Vampire proof your garden

Elizabeth sent in this comment/question on my BBQ Green Tomato Chutney entry :
Hey, neighbor- Just found you looking for green tomato chutney (I can't face that old file folder of paper recipes!)- yours sounds great. I have a question, though- I have a mess (a gallon?) of small green tomatoes, from bigger-than-cherry-but-not-quite-plum-tomatoes. Can you give me an approximate weight/volume of tomatoes in the recipe? I'm not all about measurements but I'm having a hard time visualizing full-size tomatoes out of this pile I have. Thanks, from Seattle.
My recipe called for 3-4 medium sized tomatoes and that is about 1 1/2 lbs or 750grams. Chutney is one of those of things that are evolved as it's made. You toss the ingredients in and then take a little taste. Toss in a bit more of this, a touch more of that until it suits your palate. I do make big batches of chutney for canning but I often will make small batches for just one or two meals. It makes for a fresher and brighter tasting chutney.

If you still have green tomatoes leftover, you can ripen them indoors. I've just brought all of my tomato plants into my dining room to let them ripen. You can simply take vines/branches and hang them for vine ripened tomatoes . Or you can take the tomato off the vine and put them in a cardboard box in a single layer and cover them with some newspaper and let them ripen somewhere cool.

I hope that helps!
*******

I hope everyone is enjoying a yummy 100 mile diet fall season. I've been delighting in this season's buffet. We've been swooning a sea of fall and winter delights!
For garlic lovers, it's garlic planting season again. I've planted garlic in a wide range of soil conditions and they don't seem to need much work after the initial planting making them a great garden item for beginner green thumbs. It will keep vampires out of your garden though it won't do anything to keep them from showing up at your front door and begging for junk food at the end of this month.
If some gaunt, serpent tongued Qing dynasty official comes hopping down them street, hold your breath, it's a Jiang Shi. Blame it on the monobrowed taoist priest and his bumbling assistants for this ghoulish happening. Fortunately, if you just block the threshold of your doorway, the undead qi sucking beggar can't get inside your house. This is why doorways in traditional chinese houses have ankle busting 6 inch high thresholds.

Anyways, here's a great tutorial for garlic planting from Boundary Garlic Farm.
I got my garlic from Ken at Gabriola Gourmet Garlic Farm at a local farmer's market. If you haven't had a chance to get your garlic yet or are looking for more locally grown goodies, you're in luck!
The 2007 Farmer's Showcase is this coming Saturday (Oct. 20) from 10am to 4pm at the Mid-Island Co-Op on Bowen Road. There will be a wide range of farm products and vendors. I'll also be manning a table and doing my 100 mile diet song n' dance. Foodlink Nanaimo is also hosting a networking forum “Supporting Local Agriculture” on Friday, October 19^th at 6:30 pm at Christ Community Church. For those in the Mid-Island region interested in finding ways to support and sustain a viable local agriculture, this is the place to be!

100 Mile Diet Table for One

(my Roma tomatoes)
DH has been away working as a kayak jedi on the west coast for the last few weeks. I've been dining solo and relishing the local bounty that marks this glorious season.



Cooking has been kept fast & dirty. Partly because it's just me eating but mostly because I wanted to spend any spare moment I could squeeze out of my schedule to finish my Fire and Ice sweater!
For more photos and knitting jabbering about the final chapter of Fire & Ice , check out my knitting blog.

















Back to our normal programming...
Here's a sampling of what I've been enjoying in my feast for one.
It's prime tomato picking time. I've got all my tomato plants squatting in my dining room and makeshift solarium. They're all warm and cozy and ripening up nicely.
My currant tomatoes came up as sweet as candy this year. Great for snacking and salads.














All my tomatoes were either from locally raised seeds or seedlings. Most are heirloom varieties. They're all so flavorful and juicy. It's been so much fun discovering all the nuances in flavor and texture of them.














Open-faced tomato and cheese sandwich made with local organic olive bread from Slow Rise Bakery in Island, local cheese and, of course, my tomatoes.














A few minutes under the broiler and it was comfort food heaven!










Bowl of summer. What I happened to have on hand.














With the summer's bounty and a can of organic black beans, a glass of Cherry Point Coastal white wine and a herbs from the my garden I made a summer veggie chowder














For lunch: Some local organic greens from my produce box, a gorgeously ripe barlett pear, local beet, Hilary's Belle Anne cheese, smoked proscuitto from Nanoose Sausage House.














A little of slicing and dicing and we have a Vancouver Island Chef's Salad. I also added some leftover roasted turkey breast, locally raised, of course. For a dressing, I made a blueberry basil dressing (recipe below)














Last, but not least, dessert. Here's a nectarine and homemade berry jam oat bar.














I popped over the Gabriola Island's farmer's market with my little green cart. It's a good thing I brought the cart because I picked up 10lbs of apples from Berry Point orchard vendor. Good thing I had my green cart. It would have been murder on my back to carry all that home. Berry Point grows a crazy awesome assortment of apples. They're the only ones that I know of that carry both of my favorite baking apples, Belle de Boskoop and Bramely Seedlings. Berry Point apples can sometimes be found at QF stores for a limited time. Their Paula Reds are one of my favorite sweet apples.
With my apple bounty I made a simple, rustic crisp. They're fairly tart but also have quite of bit natural sweetness. For a huge crisp, I only added a couple spoonfuls of honey to heighten the sweetness.














Fast & Dirty Blueberry Basil Dressing
1 part homemade local blueberry (or mixed berry) jam
1 part pesto (I used my own local homemade)
1 part basalmic or red wine vinegar
2 parts EVOO

Mix ingredients well. I just throw everything in a jar, close the lid tightly and shake vigorously.

BTW, Yellow Point Cranberries is having their Happy Turkey Night tonight. They are offering a sampling of unique cranberry dishes and the money is going to raise money for Ladysmith Secondary School. Give them a call to reserve your ticket.

Happy eating!

High centered on hump day

For the last couple of weeks, I've been riding on a non-stop wave of summer's bounty and local food events. Now I'm perched on Wednesday, with a dayplanner spilling over with events, appointments and meetings, and I've barely had time to digest last week. There's still a huge load of canning to do and I'm contemplating a Mid-Autumn moon festival 100 mile feast. But all I want to do is sit on my porch and eat my tomatoes. I'm high centered on hump day!

Here are some highlights from this last week:

Last Thursday, I spoke at Duncan's Chamber of Commerce 100 Mile Diet Breakfast, hosted by the Equinox Cafe. Sean and Jessica at the Equinox Cafe have been local farm supporters from the very beginning. Their menu boasts produce, meats, cheeses, wine and other goodies from Cowichan Valley farms. I can't remember much of my talk. It was far too early and the coffee didn't kick in until I got home. I do remember that there was very good local bacon to be had ;)
That night, I had some friends over for dinner. I made a cioppino with local halibut, tomatoes from my garden and veggies from the produce box, and a glassful of Cherry Point's Coastal White. Cioppino is a traditional fish stew. I'll let the Italians, Portuguese and San Fransiscoans fight over who's tradition it is. Fishermen made this stew as their daily meal with their daily catch. It's recipe is written by whatever you happen to have on hand. It's about as easy-peasy as you can get. Saute a bunch of veggies in olive oil, dump in chopped tomatoes, chunks of fish or shellfish, wine/stock/broth, cover and let simmer for 10 minutes. Sprinkle a bunch of herbs from the garden and you've got yourself a meal!
I've had to move my dining room table into the already cramped kitchen. My friends are too polite to say anything about the new eating arrangement.









I've had to relocate the dining table because my dining room area has been turned into a tomato refugee camp.









Friday. Well, something happened on Friday but I can't remember what.

Saturday was filled to the rim. My friend Dave and I headed over to the Errington Farmer's Market to pick up some fleece from a local sheep farmer, Elaine at Weaver's Rose Cottage.






All the fleece, roving and yarns at her stall were all from her own sheep. I picked up a few pounds of washed Romney wool at $8 a pound. What a deal! She also runs natural dyeing workshops. Elaine can be reached at (250) 248-1270 or just pop by the Errington's farmer's market. She's at stall 10.




The market is fabulous. Just what a farmer's market ought to be, a market that serves the community, not a tourist trap filled with trinket stalls . It's tucked in the local park and had wooden covered stalls and it a real friendly vibe. Part social hub, part local market, part community stage, it was a great place to spend a Saturday morning. There was a range of local produce from plums, to melons, greens and squashes. There was local seafood vendor and prepared foods and a few arts and craft stalls but the focus definitely was on local produce.

Afterwards, we headed over to Coombs market in search of more veggies and fruit for canning. They have island produce sold in cases. I also found one of my favorite foods, chantrelles. At $9/lb, I managed to find some wiggle room in my food budget to get a small bagful.
The less you do to chantrelles, the better. They have a mild, woodsy-nutty flavour that begs nothing but a saute in butter.







Here's one of my favorite things to do with these forest treasure: chantrelle and scrambled egg. Saute a bunch of chopped chantrelles in a couple plugs of butter for a few minutes. Add beaten eggs and scramble them up over medium heat. I like them soft and just a breath shy of runny. I topped the mushrooms and eggs with a few thin slices of Hilary's Belle Anne cheese. Steamed green beans rounded off the dish. So simple. So good. For heavens sake, don't skimp on the butter. If you're going to use factory farmed eggs you might as well throw the chantrelles into the trash. Better yet, pass 'em over to me, you obviously don't deserve chantrelles ;P




Saturday afternoon was spent navigating the pockmarked asphalt serpentine otherwise known as the Pacific Rim Highway as I ran off to the west coast to spend some time with DH, who has returned to his job as kayak jedi for the waning days of the season. Beachcombing black bears, burping sea lions, jumping salmon and hubcap sized sea stars made cameo appearances on our romantic-comedy-action adventure weekend.

On Tuesday, I returned to my 100 Mile Diet soapbox with an appearance on CHLY's Changes program. I ranted too much, forgot to mention a bunch of stuff that I had wanted to mention but otherwise, I think I did alright.

The folks at Changes had put a challenge out to all the restaurants to take on the 100 Mile Diet. Victoria boasts a growing list of restaurants that focus on local foods and Cowichan Valley has a 3 or 4 restaurants of the same goal, with one on a 20 mile diet (Yippee!). The last time I walked into one of the Nanaimo's finer restaurant's that boast they are making a local food a priority, I found out that their lamb was coming from Australia :(

Well, I'm proud to say that one Nanaimo establishment has stepped up to the 100 Mile Diet challenge and boy, they're doing it in style!
The Mermaid's Mug on Wesley Street has taken on the challenge. I popped over there yesterday to see how they were doing. They're bringing in local fruits and veggies from just down the road. They're using island meats and cheese. Their coffee is from a local roaster and is direct fair trade (of course). Michelle, the owner, has already squirrelled away a ton of local fruit for smoothies and is looking to can tomatoes to see them through the winter. There's also talk of building her own vegetable garden in the yard behind the restaurant. Music to my ears.

Finally, somebody who isn't just paying lip service! I'm just thrilled that I can finally go out to eat in Nanaimo and still be able to stay on my 100 mile diet.

BBQ Green Tomato Chutney

In my produce box this week, I received a few green tomatoes. There's tons you can do with green tomatoes. There's green tomato pie, fritters, pickles, relish, baked and of course, fried green tomatoes. I've even made green tomato biscotto, green tomato jam-filled cookies and green tomato crumble last year. One of my favorite is green tomato chutney.

You want to pick mature green tomatoes, not rock hard dark green ones. The mature ones are paler and just on the verge of ripening. I usually just pick some from my grow-op of tomato plants.
The front porch lined with tomato plants.








The back porch filled with tomato plants. What can I say? I love tomatoes!







Mature green tomatoes. Just about to start ripening.

I decided to make a BBQ green tomato chutney. Yep. You heard me. BBQ.

I know it sounds a bit loopy but there is method to my madness.
Firstly, it keeps my time in a stuffy, hot kitchen to a minimum. Secondly, the ingredients will take on a deeper and intense flavor thanks to the grilling. Thirdly, I was firing up the BBQ anyways to make a big batch of locally raised and made sausages. Last, but not least, a BBQ green tomato chutney would go perfectly with BBQ sausages.

I made enough to last a few weeks in the fridge. You could can this chutney but that would mean having to get your kitchen all hot and sweaty with the canning process.

The basic chutney components are veggies and/or fruit, vinegar, spices, sweetener. For the BBQ green tomato chutney, I've grilled all the vegetables before adding it to the rest of the ingredients. You could make a regular chutney and just throw all the raw veggies in with the chutney mixture and cook it down until the veggies are soften.

All the veggies, fruit, honey, even apple cider vinegar were all island grown!

I used golden plums that I picked up at the Cedar Farmer's Market a few weeks back. You could use any sort of plum or soft fruit like peaches or figs. Or you could use dried fruit. Just soak them in some hot water before adding to the rest of the chutney.





Here my Fast & Dirty BBQ Green Tomato Chutney recipe:

3-4 medium sized green tomatoes
2 small yellow onions
3 sweet peppers
4-5 golden plums

1 clove of garlic - minced
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
1 heaping tablespoon curry powder (whatever you have on hand or your own mixture)
A healthy pinch of each: salt, black pepper, chipolte chili powder, ancho chili powder, cayenne pepper (or whatever you happen to have on hand to give it a fiery kick)
1/3 cup honey (or brown or cane sugar)

Mix the curry, salt, pepper and chilli powders together.

Slice the tomatoes into 1cm thick slices.
Quarter the onions. Leave on the top on so that the quartered onions stay intact. Sprinkle both with the spice mixture.
Core peppers and cut them into 3-4 chunks.
Fire up the BBQ to medium high heat and lay the vegetables in a single layer on the grill. You want to char the pepper skins so have those skin side down.
Grill the tomatoes and onions for 2-3 minutes on each side or until starting to soften.
Grill the peppers until the skin is blackened.
Set all the the veggies aside to cool.

While veggies cool, mix all the other ingredients in a medium sized pot.
Bring to a boil and then simmer for 5 minutes.
While the mixture simmers, chop up the tomatoes into 1 cm chunks, chop of the top ends of the onions and chop that into 1 cm chunks.
Remove the blackened skin off the pepper and chop into 1 cm chunks.
Remove the plum pits and chop into quarters.
Dump veggies and plums into the chutney mixture and simmer for another 5 minutes.

Voila!
Have a yummy week everybody!

Jen

Enjoy the summer bounty and take the 100 Mile Diet Challenge!

Thai one on

I finally got around to freezing the 15 pounds of tomatoes I got from Gary Argyle’s farm this past weekend. Of course, now I had to find room for 15 pounds of tomatoes in our tiny chest freezer. In order to make more real estate, I pulled out a few odds and ends to be made into dinner including some corn (from McNab’s farm) and a few meatballs leftover from a Frikadeller dinner a few weeks back, a couple cups of beef stock and a block of Pete’s organic extra firm tofu. Tofu freezes beautifully and can be thawed either at room temperature or immersed in boiling water. Just make sure to press out the excess water. The tofu takes on a meatier texture after being frozen.

The possibilities are endless, especially with a vat of ready-to-go roasted veggies at my disposal. I could have done a stew or a tomato based chowder. I could have done a funky Ma Po Tofu or a miso-marinated stirfry. I could have done a savoury risotto with corn & tomato salsa. Or just toss the stock back into the freezer and used the rest of the ingredients as the base for a super-simple pasta.

I was still savoring last night’s noodle dish and wanted something warm and comforting. So I decided on my Thai One On noodle soup. Here’s the Fast & Dirty directions for soup:

3-4 oz rice sticks

5 meatballs – quartered

1 heaping teaspoon minced ginger

1 garlic clove- minced

1 green onion/scallion chopped

3 cup cilantro chopped

2-3 oz of extra firm tofu – pressed and cubed

2 cups roasted veggies

½ cup frozen corn

2-3 tomatoes chopped into chunks

2-3 cups diluted beef broth. Basically 2 part broth to 1 part water. Veggie or chicken broth would be fine. Use low-sodium if you’re using pre-fab.

2 tablespoon fish sauce

½ teaspoon sambel oelek

2 kaffir lime leaves minced fine – use fresh or frozen

juice of ½ lime

couple shots of sesame seed oil

peanut or veg. oil

Topping options – chopped cilantro/parsley/scallions, shredded carrots, fresh thai basil, lime wedges, shredded egg omelet/scramble egg, bean sprouts, dry roasted peanuts or any other nuts or seeds

Soak rice sticks in boiling water. Cover and set aside. Once soft, drain and rinse in cold water. Set aside.

In a wok, heat up the oil over high heat. Dump in meatballs, ginger, garlic, cilantro, scallions. Stir fry for a few minutes. Take a moment and inhale the wonderful aromatics.

Dump in tofu and let that brown a bit. Dump in roasted veggies, tomatoes, corn, beef broth, fish sauce, sambel oelek and lime leaves. Bring to a boil and lower to a simmer for 10 mins.

Finish off with the lime juice and the sesame seed oil.

Arrange noodles in bowls and top with the piping hot soup. Garnish as desired. I just had some lime slices on the side just in case folks wanted a larger slap of citrus.

So good on a cold fall night. This is one of my favorite soups. I love the beautiful, robust flavours of Thai cooking. I often keep a small jar of 'Thai It Up' sauce in my fridge. Here's the fast & dirty recipe for that:
1/3 cup fish sauce
1/3 cup lime juice
1/3 cup rice vinegar
1 teaspoon organic cane sugar or honey
1 thumb of ginger grated
1-2 garlic cloves crushed
2-3 kaffir lime leaves minced fine
1/8 teaspoon sambel oelek (you can use more if you want)
a couple shots of sesame seed oil

Dump everything into a jar and store in the fridge for up to a month. Shake before using.

You can use in absolutely everythng ;)
You can add it a simple brothy soup, drizzle it over scrambled eggs, use it as seasoning for a stirfry, add a spoonful to fish congee with lots and lots of cilantro, use it as a dipping sauce for gyozas/potstickers or dimsum (so good with har gow and sui mai), dump it over cellophane noodles and let marinate overnight for the best noodle salad or use it as a slaw dressing.


Speaking of slaw, (look Kev, a segue) for our first course I made a quick asian slaw with gomashio dressing. As mentioned before, gomashio is one of those items that is usually grossly overpriced when bought already made. Along with the fact that it will start going rancid as soon as it’s made, it’s just absurd to be paying $6 for something that really only costs 25 cents and 3 minutes to make. Just toast up a couple spoonfuls of black sesame seeds in a dry pan over medium heat until you smell the toasted sesame seed goodness. Then with a good pinch of sea salt and pound in a mortar & pestle for a few seconds or toss into spice/coffee grinder and pulse a couple times.

Here’s my Fast & Dirty Asian Slaw & Gomashio Dressing recipe:

In the bowl that you’re going to serve the salad in dump in (because you don't really need more dishes to do):

2 tablespoons rice vinegar – just eyeball it

½ teaspoon honey – I used a wonderful local wildflower honey

1 tablespoons gomashio

Mix until the honey has dissolved.

Then add in (again eyeball it because it would be stupid to actually measure this out):

1 cup finely shredded cabbage – pretty much any type of cabbage will do. I’m still working my way through a red cabbage.

½ cup carrots- sliced fine

½ cup English cucumber sliced fine

Toss and let sit while you prepare the rest of dinner. You could let the veggies marinated overnight too.

We had our usual last minute, drop-in dinner guest show up and the above recipe was enough to feed me and two grown men.

Of course, all the veggies and the meat from the meatballs are from local farms. Dinner itself took less than 30 minutes to make. You can play around with the vegetable and meat options for the noodle soup. Use whatever leftover meats or seafood you have on hand. It's a great way to use up leftover baked salmon. Just add right it to the soup at the very end so it does get too fishy. Or use tofu, tempeh & /or beans like chickpeas . Instead of rice sticks, you could use udon or egg noodles but I like rice sticks best with this soup. The veggie alternatives are pretty much whatever you can find. Again, leftover veggies do well in this soup. If you really want to go super-deluxe, you could even toss in dumplings.

Enjoy!
Jen

Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge

You say To-MAY-To, I say…

(a tuscan heirloom tomato. Sweet and juicy. Great simply sliced with a drizzle of olive oil.)

Solanum lycopersicum

Or at least that’s one of the monikers used last night at the Slow Food Tomato Feast. They like their Latin at the Slow Food clubhouse. Which makes sense since the latin term is the same if you’re in Nanaimo, BC or Marrakech, Morocco.

The tomato event was hosted by the delightful host with the most, Nick Versteeg, at the Laughing Geese in the Cowichan Valley. Nick is the producer with DV Cuisine, a company specializing in producing culinary and food documentaries and short features from around the world. We were all to bring a dish made with local tomatoes. The invitation ended with a dared to bring a dessert.

Well, you know me and dares. More about my dish later.

Other guests were mostly from the Cowichan Valley or the Victoria and surrounding area. There were farmers, educators, chefs and just folks who liked a good meal. The.Vancouver Island Slow Food convivium is led by the culinary jedi, Sinclair Philip of Sooke Harbour House and the talented culinary diva, Mara Jernigan, from nearby Fairburn Farms.. A convivium is Latin (of course) for a feast. In the case of the Slow Food movement, it is not only a feast for the belly, but a feast for the mind and soul. There is a deep sense of respect and appreciation for food that I found at this gathering that I haven’t experienced in a long time in the company of others.

Usually I’m the only one at the table who cares where the food came from, it’s lineage, it’s story. Though most of my dinner companions are nice enough to humor my culinary rhapsodizing, most couldn’t care less which farm the beef came from or what variety of apples are in the pie. At best, I find someone eager to learn, explore and celebrate food, if only for a meal. At worse, food is treated as background noise to television.

I hate that. Really.

HATE IT.

As a friend once so eloquently put it, ‘I’d rather that you just not eat it, than to eat and not even taste it because you’re too busy watching another fucking ‘Friends’ rerun.’

Now, this Slow Food event is not a meeting of Foodies. They weren’t a bunch a gourmet snobs pooh-poohing what the peasants are eating. In many ways, these were the peasants. These are the folks who connected food from farm to fork. Throughout the evening I had conversations with guests about gathering of food and what simple feasts could be had right off the land. I had conversations about growing up at the farm and sharing family recipes and the connecting of food to our identity. The food they brought was simple, rustic fare highlighting the lovely tomato. There wasn’t a single speck of gold dust or contorted vegetable garnish in sight. There was no chastising for eating the 'wrong' food, merely reveling in real food.

Tomatoes took centre stage and they weren’t shy about it. The evening was a many chaptered story on local tomatoes. After a small taste of a wonderful roasted cherry tomato soup made by Don Genova, (yes, the host of Pacific Palate), we gathered outside on the cool evening patio, surrounded by whispering trees and the calls of chortling geese.

Derek, a local farmer and tomato expert from Pender Island, gave a small lecture on the growing tomatoes and the importance of seed saving, especially heirloom or heritage varieties. I learned that tomatoes, like grapes, take on different characteristics depending on the soil. I also caught bits and nibbles of the other’s culinary travels and tidbits of intricacies of European agricultural and culinary bureaucracy.

On a small table were a variety of heirloom tomatoes of various shapes, colours and sizes. Having tasted any of these garden beauties, one would wondered, why the heck are they only selling the insipid, tasteless ones at the supermarket?

Well, because they can. Because they can genetically modify perfect looking ones that produce a ton of cloned fruit and a ton of money. Of course, that means consumers end up with a bunch of ‘Barbie doll’ tomatoes.

Because the agro-corporations are betting that the public won’t put out the extra 25 cents a pound for properly grown, flavour-bursting heirloom varieties that haven’t had fish genes spliced into them.

They’re betting that the public are a herd of stupid, cheap, superficial consumers that have had their taste buds chemically burned off by years of fast food.

Oops, now how did that soapbox get there???

BTW, for anyone out there who’s growing tomatoes in their garden, you can stop watering them. Just let them ripen on their own. They need to be somewhere warmer. Either move those babies inside if they’re in containers or just pick the fruit and let it ripe on it’s own. Store them in a box in a dark, mildly humid room and let them naturally ripen. They’ll naturally release ethylene gas which stimulates ripening. Ripening this way isn’t quite as yummy as vine-ripened but it sure beats those
artificially gassed, factory-farmed bland-bombs you find at the supermarket.

(my golden boys. Sorry about the eBay quality of the photos).

The rest of the evening was spent eating tomatoes. Mara Jernigan made a simple and sublime yellow tomato sorbet topped with raw tuna. There was something so familiar, yet exciting about that taste combination. The light, sweetness of the yellow tomato sorbet cleansed the palate as it melted to make way for the rich tuna. Many brought salads to showcase the bright, fresh flavour of our local tomatoes. Married with local cheeses and herbs, these dishes were a fine example of simple, rustic fare at it’s best. Others brought simple slow roasted dishes. One young lady brought a gorgeous slow-roasted Moroccan tomato dish that had such an intense flavour, it was like having the Mediterranean sun in my mouth. Another guest had brought a slow roasted tomato topped with pesto.

Joyce, a vivacious and absolutely delicious creature from Victoria, brought the only other dessert: A cheesecake topped with a tomato, ginger and salal berry sauce. The ginger did a great job adding a bit of zing to highlight the sweetness of the tomatoes. I could totally see the sauce dribbled over vanilla gelato or topping for crepes.

Blessed with bounty of tomatoes, I decided I could sacrifice some for a green tomato dessert. After a few failed experiments, I ended up with a green tomato dish done in three variations. I started with a basic olive oil cookie recipe.

For the first variation, I did a biscotti with local hazelnuts and green tomato marmalade filling. The second variation, I used the same cookie dough recipe and made jam cookies with a dollop of Little Qualicum’s fromage frais and a dollop of green tomato marmalade in the middle. The third variation, I made a green tomato crumble with the plain olive oil cookies lining the dish and a green tomato filling which was basically chopped green tomatoes, lemon zest and organic cane sugar cooked for a 10 mins over medium heat, dumped in the cookie lined dish and topped with chopped local hazelnuts and crumble mix. Bake for 30 mins at 350F. I wouldn’t have posted a picture of that but it’s all gone ;)

One lady remarked that the crumble tasted like something that would come from a farm. From this group, I take that as a huge compliment.

Despite the bounty of food laid out for us, this was not the Gluttony Bowl. We were given modest lunch size plates that were just big enough so we could all have a taste of everything. There was no heaping of food onto one’s plate, no shovelling of food into one’s mouth. All around, people savoured and relished and appreciated the bounty bite by bite. We chatted and shared food stories.

Time and time again, I heard folks remark, ‘We are so lucky.’

Yes, we certainly are.

Happy Eating!

Jen

Nanaimo 100 Mile Diet Challenge