meze monday

Mondays are actually meant for leftovers: low-energy, no-brainer meals that use up extras from weekend meals. But this time of year, anything that uses up excess produce is a good thing.

Panzanella is a traditionally for us a celebratory meal for the first ripe tomatoes of the season. This year, it celebrated the first ripe brandywine tomato. I chopped up a medley of tomatoes: the brandywine, a black krim, italian heirloom, and some orange sungold and black plums for color. Add some red onion, garlic, basil, parsley, a rogue cucumber, plus olive oil and lemon juice, and you have a juicy sensory overload:



Add some croutons (aka old bread, toasted bread, or in this case bread tossed with butter and olive oil, pan-toasted, with a little parm for overkill:



And throw on a small bed of arugula, or mixed greens.

Meanwhile, my assistant is game for stuffing cherry tomatoes with a quickly thrown-together pesto sauce, and has the inspired idea to add some goat cheese..... That and some farmer's market cantaloupe and a few raspberries from our patch makes for a memorable meal.... Perhaps it wasn't completely brain dead cooking, but it went together in probably less than an hour.

Ahh, August. Does it get any better?


note to self....ignore the FIFTEEN pounds of tomatoes you picked today....until tomorrow.