Tofu & Green Beans

This is one of those meals that can come together in like 15 minutes. It's great for times like when you take the chicken you were planning on having for dinner out of the fridge and it smells like a weird combo of blue cheese and trash even though you just bought it the day before. That happens to everyone right?

Well it's for times like these that I always keep tofu in the fridge and on this day I totally won because I had a bag of green beans from the farm stand in the fridge, too. I crumbled tofu and dry fried it - once it was starting to get brown I added a combo of soy, hoisin, rice wine vinegar, ginger, garlic and a little veggie stock. Once almost all the liquid was absorbed I mixed the tofu with steamed green beans. I sauteed some shallot until they were on the verge of burning - that's how I like them! I topped the green beans and tofu with the shallots and chopped roasted peanuts and BOOM - dinner!

Local Potato, Corn, and Tomato Salad

Itty bitty fingerling potatoes from the Sunday farmer's market at Dickinson Park, heirloom tomatoes from the same market and our backyard, and corn, long hots and Hidden Hills Dairy feta from our CSA make one very local, very delicious salad.

Roast and peel the skin off of a long hot, cut the corn off the cob and sautee the in olive oil, steam the potatoes, let everything cool before tossing with the chopped tomatoes, feta, chives (home grown!), a little red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Chow down.

Tomatoes + Homemade Bread = Perfect

I didn't always love tomatoes - in fact they were one of the few foods that I didn't like. But over the past few years I've smartened up and this time of year I can't get enough.

Tomatoes with cream cheese on toast? Okay! Pico De Gallo on just about everything? Yup. Perfect little heirlooms cut up with salt and pepper...for breakfast? Definitely.

Or how about this? BLT's on homemade no-knead bread. This might just be the perfect food.

This bread, slightly stale, tossed in olive oil and toasted up makes an awesome panzanella. Just one more way to use up all those tomatoes!