When The Moon Hits Your Eye

If you picked up on the Dean Martin reference, you must be thinking, "Yes! She's finally made a pizza!" And you'd be right! It was beautiful! See?

My roommates and I had dinner together the other night, and I had an abundance of cherry tomatoes from Julie's garden and yet more basil from both my backyard and Karen's. What can you do with basil and tomatoes? Well, many things. But margarita pizza might just be my favorite. The small tomatoes actually made for a great topping.

Even though I would be content eating pizza all day, everyday, I wanted to add something healthy. We had even more tomatoes from my roommate's nameless friend, plus cucumbers from Julie and said nameless friend:

With all this fresh produce (plus some non-garden greens and carrots we needed to use up), salad was in order. I really like the salad/pizza combination, especially when an Italian vinaigrette is in the mix. I don't have a picture of it, but I made a simple balsamic dressing which included some local Goodflow honey. The salad was very pretty on its own:

I also must confess that I did not make the pizza crust -- I bought it at Central Market. I've always been pretty impressed with their in-store bakery items, and their pizza crust is great. This meal overall came together at the last minute, and my roommates and I had a great time sharing it.

Healthy and Italian: Not an Oxymoron

I really love bringing food to families just after they've had a new baby. One of my single friends once told me that she would have a baby just so I'd make her lasagna. I don't know that it's worth pushing a tiny human out of your vag and then raising it for 18 years (and supporting it financially indefinitely) just for a Gina-made meal. But I appreciate the sentiment.

I recently brought some food to a couple who had their first child, and they said they like Italian and healthy food. I had a childhood of Nutella, white bread, and chicken parm, so I know fully well that these two categories do not often go together. But they are not mutually exclusive. Italian food is often healthy, as long as you don't fry things or smother them in chocolate-hazelnut butter.

The solution, then, was to make a variation on my grandmother's exquisite tomato salad recipe. It is one of my favorite dishes. Ever. It's simply tomatoes, garlic, onions, olive oil, salt, and basil. The beauty of it is when the olive oil mixes with the tomato juice. Italian families fight over the last bits of bread so they can sop up this tomato-olive oil juice after eating the salad.

For this meal, I used the rest of the lovely yellow tomatoes, along with some classic reds. I also added the last of Karen's cucumbers. I mixed them with straight-from-Georgia Vidalia onions and garlic, plus more basil also from Karen's garden. It is summer incarnated into food. Here are the glamor shots:

Love and Kindness from Start to Finish, Part 1

If I were to choose someone who is kindness personified, it would be my friend Karen. Today, I went over to her house to get some much-discussed kale. There wasn't much kale left, as it is on its way out for the season. Karen ended up giving me cucumbers, lettuce, basil, and oregano, too. She lives only a few blocks away -- only about a 10 minute walk from house. When it started to drizzle, she insisted on driving me home. She might just be the nicest person I know.

With all this garden-grown goodness, I was inspired to make a full dinner, and my roommate Rosalie spontaneously joined in. While all three of my roommates are good friends, we don't often eat together. It was really nice to share food tonight, and Rosalie and I put together a lovely salad and spaghetti squash with marinara sauce.

For tonight's post, I'll focus on the salad. (I'll post on the spaghetti squash tomorrow.) Here's the lettuce, which was a tad bitter (greens get more bitter as they adjust to the summer heat), but it was still quite edible:

And here are the cucumbers. Aren't they cute? The yellow tomatoes are also local. They're from Johnson's Backyard Garden here in Austin. I bought them at Wheatsville.

Rosalie made the salad dressing out garlic, ginger, honey, and olive oil. It turned out sweet and tangy, which balanced out the bitter greens. The sweet, fresh flavors from the cucumbers and tomatoes complimented the dressing, and I topped the salad with sliced almonds to give it a nice crunch. It was one of the best salads I've ever made, plus it made some pretty pictures:

Oh, the Joys of Cucumber Juice

My brave friend Anslee recently completed a 60-day juice fast. (Read about here.) Out of solidarity with her and masochistic curiosity, I joined her for a week back in March. I bought a juicer and experimented with different recipes. Now that I'm back to eating solid food as God intended, I still juice from time to time (that machine was expensive!), and it's a great way to use up fruits and veggies that are starting to get a little too ripe.

This morning, I made a cucumber, pear, and apple juice for breakfast, and it was delicious! The cucumbers came from Julie's garden. I'm going to say a little bit about Julie, a true Renaissance Woman. But first, take a look at these cucumbers:

The green one was about 18 inches long. The other was a white cucumber and about 3 inches long and about 2 inches wide.

Julie uses the French Intensive gardening method, which is as intense as the name suggests. Not only does she manage a garden, but she cooks most of her meals from scratch, is getting a PhD in economics, volunteers with local non-profits to trap stray cats for spaying and neutering, and voluntarily does the accounting for our church. Oh, and did I mention that she's about to give birth to her first child any day now?

I can only hope my meals live up to Julie's high standards, and I try very hard to make sure I use all the vegetables she gives me. I foolishly let these cucumbers sit in my fridge too long, so juicing seemed a good idea. I added an apple and two pears, plus some lime juice and bit of the backyard basil, to make this lovely concoction: