My latest tomato endeavors have been delicious. Too delicious not to share. I don’t know how you like your tomatoes but I am a purist. My favorite preparation of a tomato is a dash of salt. eat.

So these two recipes are pretty simple but have really good flavors and you can always spice things up!

The first is a super simple tomato soup from allrecipes.com. I followed the recipe to a T and it turned out fantastic! Add a grilled cheese on marble rye and you have perfection!

The next recipe is my own concoction so forgive me for the lack of measurements.

Mascarpone Pasta Sauce for Two:

• Two strips of bacon
• One clove of garlic minced
• Some shallots minced
• 1T. mascarpone
• Three fresh tomatoes diced
• Some chopped up parsley
• Cooked pasta for two

Cook two strips of bacon in a large pan. Remove bacon and put to the side. Add garlic and shallots to bacon grease and lightly brown. Add diced tomatoes to pan and let simmer about 15 minutes or until much of the liquid has cooked down. Break up the bacon into small pieces and add to the sauce. Keep the heat on low and add the mascarpone. Stir until combined and pour over pasta. Sprinkle the parsley on top. Voila!

I know my photo of the sauce looks a bit like chicken curry :/  But it looks much better in person, trust me!

The kale is looking great and tastes even better! In our excitement (and ignorance) we bought far too many kale plants for a two person household. Fortunately we do love kale and so we have been trying out a few ways to prepare it. Here are our two favorite ways to cook kale.

#1 Baked:

• Rinse and dry kale leaves.
• Remove the thick stalk and spread on a cookie sheet.
• Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle a little salt or other seasoning of your choice and place in oven.
• Our oven runs really hot so I put it on 275- 300 for about 5 minutes. Make sure you watch it though! It can burn quickly.

#2 Blanched and Sauteed:

• Rinse, dry and de-stalk the kale leaves.
• Blanch your kale! If you don’t know how, check out this All Recipes instruction. It’s super simple.
• After blanching lay them out on a clean towel to soak up the excess water.
• In a pan with a drizzle of olive oil, saute diced red onion and a clove or two of garlic.
• Before the onion becomes translucent add your kale and sprinkle salt and pepper on top. Just toss the kale in the pan long enough to reheat it and spread all the seasoning so each leaf is coated.
• You can saute the kale without blanching first but we found that the blanching toned down the bitterness which was a nice change for kale

Next I am going to start blanching and freezing our kale so it doesn’t go to waste and we can enjoy it long after our plants have died. Pick Your Own has a great little page on how to blanch and freeze your greens. If you already know how to blanch scroll on down the page for some great tips on harvesting and freezing.

Enjoy!

Or “Adventures In Tongue!”, that was the runner up title. But I thought “No, no! Lest someone mistake this for an X rated site!”…

But even if you did think about food, the word “tongue” does not evoke a particularly mouth watering, pleasant feeling for the majority of “Average Americans”. Tongue, liver, heart, blood, feet, hooves etc. these are things that most Americans would throw away. Well, they would throw them away if they HAD to. Instead they cut the cellophane packages open and find a perfectly shaped chicken breast. Something devoid of skin and bones or anything else that would remind them that this was, in fact, once a living being. But I digress.

No, tongue is not something “normal” in the American diet. In fact we could only get ONE of our friends come over for a dinner of tacos de lengua. But let me tell you, you have no idea what you’re missing! First of all, it’s cheap! Sure, go ahead and joke that it’s cheap because no one wants it but the truth is a lot of people in the world DO want it.

Secondly, it’s very tender and flavorful. The images of it being cooked may not be very pleasant. I will admit that. But you should at least give it a try! There are Mexican restaurants that will often have “tacos de lengua” but you can also get it at many Jewish deli’s. For a first timer I would suggest the tacos route. It is not distinguishable as a tongue and it is mixed with a lot of different textures and flavors to distract you from constantly thinking “I’m eating tongue!”.

*** Warning! Tongue images below! Don’t look if you’re a wussy!***

First we boiled the tongue for about three hours in a pot full of onions and peppercorns and other yummy seasonings!

Taste buds!!! Gaaahhhhh!!!!

Now to peel off the “skin”. Ugh, thank god the taste buds are gone!

Finally we cut the tongue up into small bite size pieces and saute it in a pan. I also made up my delicious homemade flour tortillas and a variety of fillings for the tacos: red onion, cilantro, radishes and avocado.

If you are feeling adventurous (and you should be!) hop on over to Simply Recipes were we got our recipe and try it out for yourself!

I got snowed in at my Dad’s house… so naturally we cooked! We cooked massive amounts of spanakopita. We are Greek after all, what else would we cook on a snow day?

kefalotiri and a mouli

two different kinds of feta, kefalotiri, ricotta, spinach, yellow onions, scallions, parsley, eggs and dill!

Butter and oil!

Anyone who thinks spanakopita is “healthy” should take a second look at this photo because I think my Dad and I made at least four pans of butter and oil for brushing on the filo dough!

Yes, wearing pajamas is a requirement for snow day cooking!

Yummy! I wish you could smell it! So GOOD!

All told we made two large 9×13 pans and 31 individual triangles. Of course we cooked up and ate some of the triangles. Our reward for a hard days work. The pans are for a Christmas Party and Christmas Eve dinner. You’re welcome family!

Happy Snow Day!!

Elevation Burger is a new “fast food” place that recently opened up over in Harbor East Baltimore. Its site boasts that it serves only 100% organic grass fed beef. They also strive to be as sustainable as possible. So we decided to check it out and were very pleased! Their burgers are amazing! And the fries are made in olive oil and taste great! (I don’t even like fries, so that’s saying something) Seriously, if you like burgers you should check this place out. And yes, they have veggie burgers too. The atmosphere is relaxed and clean, not jarring and loud like most fast food places. It was a great experience all around and I will definitely be going back there.