ON MY TABLE: A TON O' TOMATOES

I went a little nuts when I placed my last order with The Bountiful Sprout, which is why my kitchen counter is now covered in all sorts of tomatoes, from tiny yellow and orange cherry tomatoes, through the medium sized Juliets, and on to some beautiful red slicers and a few gorgeous heirlooms. As I sat this morning, thinking about all my favorite ways to use them, it occurred to me that I should probably share that information with you guys. In return, perhaps you can give me a few new ideas to try?

Tickled, as usual, by the way those color-mad tomatoes match my Bakelite utensils.

The first thing I usually do, upon bringing home some fresh tomatoes, is to pick a slicer that is bruised or damaged, or close to being overripe. I cut out any bad parts, and use what's left to make an old fashioned tomato sammich. I'm not a big fan of either mayo or mushy white bread, but this is where I make an exception, since there's no other way to make this sandwich. You try to fancy this up with extra ingredients, and you're gonna be sorry. Just spread white bread with good mayo, pile on the sliced, fresh-from-the-garden 'maters, sprinkle with coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper, et voila! The best thing you ever tasted.

Next up would be a Caprese salad. In fact, we will probably be having several variations on that this week, since I happen to have a nice ball of fresh mozzarella in the fridge. A couple of days ago I sliced a variety of tomatoes into a dish, layered with slices of the mozzarella. Then I whisked up a quick red wine vinaigrette and drizzled it over all, and topped them with some slivered fresh basil. Tonight I may use a few slices of red tomato, skip making the dressing, and just drizzle them with a bit of good olive oil first, then a bit of balsamic. Sometimes I just drizzle them with pesto.

Not long ago I gave you my simple fresh tomato sauce recipe, where you just let them marinate at room temperature for several hours, then serve over warm pasta or toasted Italian bread. Sometimes I also use this recipe I found in my Jamie At Home cookbook, from Jamie Oliver.

I usually make some variation of a Greek Salad, like this one from our Jamie-inspired Greek Easter Feast a few years back...

or a Provencal salad, something like this:

There should be a recipe for this over in my sidebar.

You can always roast your romas or those prolific little Juliettes, when they all come ripe at once, then use them over pasta, or atop goat cheese that has been spread on toasted bread.

I roast mine with garlic, thyme, and olive oil, then store them in the fridge.

Last but not least, there's this super simple, but super yummy recipe for a Tomato Pesto Tart that I discovered last year.

Guess that's about it for my fresh tomato repertoire. What about you? What's your favorite way to use them?

MY WILD GIRLS CIRCLE JOURNAL

Have you ever heard of a Circle Journal? I hadn't, until just recently, but as soon as one of my Wild Summer Art classmates explained the concept and asked for volunteers, I jumped right on board! A Circle Journal is something like a Round Robin quilt, which goes from house to house, with each person contributing to the final product. In our case there will be fifteen participants, and the first step was for each of us to choose or make a journal to use.

I opted to use this handmade journal, which a dear new friend gifted me with not long ago. We're calling it a Wild Girls Circle Journal, and since I'd been using this one for some of my Wild Summer Art projects, it already had the perfect title on its cover!

The hardest part will be letting go of it for almost a year, which is how long it will take for the journal to make its rounds and come back to me. Before I send it off to the person whose name follows mine on The List, there are a few things I must do...

such as creating a title page for the inside cover...

and creating at least one double page spread of my own in it. After that it will work its way around the list, with each person adding their own spread -- no set theme or style, just whatever they feel like creating at the time. Meanwhile, fourteen different journals will be showing up at my house, one approximately every three weeks, and I will be adding a bit of my own art journaling to each of those. I bet I'll make a lot of new friends in the process, as we have set up a special facebook page where we can communicate with one another during these fun-filled months, and post pictures of the work we are adding to the journals.

Just one or two things left to do here, before I send this baby out into the world. Each journal needs a sign-in page of sorts. I've opted for a sign-in pocket to go inside the back cover, which each artist can stick a decorated tag into.

Just have to figure out which pic and what info I want to include on the back of this tag, then it's Arrivederci, Baby!

WEEKEND STUDIO: CHALKBOARD ART

Junelle gave us a bonus lesson in our Wild Summer Art class this week. This one involved handwriting, since everyone loves her lettering style, but is always complaining about their own. One part of the class, which I haven't done yet, involved painted words. The other, which I made a beeline for, was what she called "chalkboard art". Basically, you just slap some black acrylic paint on a piece of book paper, pencil in some words, then go after it with some white pens.

 

Love, love, LOVE the way it turns out!

SEASONAL FEASTS: THE JOY OF ANTICIPATION

 "There is no season such delight can bring, 

as summer, autumn, winter and the spring." ~ William Brown

An Autumn Feast Hosted By High School Debbie A While Back

Earlier this week I was reading about seasonal feasts in the book Simple Abundance. Ban Breathnach says "The joy of seasonal cooking is the simplest of pleasures, but one of the most overlooked. It brings harmony and rhythm to our days, demonstrating with gentle wisdom that simplicity and abundance are soul mates. The joy of seasonal foods transforms even the ordinary days at the table into hallowed moments."

Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it wasn't those very words, when read for the first time so many years ago, that inspired My Great Epiphany -- the one that made me see the link between all those great books I had read about people who were living "the good life." The epiphany that made me aware of something I dubbed "seasonality" -- a quality that has colored most everything I have thought or done since, from how I cook and eat, to starting a garden design business called Seasonality which focussed on four seasons of interest, buying this Hill Country home and naming it Seasonality, trying to grow some of my own food, and even writing a blog called Seasonality.

When we first bought this place, I had great plans for big seasonal feasts to be held out on our porches or patios, with tables full of interesting people, scintillating conversation, and the best food that the season had to offer. Unfortunately, for the first several years we only came up here a couple of weekends per month, we hadn't got to know any locals yet, and we didn't have beds to sleep more than two out-of-towners at a time, so the feast idea sort of fizzled. This essay got me to thinkin' about it again.

Ban Breathnach went on to mention a favorite cookbook for seasonal feasts, Table For Eight by Judith Huxley, which contains "fifty-two sensational menus -- a week-by-week walk through the year celebrating the pleasures of the table", which got me to thinking about the great foodie friends we have made since moving here, about how lucky we are to have two kids who love to cook, and who, by some miracle, have both ended up living nearby in Austin, and about our forever friends Paula and Tim, who would be the only ones who would need overnight accommodations (unless one of our siblings wanted to come, in which case they could take turns). Hmmmm. Wonder if I could still get my hands on a copy of that cookbook, after all these years? If so, it just might be time to resurrect the idea of those seasonal porch feasts...perhaps in the form of a once-a-month-or-season, old fashioned Sunday Dinner. What say my foodie friends and family?

ONE THING I LOVE: FRENCH MARKETS

We had a new assignment last week, in my Wild Art Summer class -- one involving summer markets. We were to take ourselves out on an "artist's date" to explore our favorite summer markets, be they veggie, antique, flea, or whatever, to see what inspiration we could find there. My first thought was "Hey, I've got that covered!", since we had just recently returned from a day spent at both the amazing Findlay Market and the City Flea in Cincinnati. However, once I'd flipped through all the pictures I'd taken there, and sat down to play in my sketch book, something strange happened. Instead of sketches from Findlay, I found myself staring at snippets from our Vacation of the Decade in France a couple of years back. Snippets from Paris...

Lyon...

Le Miel en Motte just means honey in mound. Miel Extrait means extracted honey.

Avignon...

and Marseilles.

I think I could fill an entire journal with nothing but market scenes!  For now, however, I had to settle for this simple composite sketch.

Vive la France!

WHAT TIME IS IT BOYS AND GIRLS?

Why, it's TOMATO time, and I've got a whole mess of beautiful, home-grown tomatoes headed our way this week. You know what that means don't you? That means it's time to pull out this nifty little fellow...

and whip up a big ol' ball of fresh mozzarella, 'cause my hubby dearly loves a good Caprese salad, or two, or three!

DAY TRIPPIN'

We've fallen into the habit of spending most Sunday afternoons picnicking with two other couples out at Driftwood Vineyard, which sits upon a hilltop with a gorgeous view. Yesterday, however, we decided to branch out and go splorin'. Lots of people have to settle for those silly Humvee limos when they go winery-hopping, but we had something even better...

a personal driver with the best wine "nose" around, and a seven-seat SUV with Harry Potter playing on multiple screens!

Our first stop was for lunch at Pecan Street Brewing in Johnson City. Several of us had the most delicious lamb burgers with feta cheese sauce and pepperoncini (Mmmmmmm!), two had the pastrami pannini, little Bella had a pizza, and John had a char-grilled Hickory Burger that rivaled the ones I drive all the way back to Houston for periodically. We'll definitely be going back there again, but next time John and I will know to share an entree!

Next stop was Woodrose Winery, in Stonewall. In really hot weather they move the tastings over to the gorgeous Dance Hall building, where you get to sit together around a table, and they bring the wines to you!

From there we headed to Pedernales Cellars, also in Stonewall. They had some really good wine there!

Last stop was my favorite -- William Chris Vineyards, in Hye, Texas. Why was it my favorite? Check this out:

You walk up to the entrance and think "Cuh-yoot! They've converted this little ol' country farmhouse into their tasting room!"

I'm lovin' the patina on this door...

and the turquoise crushed velvet on these stools.

But wait, what is this? You come out onto what must have been the original back porch, walk down a ramp, et voila! You find yourself in this very modern, spacious tasting room, where the classical guitar and violin music was so gorgeous, I just had to buy the CD.

Later, whilst sitting out back having a little snack, we discussed the day's results, and here's what we decided:

Best Wines: 1st - Pedernales, 2nd - William Chris, 3rd - Woodrose
Best Venue: 1st - William Chris, 2nd - Woodrose, 3rd - Pedernales (nice, clean, modern, just not all that interesting)
Best Staff: 1st - Pedernales, 2nd - Woodrose, 3rd - William Chris, though we really shouldn't judge the entire staff by this one guy, who'm we gave the D***head of the Day award for spending all his time with the cute young things down at the other end of the bar, and being kinda rude to us. And, just so you know, it wasn't either of those guys pictured. We were at the bar across the room.

Also, in case you too live in the area, and enjoy sipping some wine every now and then, I just want you to know that we are a friendly group. You are more than welcome to join us, if you happen to drop in at Driftwood Vineyard on a Sunday afternoon. We're usually there, weather permitting, from about 4:30 until they kick us out around 6:00. But you have to bring munchies.