Tomato Time

I've been working on ways to use all the tomatoes coming in. Here is a salad I made the other day. (Tomatoes, basil, fresh mozzarella, olive oil, red wine vinegar, kosher salt, pepper.) I think it's my favorite.

Here's salsa I made yesterday. Maybe it's guacamole, I put avocados in it, plus the regular ingredients for salsa or pico de gallo, basically what I had on hand. Very tasty.

I made gazpacho, but it's not very photogenic, particularly because I used green and red tomatoes. It looks kind of disgusting, but it tastes great and it's a good way to use cucumbers, which I have an excess of too.

But mostly these days, I'm in love with The Crockpot Lady. She posts a crockpot recipe every day, complete with an honest review of the result, i.e. whether the kids would eat it. She appeared on The Rachel Ray show recently, which I missed. I tried her macaroni and cheese recipe this weekend, and it tasted good, but separated, like many commenters had mentioned. I've made the cream cheese chicken and onion soup pot roast, which have been winners.

I actually bought a new crock pot this week. I finally figured out that mine, pictured here, doesn't have an actual *high* setting, the Low is more like Warm, and the High is Low. I bought This One on sale at Target because it has interchangeable, different sized liners. The High setting seems to work on it.

I really want to try her crock pot tomato soup this week. Of course, I'm the only tomato eater around here and I seem to cook a lot of things for myself that no one else will eat. Maybe they'll grow up eventually? Even dh?? Nah, not a chance.


A visitor on the porch. He hung out there for a couple of days.


Maybe I'll try poke sallet next? I went to the park yesterday and saw this, along with a bunch of wild muscadine grapes growing in the woods.

I just finished up a long, exhausting knitting project. Hope to post it this week.