Yes, people really eat those things down here...

I recall when I was growing up in Utah hearing about fried green tomatoes, and being horrified that someone would actually eat something like that. I dislike the mushy, slimy texture of cooked tomatoes, so the thought of eating a cooked tomato that's not even ripe yet? Disgusting. How can you eat something like that?

Very easily I've discovered.

I made my first attempt at fried green tomatoes about a week ago. I had tried them before at resturants, and while they weren't disgusting, neither were they something I wanted to seek out. However, I'm very committed right now to local, seasonal eating, and there is nothing that says "late October in Georgia" more than a plate of fried green tomatoes.

Green tomato anything is a great way to use up those late season tomatoes that just will not ripen now that it's cooler. I made these using the last tiny tomatoes from my yard and a few other things I'd been saving. This is a perfect example of poverty food.


First, I sliced my tomatoes and sprinkled them with salt and pepper. The salt will dry out the tomato, which makes the breading stick. Leave them on the counter for about ten minutes. Breading is very simple. The technique for a tomato is the same as a piece of meat. First, you roll in flour. I used unseasoned all purpose. Remember, the tomatoes are already seasoned. Then I dipped them in an egg and milk mixture. Then you roll them in bread crumbs. I ran a slice of home made beer bread through my food processor to get my bread crumbs. The flour gives the egg something to stick to, the egg gives the bread crumbs something to stick to. If you've ever bitten into something fried and had the crispy outside come away from the inside bit, they didn't use flour first.

While I was mucking about with the breading, I melted some saved bacon fat in a pan. Bacon fat is great. It's full of flavor and it comes free with your breakfast. After I finished breading, the tomatoes went in the pan.

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Notice, I'm only cooking a few at a time. Crowding the pan means they take longer to cook and soak up more grease. I like bacon fat, but I like my arteries more.

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As they reach doneness, pull them out and lay them on paper towels to drain. If you're super concerned about the grease, you can lay them on a cooling rack. Since I only had a few tomatoes, I wasn't too worried about them reabsorbing the grease.

And thus concludes the saga of my first attempt at growing my own tomatoes.

Submitted to Grow Your Own.

Apple Crisp

I have a gaming group that meets on Saturdays. Usually it's straight up Dungeons and Dragons, but lately its been Werewolf. Though someone bought a 4th ed handbook, so as of this weekend we're back to DnD. Anyways, the hosts usually do the cooking or we order take out for dinner. I've started making a habit to bring a dessert or side dish along. The big hits this year have been peach salsa and peach cobbler. Since I am currently swimming in apples from the Apple Festival, I thought I'd do a little apple crisp.

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We start with apples. These are Black Arkansas varieties. They are very firm and sweet, perfect for baking.

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I bought a new Oxo grip peeler for this. I've been using the same peeler since before we were married, it was quite dull. I usually hate peeling things, but I actually liked it with this one. Except for the part where I nicked my finger because I didn't get resistance when I expected it.

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Apples, sliced and mixed with orange juice. Yes, I know it's supposed to be lemon juice. I'm out. Deal with it.

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The finished Apple Crisp, fresh from the oven. Not as pretty as I would like, but I can work on that.

Ingredients

2 cups-ish of sliced apples
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup quick oats
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/8 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon

Directions

Peel and slice apples and toss with lemon (or orange) juice. In a mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients and cut in the butter. You can use a fancy pastry cutter for this, or you can just squish it up with your hands like I do. Mix about a quarter of the topping with the apples, then spread in a baking dish. Spread the rest around on top and bake for 50 minutes at 375 degrees.

Picture Dump

I'm behind on posts, so I'm going to do my classic "Post a bunch of pictures that I planned to do posts about, but didn't" thing. You know you love it.

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Ham sandwich. I pack my husband's lunch for him every morning. He likes the most boring sandwiches ever. White bread, mayo, turkey and processed cheese. I have slowly managed to coax him into more interesting sandwiches. This one is ham and swiss on wheat bread (from a bakery) with arugula. He still likes plain mayo, but I feel a little better about it.

As an aside, he used to complain about my "gourmet" taste in lunch meat. I like to get the fresh Boar's Head from the deli counter, where he would buy Oscar Meyer if left to his own devices. But then I pointed out that the cost of a half pound each of meat and cheese (a week's worth) is still not quite equal to the cost of him going out for one meal.

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Some Pumpkin Curry Soup I made. I'm almost out of my pumpkin puree now. This makes me very sad.

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I'm doing a Day of the Dead party/ project with my International Studies elective class. The kids have done a ton of research about this holiday and Mexican culture in general. They are particularly taken with the cheerful and colorful skull imagery that predominates. Gotta love middle school. Anyways, these are "Skullipops". Pretzel sticks dipped in white chocolate and decorated with black gel frosting. A very simple and easy project to do with kids. They are currently hiding in a corner of my office, otherwise I'm afraid my co workers will steal them.

I'll conclude with some shots from the Cumming Greek Festival a few weeks ago. This was way better than the Atlanta Greek Festival.

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Lamb cooking on the spit.

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Crowd shot. See how not crowded everything is?

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Greek salad, roast lamb and potatoes with lemon and herbs. Delicious.

Tomato Sauce

I always seem to get behind on posts here, don't I? Let me reward your patience with some marinara sauce!

Tomato season is starting to wind down here. A few weeks ago, I had the half assed idea of making tomato sauce to freeze, so I could still enjoy locally grown food over the winter. Great idea, misses something in the execution. You'll see.

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The tomatoes. A combination of from my garden and the farmers market.

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Onion, garlic, green bell pepper and carrots. Yes, carrots. My mom made a recipe for Bolognase sauce a few years ago that used carrots as part of the base. Ever since then I've used them in tomato sauce and tomato soup. They add a different dimension of flavor to your dish.

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With the tomatoes added. I used the box grater method, which is why it looks pureed.

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After I added parsley and basil from my garden.

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Pureed using my immersion blender.

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LOOK AT THE SAUCE! LOOK AT IT!!!

The more astute of you have figured out why there is none in my freezer currently.

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It turns out I made just enough for one lasagna. It was a great one. Feta cheese mixed with the ricotta, freshly made sauce, Italian sausage. We had leftovers for three days.

But it's gone now.

And I am sad.

Submitted to Grow Your Own.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Due to the vagaries of the economy, we're skipping this year's annual trek to Texas for Thanksgiving with my in laws. I'm still ambivalent about skipping it, my family lives here in Georgia, so we see them pretty frequently. My husband's family can't travel to us, because they own a restaurant and can never take time off. Our Thanksgiving visit is really the only time we see them. But we're decided now and my mother in law, surprisingly, is cool with it.

My own mother (who will do anything to weasel out of cooking Thanksgiving) told me last weekend that they won't be spending Thanksgiving in Florida on the beach. My sister just got a new job and doesn't have the time off to travel, my other sister and my brother both have finals that week. So rather than attempt to get everyone down to Florida, they planned to stay home. And since I'm home, I offered to make dinner this year.

So now I get the challenge of making Thanksgiving for my picky siblings and my diabetic father. After some emailing back and forth with Mom, I seem to have worked out a menu.

Dinner...
Roast turkey with Cranberry Orange relish
Corn bread dressing
Roasted mixed potatoes (mix of different kinds, including sweet potatoes)
Green bean casserole
Spinach salad (baby spinach topped with red onion, bacon bits, chopped hard
boiled egg and silvered almonds)
Roasted broccoli


Snacks before dinner...
Raw veggies and dip
Baked brie with warm fruit compote

Dessert...
Applesauce cake (made with Splenda for Dad, since this is his favorite cake.)
Pumpkin pie

The heavy baking doesn't bother me. I've got the Wednesday off from school and I'll probably be home early on Tuesday. I may leave off the pumpkin pie if my sister decides to bring a pumpkin cheese cake. She's still deciding if she wants to do that or a pecan pie.

So even though it's a little early, I've got my plan. I'll be looking for sales on the ingredients I need, or searching out local/ organic sources for the next few weeks.

Elijay Apple Festival

Today marked my first visit to the Georgia Apple Festival in Elijay. I've been curious about this one for years, but had never managed a visit before. Luckily, I discovered that my eating buddy, Diane, wanted to visit too, so we made the trip up today.

Since neither one of us had been before, we planned to be early. We stopped by Katie's for a quick breakfast (They are decently fast if you get there before the brunch crowd starts) and then headed up. That turned out to be a good idea. When we left around noon, the festival was starting to become very crowded. So if we go again next year, we'll plan for another early trip.

I was so full from breakfast (I always stuff my face at Katie's. I'm a sucker for anything fresh baked.) that I didn't sample any of the festival food. I think if I had been there much longer, I would have had to buy one of the lunch plates the Lions Club was peddling. Fried chicken, turnip greens, pinto beans and corn bread. It smelled divine. There were also booths selling the requisite funnel cakes and apple fritters, as well as hot cider, hot chocolate and hot tea. Perfect fare for a cool, late October morning.

I also foolishly did not bring my camera. Diane snapped a few pictures on hers, but all I took was this one on my phone. Looks delicious right? Don't eat it. It's really a candle. Seriously. They had all sorts of beautiful hand crafted candles made to look like cakes and pies. They were scented too. They had tons of great crafts like this for sale. I had a hard time not spending all my money.

Of course, we bought apples there. We had promised a friend we'd get her some fresh apple cider. We also bought locally grown apples. Diane got a half peck of Red Delicious. I got a half peck of Granny Smith and a half peck of Black Arkansas. The picture at the top of this post is about half of what I bought. After a bit of googling, I have discovered that Black Arkansas apples are perfect for pies, along with Granny Smith's. So you'll probably see a post about that next weekend.

All in all, I considered this to be a great trip. I bought some apples. I did some Christmas shopping. I enjoyed some time in the north Georgia mountains. I'd do it again.

I'll probably eat a fritter though. That is my one regret.

Well, I finally decided...

I'm skipping the Taste of Roswell this weekend. I'll be at the Elijay Apple Festival Saturday and the Cumming Greek Festival on Sunday.

I know everyone was breathlessly awaiting this decision.

In other news, we finally finished off the collard greens for dinner tonight. The recipe I used came from someone I know on a forum. It's very simple and made some of the tastiest greens you can imagine.

A couple slices of bacon
Chopped onion
Greens
Chicken broth

Fry the bacon in a pan with a lid. Throw in your onions. Add greens, then enough chicken broth to cover. Cover with lid, then simmer until greens are tender. The bacon adds great flavor to the greens.

I served it alongside fried potatoes. My husband was iffy about a meal without a big, meaty centerpiece, but even he admitted that it was very filling.