Breakfast in Spain is unsubstantial, to my taste: a toasted and buttered bolillo (a large roll) and café con leche, Spain’s rich and tasty version of the latte. (I don’t like coffee or even lattes particularly, but I’ll take a café con leche any day.) Supper, as well, is fairly insubstantial: fried finger foods or a light platter of leftovers, served at 11 p.m., midnight, or even later, depending on the night-owlishness of your household.

Those are the foods my host mom, when I spent 6 months studying in Seville in college, served for breakfast and supper. She was garrulous and quick with a smile, matronly and recently-grandmotherly as well. Also in the household was my roommate and confidante, Laura; and host mom’s two daughters, one also with a husband and 3-year old daughter of her own. However, due to the 8 a.m. light breakfast and midnight greasy/not-filling supper, I was hungry quite often!

Lunch helped alleviate that. The biggest meal of the day in Mediterranean countries, usually eaten just before taking a siesta. My day went like so: get up and get breakfast around 8 a.m. Walk 45 minutes to classes, attend classes. Walk 45 minutes home around 2 p.m., famished, and have it alleviated by a home-cooked meal often followed by the biggest, juiciest, navel oranges you have ever eaten.

And after siesta, often it was another 45-minute walk back to the city center to hang out until the wee hours of the morning. Oh. That’s me in my feria dress. For Seville’s yearly post-Lent carnival and fair. Yeah. Dancing flamenco in that til 5 a.m. was kinda fun, actually.

Often host mom served fatty pork-based dishes that Laura and I picked at desultorially but tried to eat for sustenance. Occasionally she’d surprise us and make a Spanish or Andalusian classic, stunningly: a transcendent tortilla de patatas — transcendent precisely because the dish is basically eggs and potatoes — or gazpacho. Rich, smooth gazpacho as I like to imagine only the brash, proud Sevillanos would dare make it — with lots of fruity olive oil and soaked bread.

it’s tomato soup, served ice cold!

On the Simpsons, Lisa got laughed out of a party when she proudly presented her contribution, gazpacho. “It’s tomato soup, served ice-cold!”

Gazpacho is tomato soup, true, but in the sense that a Chevette is a car. It sounds really similar to a Corvette, yet they are very different machines.

People, well-intentioned people, absolutely mangle gazpacho. They make it without bread. They make it without olive oil. They put in a bunch of herbs and spices. They make it chunky. And when they serve a bowl filled with watery chunks of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, and ice cubes, people understandably balk.

They make it wrong. Wrong, I say!

gazpacho: the corvette of tomato soups

I’m biased due to my original gazpacho experiences. Inflexible, I am certain that gazpacho must contain, besides tomatoes, bread; it must contain olive oil, and a bit of garlic, cucumber, bell pepper, and onion; and it must be velvety smooth and thick.

I prepared this gazpacho for many reasons. One is to celebrate summer’s end. Though nearly October, the tomatoes still cling to the vines; they are the last ones. The green tomatoes will not ripen before a frost comes. Same goes for peppers; the onions are already pulled a month ago and cured; and cucumbers are long gone. Another reason to make gazpacho was to make use of the Nature’s Pride bread that I got from a coupon they sent me via Foodbuzz. This gazpacho recipe will be entered in a competition to be featured at the Foodbuzz blogging festival in November.

If it’s still warm where you are, or if there are still homegrown tomatoes available, try to make some gazpacho before the cold sets in for good. Having gazpacho today was a warm splash of summer.

gazpacho sevillano

This recipe was inspired by a Spanish-language post deep in some forums on Microsoft’s Spanish version of Bing. It looked close to what I remembered. I accidentally doubled the bread, but found it perfectly matched the gazpacho I knew and loved. For a less thick soup, use only 2 slices of stale bread. I also use less bell pepper and cucumber than most gazpacho recipes call for. Use your own taste buds and add ingredients to suit yourself. It’s easy to toss in a few more pieces of cucumber or green pepper to the food processor if the mixture seems to need them. Be careful with the garlic — a little raw garlic goes a looooong way. Also, I took the advice from Anya von Bremzen’s The New Spanish Table and used a food processor first to mix, then transferred it to a blender to make the gazpacho silky smooth.

time: 60 minutes, if you are slow like me
yield: 5 cups, or 1¼ liters
special equipment: food processor and/or blender

4 slices (7 ounces or 200 grams) of stale Nature’s Pride Country White or any other white bread, crusts removed
2–3 pounds tomatoes — I used bumpy, blemishy heirloom tomatoes that I have to cut away lots of, so I used 3 pounds
2 small cloves garlic or 1 large clove, peeled
½ small red or yellow onion
½ of a medium cucumber, peeled
1 small green bell pepper
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons champagne vinegar — sherry vinegar is often the type called for, but this works fine
salt to taste

Note: You’ll be making half of the recipe at a time. The food processor won’t hold everything at once, if yours is a normal-sized food processor.

First, put on a pot of water to boil. You’ll be slipping the tomatoes in there to loosen their skins.

While waiting for the water to boil, tear the stale bread into small pieces and put them into a bowl. Fill with water and let soak.

Prepare the vegetables. Peel the garlic. Peel the onion and cut it into quarters. Peel the cucumber half and cut into chunks. Core and peel — yep, peel — the green pepper. It’s pretty easy to just hold it in your hand and peel; seems easier than an apple. If you’re sure your food processor and blender can pulverize the skin, skip peeling. Toss 1 clove of garlic, half the cucumber, and half the green pepper into the food processor’s bowl.

Once the water is boiling, drop the tomatoes in for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Remove the tomatoes and plunge into cold water. The peels will slip right off. Remove tomato peels, then core and seed the tomatoes. Add half the tomatoes to the food processor. Add half of the soaked bread, squeezing lightly before putting it in.

Whirl it all together until it appears smooth. Add ¼ cup of the olive oil and 1 tablespoon of the vinegar. Process until all mixed. Transfer to a blender. Make the second half of the gazpacho by putting the rest of the seeded tomatoes, cucumber, onion, garlic (if using), green pepper and bread into the food processor. Mix, then add the remaining ¼ cup olive oil and 1 tablespoon vinegar. Taste and adjust vegetables/seasoning if desired.

Transfer the second half of the gazpacho to the blender. Whirl together until velvety smooth. Add salt to taste. Serve chilled. Garnish with finely diced cucumber; green, red, and yellow bell pepper; and quartered or halved cherry or grape tomatoes. Serve with crusty bread and a quality olive oil.

I like to can with an eye on the benjamins. What food products can I preserve that are costly to buy in the store, or rare to find? Canning tomatoes, on their own, feels virtually worthless. Commercially-canned tomatoes are cheap and good quality. There’s no point, man. That’s the cost half of the equation.

Peaches are an example of the “rare to find” category. Canned peaches aren’t rare per se, but good-tasting commercially-canned peaches are not merely difficult to find, they simply do not exist. In the case of peaches, it makes sense to put forth the effort because the reward is so delicious.

But what can be done with the humble tomato? Sauce and plain canned tomatoes are out, since the effort to cost/quality ratio is too high. I decided that, hey, spaghetti sauce is pretty expensive, especially for good-quality varieties. So let’s look at how to can spaghetti sauce and make some. And let’s calculate at the end the true cost and do a comparison!

prepping the tomatoes. prepping, prepping

First, pick 45 pounds of tomatoes.

WHAT?!?!?!???!?!?!!!111

Oh. Whew. It’s only 3 of these baskets’ worth. Each basketful came in around 15 pounds. Those aren’t your typical little plum tomatoes. Those are Opalka plums.

Put on your pirate voice. Now. Giant monsters they be, yarrr. A typical Opalka plum measures about 6 inches long. I was able to dig up about 25 pounds worth of those and supplemented the rest with Black Krim, Eva Purple, and Sudduth’s Brandywine varieties, all of which are basically gigantic beefsteak heirloom tomato varieties.

Opaklas, unlike the beefsteaks, have virtually no juice and no seeds, making them perfect for sauces. You don’t have to cook them down as long to get a thick sauce, which is key when you’re making spaghetti sauce in 90-degree heat without air conditioning.

That’s right. Things just got serious. Without. Air conditioning.

it puts the tomatoes in the pot, or it won’t get the hose when it gets hot

Let’s take a bigger look at the pic in the bottom right, above.

And here’s what 45 pounds of tomatoes, quartered, looks like. Now keep in mind that perspective may be distorted. Those are giant tomatoes in a giant stainless steel bowl. That bowl is so huge my mother stores it above the cupboards in her laundry room, because otherwise it would give all the normal bowls complexes with its huge size and its bragging ways. If it helps, peek at the small bowl to the back and to the left. That’s a normal large bowl. Teeny, ain’t it?

Now that the tomatoes are washed, cored, and quartered, it puts the tomatoes in the pot. They didn’t all fit into the giant pot at first, of course. Oh, yeah. You’ll need a giant pot for this too, if you do the whole recipe. Too bad there isn’t a Giant Kitchen Store somewhere. Damn, I just gave away a million-dollar idea there!

So just cook them a few minutes and the rest of the tomatoes can be smushed in too. All the spices et al go in now.

Bring to a boil. This will take approximately forever minutes. Then you’re going to simmer the tomatoes and spices for 20 minutes. In the meantime, you get to set up the instrument of the tomatoes’ destruction.

a medieval torture device for tomatoes

This is a Vittorio strainer, or food mill. It’s a pain in the ass to set up but it does the job. You put together this Rube Goldberg machine and then, ladle by ladle, run the burgeoning tomato sauce through it to smush it all real good (!) and get rid of all the peels and seeds.

The resulting stuff is a tad watery. You don’t want to can that!

So you dump it all back into the giant pot and cook it all down. This will take a couple hours. Get a book or go take a swim and make someone else give the sauce a stir once in a while. Ooh, look, it’s about half cooked down. Time to can! \o/

here’s where things get hairy

It’s at this point that my picture-taking skills go entirely to hell, because there’s so much going on. I mean, look above. That’s not at the beginning of canning. That’s after filling up the canner once and waiting for the water bath to do its job. Which gives you time to clean up a tad and downsize the sauce pan from Godzilla to Morlock.

Not to mention all the peels and other garbage!

that’s some purty sauce, but is it worth it?

I got 11 pints of thickened, seasoned, delicious red sauce for pasta from this recipe. How much does it really cost, with and without labor included? I suspect it’s more than the $2–$3 I’ll pay to get good spaghetti sauce on sale from the grocery store. If you leave labor out and assume you already have canning equipment, and just need to pay for canning lids, olive oil, and spices, along with tomato seeds and onion sets, my calculations came to $0.74 per pint. That’s not including labor, electricity, jars, canner, and so forth, which are all somewhat serious investments.

A rough calculation including labor for canning time at minimum wage made the sauce cost about $3.50 per pint.

So in the end it comes down to time. Are you able to eke out the time to spend most of a day at home, with about half that time actively working on the canning? If your time is really scarce, buying spaghetti sauce still makes sense.

But if you have the tomatoes and the time, this spaghetti sauce from the Ball canning book is, as the kids say, awesomesauce. Ha ha.

canned spaghetti sauce

This works not only for pasta, but for lasagna and makes a good pizza sauce as well. Get step-by-step instructions on how to can spaghetti sauce using a boiling-water canner here. Adapted from

Yield: 10–11 pints of thick spaghetti sauce

45 pounds tomatoes, preferably plum/paste or a mixture
6 cups onions, chopped*
12 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons dried oregano
6 bay leaves
¼ cup canning salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
1½ tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
bottled lemon juice or citric acid powder (such as Fruit Fresh)

Select fresh tomatoes free of blemishes. Wash tomatoes and drain. Remove core of tomatoes and cut into quarters. Set aside until you’re ready to use them.

Sauté the onions and garlic in olive oil in a gigantic pot until soft. Add quartered tomatoes, oregano, bay leaves, canning salt, black pepper, sugar, and crushed red pepper flakes, if using. Bring to a boil, then simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

While the sauce is simmering, set up your food mill or strainer. After the sauce has simmered 20 minutes, remove the bay leaves and run the mixture through the food mill or strainer. You’ll get a watery sauce with some pulp in it, which you’ll keep, and seeds and skins and whatnot, which you’ll discard.

Bring the sauce to a boil. Lower to medium-high heat and cook down until sauce thickens — until it’s reduced in volume by half or more.

To can, add 1 tablespoon of the bottled lemon juice or or ¼ teaspoon citric acid to each pint jar, and fill with sauce, leaving ¼-inch of headspace. Adjust caps and process in boiling-water canner for 35 minutes.

I’m making pasta sauce today. Woo! It calls for 45 pounds of tomatoes. Check this out, dudes. It’s nearly 15 pounds of tomatoes. See? 45 pounds isn’t that bad. The recipe, which is from the unfortunately-named Ball Blue Book, claims to make 14 pints or 7 quarts.

Yeah, right. Only if you can watery sauce. Blech.

What else was I going to say? Oh, yeah. I get to set up the Vittorio strainer today. Which reminds me, Mom, can I come borrow it?

Okay, I’m off. Bbl with updates and recipe.

Sis and Mom were thrilled with the dinner party. “You can do this anytime,” they cooed conspiratorially, and they began plotting holiday schedules. “Thanksgiving, Christmas…no, Mom will still do Christmas…Easter….”

I hadn’t hosted an event of this magnitude before. A bit over a month ago my sponsor, Foodbuzz, contacted me with the offer to host a pasta and wine-pairing dinner party using free coupons supplied by Buitoni Riserva. That shit’s expensive, so I jumped at the chance.

the asparagus mistake

I picked up 5 packages each of fresh pasta agnolotti, which is is a jumbo half-moon shaped ravioli. One was wild mushroom, and I planned to toss it with roasted asparagus and chives, drizzle it with olive oil, and top it with freshly ground black pepper and goat cheese. Unfortunately, I didn’t consult my sister the asparagus roasting expert, and left it in the oven about 20 minutes instead of the 5 she said was correct, and the asparagus came out limp and mushy.

My aunt, Linda, brought over a bunch of chives she snipped from her patch, some blooming with crunchy-oniony flowers atop them. They were too pretty to ignore, so they got put out on the table.

The guest list: Mom and Dad, Jennifer and Dale Javier (he said he wanted to be called Javier), Mom’s best friend Leeann and her daughter (and my friend) Angie, and Linda. I asked Leeann which wine she wanted to drink. “Oh, I love all white wine,” she said, so I poured her the La Noble chardonnay I’d picked up and a teeny glass of fino. Fino is very dry sherry that I drank a lot in Spain and it always makes me think of briny olives, tapas, dancing sevillanas, and walking home through the Parque de María Luisa at seven in the morning.

Not everyone was into the wine thing, though. Dad and Javier mixed themselves up some massive bloody marys.

Check out this spread! Angie made that vibrant salad, Mom brought the relish tray, and there’s the wild mushroom agnolotti along with the four cheese (Quattro Formaggi) agnolotti, and the red sauce I mixed up for the latter.

where’s my two dollars?

There’s Linda and the view from the other side of the tablecloth. That’s right, tablecloth. Cloth napkins. Frawnch fries. Frawnch bread. Kwissssmassss. Pardon me, I’m channeling Better Off Dead.

The top is the wild mushroom agnolotti with the asparagus/chives/black pepper/olive oil/goat cheese topping I mentioned. The left/bottom is the four cheese agnolotti with a roasted red pepper and kalamata olive sauce, topped with fresh basil. And supposed to have grated parmesan on top, but I forgot to get it on there for the pic. That sauce was the bomb.

Jennifer posed for an action shot! You can see a glass of red wine, which would be the shiraz Angie brought. I’d originally planned on cabernet to pair with the wild mushroom agnolotti, but we ended up breaking that out later. The red paired really well with the four cheese as well. Personally, I drank a little of the chardonnay and the shiraz and liked them both with both pastas. Maybe I’m just easy. Don’t answer that.

Dad warned Javier early on, “You’re not going to be getting any meat here tonight.” Of course they were going through that theater to tease me, but their little plan backfired. They chowed down and made happy noises just as much as everyone else did.

Notice how I ran out of serving dishes and dug into the storage containers. I’m so not prepared for this big party thing.

bring out your desserts

Linda made the coolest. Dessert. Evar. Think peanut butter pound cake. Slice it. Spread with peanut buttercream and blackberry jam. Top with another slice of pound cake.

That’s right. Linda made pound cake pb&j. Awesome.

Jennifer dipped strawberries in chocolate and served them on an appropriately-themed playing cards plate. Did I mention this was dinner and games night?

Mom and Leeann have been best friends for like 40 years, since Leeann moved in next door to Mom and Dad. <suckup>Did I say 40? I meant 20, because they couldn’t be a day over 40 themselves.</suckup>

euchre tournament!

Time to get our game on. With 8 of us present, and everyone liking euchre, we drew numbers, paired up, and had a little euchre tournament. To my chagrin, I was paired with Dale Javier, but he only fucked up once so I didn’t get to yell at him.

Jennifer and Mom were the winning team (never put people with shared DNA on the same team) and suddenly when it was over people began joking, “Where are the prizes?”

“Prizes?” I said, and a light bulb went on. An opportunity to divest myself of some excess goods! I got out some packaged rice/pasta sides I’d been planning to hand off to Linda, some product samples I’d received randomly in the mail, and some decks of playing cards from an estate sale I went to last week. Jennifer chose this lovely rice side dish to take home with her.

For her parting gift, Angie selected “stars of country music” playing cards and some instant coffee samples.

Then we played Perudo, or Liar’s Dice, and after that midnight was approaching, so the parent types and Jennifer and Javier left before they all turned into pumpkins. This left Linda, Angie, Bill, and me, and we broke out the Pictionary.

how to draw siamese twins in pictionary

how not to win at ingenious

Even with the adults gone, the wine kept flowing. We finished the La Noble and the Oak Leaf shiraz. Then we finished the Red Truck varietal red, and broke into the Clos du Bois chardonnay and Ravenswood cabernet, and Linda finished her Funky Llama chardonnay.

Wits and Wagers made an appearance, and then we closed out the night with Ingenious. Angie couldn’t remember if she’d played before and Bill was new to Ingenious, so I played with a handicap — I picked my tiles to play randomly. I got trounced as the newbies quickly picked up on the strategy and scored one Ingenious after another. I’m never believing Cranky Angie again! (Cranky Angie: I don’t think I like this. I don’t know if I want to play this. I know and understand Cranky Angie, because Cranky Amy always makes an appearance with new games too.)

what did i learn from all this?

I can put on a grownup party.

I can sip wine without getting too drunk.

Having smokers around leads to more smoking.

The Buitoni Riserva pastas are really good. The Quattro Formaggi Agnolotti was the hands-down favorite.

Good wine goes with anything.

Euchre needs to be more than a regional game.

roasted red pepper and kalamata olive pasta sauce

This sauce was the hit of the party. Salty, piquant, and complex, it goes well with simple pastas like cheese ravioli or agnolotti. I hesitate to post it as a recipe because it’s so simple, but it’s so good that it must be shared.

1 (28 ounce) jar red pasta sauce, like marinara
1 small (7 ounce) jar roasted red peppers
¼ cup kalamata olives

Purée the roasted red peppers and kalamata olives in a blender. Pour sauce and pepper/olive purée into a 2-quart pan and warm over medium heat. Serve over pasta.

Hello, my pretties. We’ll be quick today in honor of tax season. I have a zillion e-mail records to go through (the bane of online work) and missing 1099s to calculate by hand. My tax preparer, who also happens to be my best friend from grade school, is in 90 degree-plus Virginia this week, so I really can’t say which of us has it worse.

This red wine tomato sauce recipe can be subbed for a jar of any red store-bought pasta sauce. I like to double or triple the recipe and freeze it because hey, if I’m going to the work of making my own sauce, I may as well have some for next time.

But is it really work? Chop an onion, press a few cloves of garlic, open a can of tomatoes, and do some measuring. Twenty minutes on the stove, and it’s done.

There’s a secret to this tomato sauce. Your omnivore friends will think it has meat in it. The trick is fennel. An earthy, tangy spice used to flavor sausage, fennel is the spice that makes us think “meat.”

What do I like to do with this versatile tomato sauce?

• use it in lasagna
• top pasta with it and sprinkle with Parmesan (obvious)
• use it in baked penne (recipe coming, ooh)
• add mushrooms to it
• add soy burger crumbles to it
• add chopped red or green pepper to it
• add soy sausage crumbles to it

I-can’t-believe-it’s-meatless tomato sauce will happily take anything you wish to add to it. Go make it if you have a chance. I have Paypal receipts to sort through.

i-can’t-believe-it’s-meatless tomato sauce

The recipe calls for a large can of whole tomatoes, briefly whirred in a blender. You could instead use a 28-ounce can of tomato puree (make sure it’s made from only tomatoes) or even diced or crushed tomatoes, according to your preference. The latter will be a chunkier sauce. Adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites: Flavorful Recipes for Healthful Meals.

Time: 45 minutes
Special equipment: blender (optional)

1 tablespoon olive oil (not EVOO)
1 cup finely chopped onion (1 medium onion)
¼ teaspoon salt
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 teaspoons ground fennel
2 teaspoons Milford’s Buon Appetito Italian seasoning* or 1 teaspoon each dried oregano and dried basil
⅓ cup red wine
3 cups undrained canned tomatoes (28-ounce can)
½ to 1 tablespoon sugar
salt and pepper to taste

In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil on medium heat. Add the onions, sprinkle with salt, and sauté until soft, about 4 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

While the onions are cooking, whirl the tomatoes in a blender until just puréed and set aside.

When onions are soft, add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds.

Add the fennel, oregano and basil* and cook for another minute to coat the onions and garlic in the spices.

Pour in the red wine and bring to a boil. This will happen quickly, so have the puréed tomatoes handy, or have your canned purée, diced, or crushed tomatoes open and ready. Add tomatoes and sugar to the pan and mix well.

Cover and simmer gently for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste and season with salt and pepper to your preference.

* Just want to let you know that Milford Spice, a Michigan company, sent me a free sample of this seasoning. I also happen to dig it a lot.
** If using fresh herbs, use 1 tablespoon each of fresh oregano and basil and add them in the last couple minutes of cooking time.

Neat, this made Foodie Views of the day! They gave me a pretty button to go with it:

Have I ever mentioned that the last thing I gave up when going vegetarian was bacon? Beef: I never liked it anyway. Nearly the same with chicken. Fish: next to last. I like me some canned tuna.

I’m not going to wax poetic about bacon, though. That’s so 2008. Are you as tired as I am of candied bacon, bacon smoothies, bacon popcorn, and bacon ice cream? I’m sure they’re wonderful, but all of the swooning over bacon is becoming a tad unseemly. Let’s be seemly, shall we?

Suffice to say bacon tastes good and its namesake sandwich, the BLT, is too. The salty bacon, the pretty ruffles of leaf lettuce, the earthy, full flavor of heirloom tomato slices — slap them between a few slices of toast slathered with a condment of your choice, usually mayonnaise, and you have one mother of a sandwich.

Everyone knows how to make a BLT.

But have you ever had one with basil-garlic mayonnaise?

It elevates the humble BLT to a thing of beauty. The fresh basil complements the tomato, the garlic enhances the bacon, and a few drops of hot pepper sauce add little heat but a lot of flavor.

Now, the nice people at Nature’s Pride sent me a couple loaves of bread: 12-grain and 100% whole wheat. Since they sent me free stuff, I’m likely to say nice things about it, so be forewarned. They make their bread with all natural ingredients and no HFCS, which is a big plus for me. When my cousin and I were making the sandwiches, he asked what kind of bread I had, and stipulated, “No whole wheat.” I gacked, because I don’t keep anything but whole wheat around. He had to get whole grains anyway, in the form of the 12-grain loaf.

He survived, and said the 12-grain was really good. Whether he was being polite or not I’m not sure. Either way, I don’t care. My sandwich got validation.

Mine was on whole wheat. It was quite tasty as well. We used Black Krim heirloom tomatoes from my garden, and some really lovely curly generic leaf lettuce from the store. It was quite tasty as well. I have to say that overall, I prefer the bread I make myself, but if I had to buy some, I would choose this Nature’s Pride stuff. Again, remember, I’m predisposed to being nice about the bread though.

basil-garlic mayonnaise

1 cup fresh basil, coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt
dash or two of tabasco or other hot pepper sauce
3/4 cup mayonnaise

In a food processor, whirl the basil leaves and garlic until the basil is finely chopped. Add salt, hot pepper sauce, and mayonnaise. Pulse until mixed together. Chill 30 minutes to allow flavors to meld.

basil-garlic mayonnaise BLT

Black Krim is a Russian heirloom variety tomato. It’s considered a beefsteak, but the tomatoes are smallish, about 2-1/2 to 3 inches in diameter. They have a rich flavor, not quite as “smoky” as some of the other black varieties, but more robust-tasting than most reds. I love growing them; like Stupice, they’re the perfect size for a sandwich, and they grow perfectly round and nearly blemish-free. They grow well in cooler climates like we have here in Michigan — it’s one of the few varieties I got a good number of tomatoes off of this cold summer.

4 slices whole grain bread, toasted
4 slices of cooked bacon
2 Black Krim tomatoes
2 large leaves curly leaf lettuce
basil-garlic mayonnaise (recipe above)

Slice the Black Krims. You should get 4 slices from each tomato, about 3/8″ thick. Slather basil-garlic mayonnaise on the toast. Build the BLT in layers: first, break the bacon into halves, laying out 4 halves on the bread. Then add the tomato slices, and the leaf lettuce on top of that. This ought to provide some decent protection for the bread from the tomato’s juices.

Top with the other slice of bread, cut sandwich in half, and serve.

Want an easy, colorful, summery, fancy-schmancy looking appetizer to serve guests? These little fellas fit the bill, the bright crunch of juicy tomato mingling with sweet basil and fresh mozzarella, all drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette.

There. The food porn description is out of the way.

We threw a surprise party for Mom Saturday. As I apparently noted several times near the end of the night, it was a smashing success. Why several times? Seems I got drunk off my ass by the end. As planned. It wasn’t an accident ffs.

Look at that awesome cake Stacy’s mom made for the surprise party

People kept asking ahead of time how surprisey it was going to be. I briefly wondered at the wisdom of shocking someone with a history of heart problems, and laconically waved those concerns aside. “Not much, I think,” I told them. “We’re doing family pictures right before the party, and we expect people will begin showing up and we’ll be setting up right in front of her.”

Thanks to the big ass house, though, we were able to pull off a complete surprise. While the final pictures were being shot in the living room, Jennifer and I rushed off to the family room to get tables and chairs out and set out the cake. By the time we led Mom to the family room, most of the partygoers had arrived, and wound up giving her a proper “Surprise!” shout.

Oh, my point? One of the things I made was caprese skewers. I also made corn and crab dip. Crap. It’s gone. I didn’t get pics of it. Oh well, caprese skewers will do for now.

P.S. two to three of these is a 100-calorie snack. Believe me, you won’t have a chance to get your hands on more. Go for three. The calorie listing includes all of the balsamic vinaigrette, and I only wound up using about half of it.

caprese skewers

These appetizers may be served up to 3 hours after assembling. Do not refrigerate after putting them together. Simply cover with plastic wrap on their serving plate until it’s time to serve. Adapted from Cocktail Food: 50 Finger Foods with Attitude, by Mary Corpening Barber and Sara Corpening Whiteford.

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper, divided
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
4 ounces fresh mozzarella
24 grape tomatoes
24 small to medium leaves of fresh basil
24 toothpicks or 5-inch bamboo skewers

Soak toothpicks or skewers in water. This will keep them from splintering when assembling the skewers.

Cut the mozzarella into 24 1/2-inch cubes. In a small bowl, toss with the 1 teaspoon of olive oil and 1/8 teaspoon of the pepper. Set aside to allow the mozzarella to absorb the flavors.

In another small bowl, whisk together balsamic vinegar, remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1/8 teaspoon pepper, and the kosher salt. This is the vinaigrette you’ll be brushing on the skewers, once assembled. If you’re using regular salt, begin with a little less, say, a pinch, and work up from there. I found that the fresh mozzarella I bought was already well-salted, so it didn’t need much more.

Time to put caprese skewers together!

1. Slide 1 grape tomato onto a toothpick or skewer.
2. Fold 1 basil leaf in half; pierce with skewer and slide up to the tomato.
3. Poke 1 mozzarella cube onto the skewer.
4. Repeat 23 more times.

Lay out the assembled skewers on a nice plate. It helps to lean them against one another at a 30 degree angle or so — makes it easier for people to grab them. Once laid out, brush them with the balsamic vinaigrette, and serve.

Variations: Try them without the balsamic vinaigrette. The vinaigrette adds a lot of “pop” to the skewers, but I kind of like the homey taste of tomato/basil/mozzarella/oil/pepper all on its own too. It depends on the tastes of your guests, or what you’re serving, I suppose.

Hell yeah. Time to inaugurate the “tomato” tag.

I’d go on about heirlooms and brandywines and tell cute little stories involving one of my grandmas, or, if it were of special import requiring massive genetic support, both grandmas.

But I have to get to the Blueberry Festival in 45 minutes, and to the gym 26 minutes after that (sorry, couldn’t resist).

This little fella is from one of my rogue tomatoes, which you may have caught a glimpse of in the ruthlessly onanist garden porn gallery. He’s shaped like a brandywine, stretch marks and veins and all, but he’s small, about 4 inches across. A cross between a brandywine and a cherry, maybe? Do they even like each other? I don’t know. He’s really red, though, so maybe he’s just one of those icky red brandywines we planted last year.

did someone say icky?

Look at that flesh. It’s not got the look of awesome tomato flesh. It’s got a grainy look. This prejudiced me against it.

Then I tried it. Yeah, it wasn’t awesome. Not a lot of flavor, and really acidic.

Threw it into the fridge to put in salad or cook with. Maybe the next one will be good.