(2023) Cold Noodles With Tomatoes

I am tempted to just chop everything up and make a big salad with a little of everything in it – yes, raw corn, and YES, raw okra. And that will be dinner tonight. But eventually we’ll want something else, so I’ve got three ideas here – two from my go-to New York Times (cold noodles with tomatoes!) but one that was demonstrated at the Decatur Farmers Market. I have to say that I truly miss restaurant chef demos at local farmers markets. At once time that was a mainstay of the markets and always a source of creative inspiration … now they’re extremely rare, but the Community Farmers Market folks have local cooks who do demos most every week, and their recipes are perhaps a bit more practical and maybe easier to pull off.

(2023) Sesame Tomato Salad

There’s another idea for using those tomatoes below, a Sesame Tomato Salad from the New York Times (yes, my favorite source for recipes) which I loved because I would never have thought to combine toasted sesame oil with tomatoes, and it’s delicious.

(2022) Tomato Vinaigrette

With that one tomato, I’m going to try this Tomato Vinaigrette recipe from Emily Nunn of The Department of Salad. She adapted the recipe from “Williams-Sonoma Cooking at Home.” I’ve still got two red onions from past boxes, so I’ll put part of one to good use here.

(2022) Tomato Cracker Salad

And while there’s no zucchini in our box this week, I’ve been wanting to try this zucchini tortilla recipe that Ali Stafford adapted from https://whiteonricecouple.com/zucchini-tortillas/. So I’m trying it with yellow squash.

Stafford says keep an eye on these while baking. If you bake them too long, the Parmesan will cook too much and cause the tortillas to become brittle.

(2022) Matthew Reeves’ Ratatouille

With so many peppers and that pretty eggplant, it’s time to make ratatouille. Down below is the recipe I’ve adapted from one provided by Matthew Reeves, who with his wife Maggie Reeves, hosts a drop-off for Riverview boxes. What I love is that there are almost no quantities given (just a size for one can of crushed tomatoes). Ratatouille really must have been created as a delicious way to use up summer vegetables and you can juggle quantities of ingredients to suit what you have… and what you like. We didn’t get zucchini this week (at least not in my box) but we got eggplant, yellow squash, lots of peppers, and garlic. You could use the red onion that we got today if you like, or maybe you have some yellow onions on hand. At our house, we’re not big rosemary fans, so we’re leaving that out.