Tomato Pie

One of my favorite websites is Kevin Lee Jacobs' A Garden for the House. I discovered this site only a few months ago when searching for gardening sites. It is indeed a great site for gardening tips, but so much more. It has amazing recipes! In the past couple of months, I have made three of Kevin's recipes with great success: Lettuce Soup, Blue Cheese Dressing and, most recently, Tomato Pie.

I had never heard of tomato pie before. I had heard of The Tomato Tart, but I just thought that was my friend Sabrina and her site. About a week ago a recipe for tomato pie appeared on Kevin's site and I just had to try it! All I could think of for a week was how much I wanted to try this tomato pie! Well, I did last Saturday and I wasn't disappointed. It was delicious! Not only that, it was beautiful. Look at that picture! It has to be one of the most beautiful things I have ever made.

I made a few modifications to my version of the recipe based on a few others I researched online, but this recipe is all Kevin. My changes are minimal. I used two cheeses, added a shallot and drained the tomatoes a bit. Most recipes call for a pie shell rather than biscuits, but I loved the biscuits. I think they make the dish. Try to get the freshest tomatoes you can find, but I will be honest and say I only had time to go to the supermarket and this pie still was delicious.

Ingredients

• 10 refrigerated biscuits from package (I used Pillsbury Grands Jr.) 
• 2 large tomatoes, thinly sliced 
• 1 shallot, minced
• 1/3 cup Fresh basil, sliced thinly (about 10 leaves) 
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1 cup extra-sharp cheddar cheese, grated 
• 1 cup gruyere cheese, grated 
• Salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375. 
2. Slice the tomatoes into 1/4 inch thick slices and place in a colander. Sprinkle with salt and allow to drain for 10 minutes. 
3. Spray a 9-inch pie plate with non-stick spray. 
4. Press the biscuits against the sides and bottom of the plate and form a crust. 
5. Layer the tomato slices on the dough and give them a couple grinds of pepper. 
6. Sprinkle the shallot on top of the tomatoes evenly. 
7. Sprinkle on the basil. 
8. Combine the grated cheese and mayonnaise together. 
9. Spread the mixture on top of the tomatoes. 
10. Bake for 30 minutes until lightly browned. 
11. Let stand for 30 minutes before serving.

Makes 6 servings

Homemade Pasta

Last weekend I decided to make a special dinner - homemade pasta! I have made it a couple of times before and we always enjoy it. There is nothing quite like the texture and flavor of homemade pasta.

I always think it's going to be hard to make fresh pasta, but it's really not. It's just flour and eggs and a little water. You can do most of your kneading in a food processor or a stand up mixer. I make a basic pasta with the following ingredients.

• 4 large eggs 
• 1/2 cup water 
• 3 1/2 cup sifted all-purpose flour 
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

All you do is place all the ingredients in the mixer bowl and mix at Speed 2 for 30 seconds using the flat beater.

Swap out the flat beater for the dough hook. Knead at Speed 2 for 2 minutes.

Remove dough from bowl and hand knead for 1 to 2 minutes, folding the past over each time.

Let dough rest for 20 minutes to 2 hours.

Divide dough into 6 pieces and processing using your pasta machine or attachment.

I personally have the KitchenAid KPRA Pasta Roller Attachment. It might be a bit pricey, but I love it. It comes with one pasta roller and two pasta cutters - one for angel hair pasta and one for fettuccine. It's a great addition to my appliances. But I do admit it's a pricey commitment. If that is too expensive for you all you need to do is go to Amazon and they have a large collection of hand crank pasta rollers starting from about $30 to about $70. I would go for the best one you can afford at the time. If you aren't quite sure you are going to make pasta often, you might go with a lower priced model and if you become a pasta wizard you can always upgrade. I will say that since I only make pasta two or three times a year, I would probably go with a mid-priced machine. I have used them in cooking class and they work wonderfully.

Once you have your machine you flatten dough and roll the pasta through the maching at the 1 setting, fold it then run it through again at the next setting. Starting at 1 you move up to the thickness you want. I was making fettuccine so I went to 6. You only fold it the first time. When you have reached the desired thickness hang your pasta on a pasta rack while you work on the next piece. You really do need one of these and they are not that expensive. Mine was $13.50.

Now it's time to cut the pasta. I used my fettuccine pasta attachment, but you can also use a pasta cutter, which costs about $20.00. Cut your pasta and you are ready to go!

The next thing you need to think about is sauce. This is always a hard part for me. I want something very simple, but tasty. I choose two sauces from my favorite pasta book, The Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles by Cooks Illustrated. This is an amazing book. I will write more about this next time.

I made a salmon cream sauce and a simple olive oil, fresh tomato and summer squash sauce. Delicious! I will say, though, that the olive oil sauce was my favorite since it let the pasta be the star in the dish.

So, that's my little pasta making adventure. All together it took me about an hour to make pasta, but it's really worth it. There is a huge difference between store bought and fresh so I really recommend it. It's a bit pricey to start out, but once you have the equipment, you will love making pasta.

One Year Ago This Week

My time goes by quickly. It was only one year ago this week that we moved Aurora to San Bruno Skill Nursing. Just a month earlier Aurora had a stroke and was in a facility in Pacifica.  The day of the move I went to get help her get ready and followed the van as we moved her to her new home. She was so jolly about everything even though I am sure it must have been scary. What touched me was how much she trusted me to be there for her and that everything would be alright.

Aurora and I weren't buddies prior to all this happening. In fact, I had only seen her three times in eight years. It's not that we didn't like each other, there was just indifference on both our parts. Well, I will say mine. I don't think she knew much about me. Everyone has their own way of living life and we decided on ours. We weren't keeping it a secret, we just weren't throwing it in her face. Our life our choice. It worked.

When Aurora had her stroke Joey asked me for help and I was more than happy to. We decided to move in together and share the task of taking care of his mom. She would live downstairs and we would live upstairs. Boy, did we have a lot to do!  When it became evident that Aurora was better off where she was we just kept plugging along with the house. It was a good distraction and a tribute to the hard work she originally put into it.

One thing we thought would be helpful for Aurora was to have visitors every day. Joey in the afternoon and me in the evening. We have stuck to that plan for the past year. Joey has been amazing, never missing a day. He's there every single afternoon no matter what. I go almost every day after work, but there are some days I need to go straight to the city. I enjoy my visits with Aurora. We talk, watch TV, play games or sometimes we just sit with each other.  It reminds me of riding to my great grandmother's house after school when I was little. We did about the same things.

So, one year has past and I must say that we are blessed. All of us. We have new life now and are a little family. The folks in the nursing home think that Aurora and I have been close forever.  In a way she has.  As she says, "We have always been friends, we just didn't know it."

We Have a Pigeon

It's no secret that Joey and I are in to birds. I got my first bird in college and had him for 20 years. Since Joey and I have been together our flock has slowly grown. First it was a lovebird, then two, then a conure, some finches and finally our parrotlet Mojoe. Oh, then a few more finches.  Yes, we like birds.

When we started to clean up our garden we added some bird feeders and bird baths so we could enjoy the birds outside as well. There are all sorts of little birds that come and visit us sometime times very exotic ones, but mostly just little sparrows and the like.  We did have a flock of ring necked doves that hung out with us for a bit on their way somewhere, but mostly we just have our neighborhood birds. Oh, and pigeons.  We have also managed to attract a flock of local pigeons.  These are just your normal grey feral pigeons. While they are a bit of a nuisance, they come with the territory. I didn't pay them much mind until one day I noticed something different. Off to the side of these grey pigeons was a bright while and grey pigeon. I knew she was different the minute I walked outside and all the pigeon flew away except her. Just just looked at me as if she knew me.

For the next few weeks this pigeon would follow me around the yard as I did my yard work. She wasn't what I would call tame, but she wasn't afraid of me, either. She kept her distance, but was always close enough to me that I knew she was there. I named her Ellen.

As time passed it became apparent that Ellen was here to stay. I went out and fed her each morning. Putting the food closer and closer to me. Joey fed her every evening when he got home. The other day she even ate out of my hand. As we started to get attached to this bird we also started worrying. What would Ellen do in winter? Would she get cold? I decided to call Mickacoo, a local pigeon rescue group.

Elizabeth explained to me that Ellen was a domesticated homing pigeon that apparently got lost or decided not to go home. While Ellen could withstand the elements, she has no knowledge of how to forage for food on her own. It's most likely that the food Joey and I were giving her is what was keeping her alive. She said homing pigeons want a home and Ellen has probably decided she would like that home to be with us. At first I wasn't so sure I wanted to keep a pigeon, but it was too late. I was already attached.

So, Joey and I keeping Ellen and are in the process of making her a home. We already made the main part of her home with a chicken coop we are converting. Some folks think we are crazy.  Well, most folks do, but I don't care. I am getting old enough that I deserve to be a little crazy! I've earned it. Besides, we didn't choose to have a pigeon. Ellen chose us.

Cookbook Success!

Last Friday I wrote about choosing the recipes for my entire meal from my cookbook library. Well, it was a huge success! My meal couldn't have been any better. It wasn't the fanciest looking meal, but it was tasty.

The burgers were really tender. I had never used my broiler before and they are not all created equal!  My new stoves broiler cooks much more evenly.  I didn't really follow the recipe very closely. I think you could take any burger recipe, mold them into 1-inch patties and you would be set. I broiled them for six minutes, turned them over and cooked them for six more. Then I topped them with a tomato slice and some mozzarella cheese and broiled them for two more minutes until brown and bubbly. They were delicious.

The ratatouille was delicious.  A simple recipe is the way to go, and the recipe from The Joy of Cooking was perfect. I have ignored that book for so long thinking it wasn't fancy enough, but it's just what I needed.

The star of the show had to be the Mac & Cheese from The Best Light Recipe by Cook's Illustrated. This is something I will make again and again. I can't recommend this book, or any Cook's Illustrated cookbook, enough. I love reading the explanations on how they came up with one technique or ingredient over the other. I was worried that this wouldn't taste like the full-fat version, but it did. I see no reason to make Mac & Cheese any other way.

With the success of dinner last weekend, I have decided to do the same thing for this weekend. Head to my cookbook library and pick out some winners. I'm thinking flank steak, but who knows what I will find!

What's For Dinner?

It's been a long time since I have cooked so I decided this weekend we would have a proper Sunday dinner. When deciding on what to make I did something I rarely do - I consulted my cookbooks.  I also did something I never do. I decided that ALL my recipes would come from my cookbooks, not the internet.

I have well over 100 cookbooks, all easily accessible, that I rarely use. It's so easy to go online and Google what you are looking for. However, it makes no sense to have a library of cookbooks and never use them.

I started off with a recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens New Dieter's Cook Book - Italian Style Burgers.  I got this cookbook at Ross probably 15 years ago and used it all the time way back when.  You can still get a copy of it on Amazon for a penny, plus shipping.  These are more like mini meatloaf patties with broiled tomato and mozzarella on top.  They are yummy. This is actually a really great cookbook with beautiful pictures and easy-to-make recipes. In fact, the picture of the burger inspired me to find my next recipe - Low Fat Mac and Cheese. For that I knew right where to go - The Best Light Recipe from Cook's Illustrated.  If there is only one low-fat cookbook you buy, this should be it.  I have made several and they have all been delicious.

Next, I wanted to take advantage of all the wonderful summer vegetables so I decided to make a simple ratatouille. I thought finding this would be simple, but it wasn't.  Every book had some fancy twist on this simple recipe and I really wanted simple. I was just about to give up and make green beans when I saw my Joy of Cooking. I had never even cracked this book open before. It was just something I felt I should have. Well, I found exactly what I was looking for - a simple ratatouille. No frills, no twists, no fancy ingredients.  Just a simple recipe.

Yay! I have my menu:

• Italian Style Burgers
• Mac and Cheese
• Ratatouille

I learned something from this exercise. I actually enjoy going through my cookbooks. It really didn't take any longer than looking things up online and it some ways it was probably faster. I didn't take any breaks to check Facebook or get distracted by some ad. Also, I saw a ton of other recipes that I otherwise wouldn't have thought of while I was looking that I just can't wait to try. It is possible to find what I need without the internet. Maybe I am on to something.

A New Tree For Our New Home

I always thought it was incredibly romantic when folks would show me trees in their yards and told the story of how they planted in as a little sapling and have watched it grow for all their years together.  It's a real symbol of a life spent together.

When we had our yard cleared low and behold we had a two spots for trees.  One was already filled by an apple tree, but the other had been hidden away by huge overgrowth.  We didn't even know that spot was there. I was very excited when we found it. We could plant our little symbol!

Now comes the hard part.  What kind of tree to get?  We really didn't want anything big and weren't sure if we wanted another fruit tree in addition to the apple and lemon trees we have. Both pear and plum trees came to mind, but just didn't feel right. Then we saw it. A blossoming plum tree at Lowes. Joey fell in love with it. This was the tree he wanted. One problem - how would we get it home?

This tree wasn't small.  Probably six or seven feet. I have a Mini Cooper and Joey has a BMW sedan. There was no way we were going to fit a tree in there.  We decided that we would wait a couple of weeks, rent a truck, then go pick it up.

A couple of weeks passed and we went back to Lowes to pick out our tree. Guess what? They didn't have them anymore. In fact, no nursery near us had them. Trust me, I called them all. Apparently, the time to start carrying these is in January. January?!!!  If you know us, that is way too long for us to wait. Besides, we had just finished planting everything in the garden and we really wanted to plant our little plum tree.

After some searching online I found exactly what I wanted. Clifton's Nursery in Porterville, California had plum trees and they shipped them!  Who knew you could buy a tree online?! Better yet, I could purchase it through Amazon, meaning I could trust that I would get my money back if the tree never came.

It came.  It's was packaged beautifully and is the cutest thing I have ever seen.  We both fell in love with this little guy.  We got a Dwarf Purple Pony. It's a fruitless, flowering plum tree and only grows to about 15 feet.  Perfect for our yard.

We planted our little plum tree last Sunday. I can tell it's happy - just like Joey and I are.  It's a perfect symbol or our life together.