Omnomicon

Over the next couple months I have a short list of amazing events (read: San Francisco and a music festival) and extra hours to cram in at work to make them possible. As such I’ll be shifting the focus of the site for the next little while so I can get the most out of my summer. It’s like a free vacation from the job that doesn’t pay me. Thanks, boss! (that’s me)

While the photograph/recipe/thousand words/twice-a-week formula has been working quite well for me, I think this is a good opportunity to focus on some ideas that are a little less labour-intensive and maybe even refreshing, as there are a lot of food blogs who do the same thing I’ve been doing anyway. And don’t worry, I’m planning to return to the more familiar schedule in the last couple weeks of July.

So stay with me people, here’s what you have to look forward to over the next several weeks:

• The yummy results from June’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe Round-Robin (with plenty of commentary, photos and the recipe as per usual). If you’re following along, you know that the taste-testing is just getting ready to begin!
• The announcement of July’s Recipe Round-Robin, a savoury dish as yet to be determined (still taking suggestions!).
• Daily noms, daily.

I’ll also be chronicling my first CSA summer. Depending on how much free time I can squeeze out of my schedule, I hope to photograph each week’s share, get in touch with my local agricultural roots, and perform a cost-benefit analysis on the experience. And likely some salad “recipes” if you can call them that.

So that’s my big announcement! Not a big deal, but a little different for a little while and then I’ll be back with a veritable onslaught of delicious originals.

Now get away from the internet and take some time to enjoy your summer too! And here’s a daily nom. We made sammiches on whole-grain Tuscan pane bread with Swiss, avocado and roasted reds on the left and muenster, capicola and red delicious apples on the right.

When I was a kid we visited my Uncle Doug with some frequency, and he only owned two movies from what I can remember. The first was The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which didn’t appeal to me for more than five minutes at a time, and the second was Fried Green Tomatoes. Yes, it is a chick flick, but it’s also a dark period film, and at the time that shit was directly up my alley. Oh, who are we kidding, it’s still up my alley.

In college, I took a food lit class and this was also on the required reading. Turns out in the book there’s a little bit more of a lesbian bent. Who knew? Whatever the case, I digress. It all comes down to I saw green tomatoes at work, and decided to try something new. In addition to the food itself, check out the results of my fancy little light box!

Look at these babies. Just beautiful, the color.

Green being my favourite colour, this was practically a religious experience visually.

This isn’t sandart, it’s just the underwhelming breading for these things.

And here they are, fried green tomatoes!

These were really just okay, which surprises me in a way, considering how much oil went into them, but not in other ways, like it’s a southern dish. I could see these being excellent with seasoned breadcrumbs, but I’m not a big fan of cornmeal without something punching it up a bit, and needless to say, the tsp of paprika really didn’t cut it. That said, I made an attempt to salvage this experiment.

Yep, you can make anything into a pretty good sammich. This one features arugula, cheddar, red onion, and mayo. My research tells me that green tomatoes are indeed just red tomatoes that haven’t had a chance to ripen yet. I thought maybe they were some kind of varietal. Maybe I’ll try fried heirloom tomatoes one of these days.

If you are interested in making your own, here’s a recipe from Epicurious.