How to Make Healthy Vegetarian Foods Recipes

' Tomatoes are the Elixir of Summer '  Anna Thomas of The Epicurean I have come to enjoy  home grown tomatoes, not pureed to a pulp in a soup or mushed for a pasta sauce, not roasted or de-hydrated either, but completely natural in their own right.  It wasn't always this way though, I used to find them rather bland and tasteless.   Let me tell you something,  in the early 2000 when I graduated and got a job with this big organisation, I used to have to attend formal dinner party events, award ceremonies and that kind of thing.  Well the most innovative Western inspired starter this vegetarian would often get served (and I write this with some sarcasm) would be a 1970s style large beef tomato hollowed out and then stuffed with some herby grain like barley.  I would not mind that much at all had the star of the plate, this fruit (and yes tomato is a fruit) been deliriously tasty, instead it was often insipid, tough and tasteless and the filling was...

Yes its all about the tomatoes and this week I have mostly been eating tomatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Here is a Orzo Pasta Salad with tomatoes and runner beans.  I made a big batch that was good for three working day lunches. My work lunches are often home-made as buying from eateries adds up over the week.  So here are some other lunches from the past.  Barley Salad Pot with grated carrots, pumpkin, sunflower seeds and raisins.  Portion of spicy nuts,  I don't do breakfast during the working week, so a banana or apple in the morning is what stops my tummy from rumbling.  And this time some Nakd cocoa delights, I actually like these very much, but would be happy to give the Nakd bars a miss.  A wholemeal bread sandwich right at the back and a muffins and flapjacks now and again, but as I said sometimes its nice to have a sneaky treat.    A different Pasta Salad, yes with tomatoes again, but also black  ol...

The marrows and courgettes are still growing well in the garden plot and I have been cooking with them loads, but this week its the tomatoes that have got us excited.  I think its another two weeks and then was distracted with work la We finally are harvesting them on a daily basis.   I have made so many dishes with them from Savoury Tomato Clafoutis, Tomato Couscous Tart Tatin and Tomato Date Baklava ! This is a cake stand full of assorted tomatoes and some chilies. Chillies growing happily.   The raspberries are starting to come along nicely.   However, the birds are beating me to them - they are welcome to it, we still have plums dripping from the tree.  I have given some plums to neighbours and friends, as well as family. And if the plums were not keeping me busy in the kitchen, the neighbours gave us bag full of eating apples.  I am sharing this post with    Harvest Monday hosted by Dave over  Our Happy Acres...

As mentioned in a previous Harvest Monday blog post , the tomatoes are coming along very nicely in the greenhouse   We have all types and the names escape me, especially of this rather large tomato. Just to give you some context of how big it is, I am holding it here; and no, I am not going to stuff it!.  We have been harvesting raspberries too.  I have had to freeze some as we are still enjoying plums from the tree. The cooking apples are beginning to fall from the tree too, in fact one fell and cracked a greenhouse window pane, fortunately it did not go through this time.  I made a Raspberry and Apple crumble at the weekend, and let me tell you it was absolutely the gorgeous, the apples just turned to pulp taking on the colour of the raspberries.  It was lush, I tell you. Funnily enough we are still harvesting courgettes, though I will be pulling the plants out next week as those remaining courgettes are tiddlers.  I made an untraditi...

I have been such a wimp recently, I have not ventured much into the allotment garden plot of late.  The constant drizzle is bringing me down.  I leave home to go into work in the morning and get drenched; and I get home home and I am soaking.  The joys of waiting for public transport when there is no shelter.  So come the weekend and its raining, the last thing I want to do is go out - even if it is my back garden.  Fortunately fo r me, my husband picked the last tomatoes in the greenhouse in November. These were all used for a pasta sauce and a cold pasta salad for work.. Some of you may remember that from my last Harvest Monday blog post that I do still have some curly kale and black Tuscan aka dinosaur kale, and purple Brussels sprouts to harvest, but after that there will not be much else to share on Harvest Monday until Spring next year.   For now, please enjoy the last of my homegrown tomatoes that were harvested in the last week of November. I ...