The Omnivore has a green thumb

The Omnivore, meat eater that he is, has a surprisingly green thumb.

And I don’t mean the kind of thumb you get when you choose to use exclusively fountain pens as your writing-tool of choice and are particularly messy at filling your ink cartridges (although, he is very guilty of that thumb as well).

I mean the man can grow a garden.  And he takes it seriously.

Take exhibits A, B, and C:

I don’t ask questions.  But I do know this. Exhibits A and B smell really bad.

Exhibit C  is where the good stuff comes from.  The man can propagate some tomatoes.  And right now, that thought is really appealing.  The styro-foamy pink tomatoes in the grocery store just aren’t cutting it.  When you slice into them, you smell nothing.  Fake, fake, fake.  Blech.  Nothing like a freshly picked, vine ripened tomato to take your eating up a notch.

That is, of course, until you get to that point that the Omnivore is harvesting fruit faster that you can eat it.  And you never want to eat bruschetta again, and No, it is too hot for tomato soup, and No thank you I’ll pass on the gazpacho, TYVM.  I told you it was too hot for soup. I DON’T CARE THAT GAZPACHO IS SERVED COLD.

And your coworkers don’t want them.  And your neighbors have too many tomatoes themselves and they’re leaving their tomatoes on your front doorstep when you aren’t looking and and and…

Stressful, I know.  But the following recipe uses up plenty of tomatoes while providing a warm, flavorful side dish that would accompany grilled chicken, hot dogs, or well, anything, just fine (don’t ask me why I just rambled off all these meat-laden main dishes.  That was weird, stream of consciousness thinking).

And I’ll be keeping you supplied with plenty of tomato ideas, because considering how green (and I don’t mean that in the save-the-earth-way, although I’m all for saving the world) the Omnivore’s thumb seems to be, we’re in for a tomato-full summer.

You see those lil chick peas?  Well, during dinner they sprouted legs and started mingling with my tomatoes and the combination was super.  So, if you are daring, add chick peas to the recipe listed below.

Scalloped Tomatoes (adapted from The Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Cooking)

1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup chopped carrot
1/4 chopped parsley
(are we seeing a pattern here?)
6 roma tomatoes
2 slices wheat bread, cubed
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp dry mustard

Saute cubed bread with onions in nonstick spray.  Combine the remaining ingredients along with half of the bread/onion mixture in a casserole dish sprayed with nonstick spray.  Top with remaining bread mixture and bake at 375* for 30 minutes.