You know how sometimes (and for us, especially in the summer) you just throw together whatever for supper? It happens here because we choose to stay outside mowing, weeding, tending sheep, on and on and on.......until suddenly it's dark, nearly 10 pm and we're starved.
Not tonight! I've been thinking about tonight's supper for days now and have happily spent the last little bit preparing (boy, will Mike be surprised to have food actually waiting for him!). This salad is a summertime treat. Fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil splashed with some good olive oil and
really good balsamic vinegar. I've been rationing the balsamic vinegar you see drizzled across the tomatoes and cheese. A friend brought it back from her trip to Italy a few months ago and it is unbelievably good. I have never seen anything like it for sale here. It is thick and sweet and makes everything you put it on taste better. After the picture was taken , I added some regular balsamic to the dish because you want the mozzarella to soak it up so that it looks like brown bread. Add a little salt and pepper and you're done. Along with the salad, we're having crab cakes, fresh corn and a good French baguette.
I recently finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:A Year of Food Life and really enjoyed reading about her family's experience. I would like to say I could eat only local for a year, but I don't think I'm there yet. Reading that book did inspire me to put out a rather large garden this year and I'm hoping to grow plenty of fresh vegetables for eating now and preserving for the winter. These tomatoes aren't from my garden (how I wish), but very soon they will be. Here's what the tomatoes in my garden look like today. It won't be long.
That looks straight out of a cookbook. That type of tomato, basil and mozzarella combo is my all-time favorite salad. I haven't made it with balsamic but I will now. I wish I was there for dinner:)
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing.
I would love to have a vegetable garden but my yard is so darn shady that we have a hard time growing much of anything. Your tomatoes look beautiful.
You have an open invitation---anytime you can manage to be in this part of the country! Thanks so much for the reference to my blog. There has been an increase in my readers since then!
ReplyDeleteHi Dianne
ReplyDeleteCame by your blog after reading Susan's. I am a reader of her blog and love the things she makes.
The salad looks great, I am going to have to try that. I looked down through your old posts for the month and saw that rooster. I just got chickens. We have had them in the past but didn't work out with our neighbors so we now have new neighbors and are going to try again. I did get a rooster, but the same thing goes for him, your not nice you will be going. Anyways, I had wanted fancy chickens this time, something black or black and white and didn't end up with that. Maybe when I add to the flock again next year.