ELC Day 9

Sunday we did a bit of cooking. First thing, for breakfast I searched out a recipe for peach coffeecake, since we had quite a few tasty peaches begging to be transformed into something breakfast-y. The results were a little disappointing; I guess it just wasn't sweet enough, or maybe it was lacking in spices. I rated it a 3 out of 5 on allrecipes.com anyway. Not great, not terrible.

Then a good bit of the morning was spent getting the next batch of tomato sauce in the crockpot - it takes a bit of time to chop all those cute little heirlooms up! But it is always, always, always worth it. I don't think Chad will let me cook a dinner this week that doesn't involve tomato sauce. We froze three quarts and have 1 fresh jar in the fridge. It's sooo good! I used about half as many onions this time and fresh herbs instead of dried (from the backyard! I love growing stuff to use in cooking). And it was interesting, the last batch of sauce used a lot of different colored tomatoes, and the sauce had a more orange-y hue. This batch was RED RED RED. Kind of neat how non-uniform cooking can be when the ingredients are just a little varied. ;) So we now have 5 quarts of sauce in the freezer. I know this won't get us that far, but it still makes me so excited! I hope we can get some more tomatoes this weekend at the farmer's market...

Oh, and speaking of tomatoes (god, do I talk about anything else?!?), I also slow roasted the romas we got from our CSA share last week. Cut in half, brushed with EVOO, sprinkled with chopped garlic and fresh backyard oregano, s&p and baked for 2 hours. O. Mi. Gawd. They are so good, like tomato candy. Rich and tangy and luscious.

AND, inspired by The Green Mommy I hit craigslist in search of a food dehydrator. And I found one! We pick it up tomorrow morning in Det-wa. Right before storytime at the lie-berry. I'm psyched, I've never dehydrated anything before. But I've got big dreams. Big dreams.

Day 9 Menu
Breakfast:
Fresh Peach Coffeecake
Pero (weird toasted grain coffee-like beverage)

Lunch:
Tofu "egg" salad sandwich on local rye bread
Grassfield's local cheeses
Caramel Corn (from Lansing farmer's market)

Snack:
Coffeecake

Dinner:
Gnocchi from Roma Grocery
Fresh out of the crockpot tomato sauce (Lansing heirloom tomatoes, local onions, peppers, garlic, backyard basil and oregano. Non local tomato paste, salt, EVOO and sugar).
Garlic rye toast

The baby enjoyed some jarred baby food and cottage cheese that he fed himself. Weird.