It’s turned dramatically colder in the last few days. Not really surprising, given that it is the end of October. I refuse to turn on the heat until November 1st though. But, colder weather means warmer food so I made this lovely Bacon Shrimp and Corn Chowder for dinner last night. Now, soup is hard to photograph and chwder even more so, so even though the photo has a whole lot of white in it, you’ll have to trust me that the chowdah has a whole lot of flavor.
Lunch
Slow-Cooked Cherry Tomatoes with Garlic and Rosemary
I’ve had a crazy overload of tomatoes from my porch garden this year. It started out with the bigger tomatoes, like Early Girl and Big Boys. Then came the Romas, and now I have a crazy amount of cherry and grape tomatoes. I mean, it’s insane. Every day I am picking at least 20 and there are still at least 2 weeks worth coming. Often I just eat them straight off the vine, but tonight I made these really easy Slow-Cooked Cherry Tomatoes with Garlic and Rosemary for dinner. Would be great with fish, chicken or as a bruschetta topping too. Yum!
It’s Farmer’s Market Season again — I love the summer — and I found a huge bushel of fresh peas. I love peas, freshly shucked and just blanched with a bit of butter. I made this quick pantry friendly meal (don’t most of us have spaghetti and parm in the house?) for dinner tonight. Absolutely delish!
So, have you guys noticed that I seem to buy random ingredients and then kind of after the fact, think to make something with them? Yep, I have a pantry full of weirdness. And in today’s edition of “what does the CSPS Girl have up her sleeve”, I present my lunch: Charred Sweet Potatoes with Chile-Infused Honey. A few weeks ago, I was in some kitchen specialty shop and they had Mike’s Hot Honey (can he found here and on Amazon also. I had no idea what to do with it when I bought it, but I am guessing that it would go well on pretty much anything where you want that whole sweet and spicy thing: chicken, ribs, stir fry and apparently sweet potatoes. The honey is *really spicy* so keep that in mind (or mellow it out with a bit of regular honey.
Here is a riff on both pasta salad and caprese, the tomato-mozzarella-basil salad that I eat normally when the local tomatoes come into season. I used mini-everything for this recipe: cherry tomatoes, perlini mozzarella and orecchiette pasta. Orecchiette meand “earlobe” which I think is just funny and somewhat appropriate.