Plan T

These tomatoes don't qualify as local. They are organic and home grown, but our friend Jeanne brought them up with her from La-La Land yesterday when she came for a visit.

I've been reading in other people's blogs and newspaper articles about the glut in garden produce at this time of year and feeling partly lucky and partly deprived of this annual surfeit of abundance. My Beloved and I are not really gardeners, we just accept the peaches and occasional lemon that our trees produce all by themselves. When Jeanne arrived bearing a half grocery bag full of Romas and Celebrities, we joined the Glut Club.

Jeanne is an adventurous friend so she was open to the idea of trying to roast about half of the harvest. Inspired by Cookiecrumb, we read a recipe on Orangette, halved some of each kind of tomato, brushed them with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt before sliding the pans into a 200 degree oven and departing to do some errands.

The errands included a stop at a new store we've never visited before, El Cerrito Natural Grocery, and what a treat that was! If you've never visited, I can recommend it. Very cool store with all kind of organic and natural products, They sold us a Diestel free-range turkey, impressive packaged in its very own fitted cardboard box, and we hurried home to prepare the corn bread stuffing.

Discovering that I had run out of onions and celery, I send MB and Jeanne down to the local store, only to discover as I opened the turkey box, that the bird I was planning to serve for dinner in a couple of hours was frozen solid! Never thought to ask if it was fresh! So, what to make for dinner? Time to move to Plan T.

By this time, five and a half hours later, the oven had yielded two sheets full of lovely, slumpy, concentrated tomatoes. I shanghaied one of the onions they brought from the market and scoured the fridge and the cupboards for additional ingredients. I found a few mushrooms, some fresh carrots, two big shallots, some ripe olives, a can of artichoke hearts and the Cody's Crush wine that Jeanne brought with her. I sauteed the onions and mushrooms, then added the rest along with some Italian herb seasoning and a small can of tomato sauce, but the piece de resistance was those luscious, rich roasted tomatoes. Jeanne and I squeezed the flesh out of the skins and into the pot with the rest of the ingredients, simmered it for a long time, and voila! a feast to ladle over some vermicelli and to top with fresh parmesan cheese!

We'll return to Plan A tomorrow and roast that turkey but I have to admit, we didn't miss it today!