed to be sliced tomatoes, layered with the cheese, mayo on top. Oops. Also way too much mayo in this recipe, that is all we could taste!

But it looked nice, so I figured I'd just go with the chopped tomatoes this time.

Baked up so pretty!

You must let it stand quite a while and serve room temp, otherwise the filling just oozes away. Less mayo would help with that too.

Here's the big green salad I always say to serve with...

It made a nice no-meat dinner, with too much leftover.[very rich!] But we've been wrapping it up for beach picnic snacks and it is great leftover and cold[ish]....

Would I make again? Probably not! I like my pie crust with berries and ice cream...and I think  I'll stick to fried tomatoes and corn next time I get carried away and buy too much at the market.

Any useful tomato ideas? You just know I'll buy more. In fact I have a big bowlful on my counter right now.

BLTs for dinner! Heavy on the T's.

PS Next up on the foodie list: very simple cobbler! And/or mixed berry Splenda pie? And many kinds of pickles....


love

        lizzy

gone to the beach.......