Tomato Heaven

If your garden did better than mine did this year, you may have more tomatoes right now than you know what to do with. I picked some up at the farmers market last weekend, and am now obsessed with my new way of eating them.

Best part about this "recipe" is that it takes all of a minute to be ready.

Other best part, it's super healthy. Enjoy.

1. Medium to large tomato (or a couple handfuls of cherry or grape tomatoes)
2. Olive oil
3. Cheese
4. Salt/Pepper

Just chunk the tomato and put the pieces in a bowl.
Drizzle a little olive oil over the tomato pieces.
Add salt and pepper if you want.
Top it all off with a sprinkle of your favorite cheese. My personal favorites are gorgonzola and crumbled blue cheese. Feta would be good too. If you like milder cheese, try some fresh mozzarella.

Stuffed Eggplant

Giving Meatless Monday another shot this week.  I put this dish together in my head the other day, and it would be very easy to substitute ingredients to suit your taste.  Feel free to use this recipe as a blueprint to build your own delicious Meatless Monday meal.

Hope you enjoy!

1 Eggplant, sliced in half lengthwise, some inside flesh removed to create small "bowl"
1 cup Quinoa
Salt
Olive Oil
1/4 Red Onion
3 Cloves Garlic
1/2 Bell Pepper
3 TBSP Sunflower Seeds
3 TBSP Apple Cider Vinegar (optional)
Gorgonzola Cheese

1. Heat oven to 350.  Coat flesh of eggplant with approx 1 Tsp of Olive Oil and a pinch of salt.  Put on baking tray flesh side up and bake for 20-25 minutes.  Eggplant flesh should be slightly browned when done.  Remove from oven.

2.  While eggplant is in oven, prepare Quinoa as directed.  Add 3 TBSP Apple Cider Vinegar in addition to the water needed to cook quinoa.  When it is ready, remove from heat and set aside.  1 cup will have cooked up to about 2.5 cups. 

3.  Saute pepper, onion, sunflower seeds, and garlic in olive oil.

4.  Combine sauteed veggies and approx 3/4 cup of quinoa in separate dish.  Stir together and then 'stuff' the eggplant halves with the mixture.  Sprinkle cheese on top, and put under the broiler for a few minutes to melt cheese. 

Serve.  Can use extra quinoa as a side, or serve by itself.

Black Bean Burgers

Giving the whole "Meatless Monday" thing a try this week.  Giving black bean burgers a shot, along with some fried potatoes and steamed green and yellow beans from the garden.  Got the main frame of the recipe from allrecipes.com, but made a few substitutions based on preference and ingredients on hand.

Here is the recipe I used:

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 jalapeno, seeded/sliced
1/2 banana pepper, seeded/sliced
1/2 onion
3 cloves garlic
2 eggs
1/2 cup bread crumbs
Salt
Pepper

Mash beans with a fork.  Combine peppers, onion, and garlic in food processor and mince.  Drain off as much liquid as you can from the minced veggies (I dried it a bit with paper towel) and combine with bean mash.  Add salt and pepper to taste and mix together.  Add eggs and bread crumbs.  Once thoroughly mixed, form into patties.  You should get 4 good sized patties. 

To cook, heat a frying pan to med/high and add TBSP of olive oil (just enough to coat the pan).  Cook on each side about 3 minutes and serve.