Mmmm....Caprese Salad (Otherwise known as "Salmonella Be Damned!"

[nekosensei]

2 vine-ripened tomatoes
mozzarella
fresh basil
balsamic vinegar

Very tasty!

The only thing I grew myself was the basil. I hope to be making more of this once I get tomatoes from my garden. That's probably going to happen within the next couple of weeks.

By the way, here's a gardening question for my friends list. I'm also growing Cayenne peppers. (I'm sucking up because doomsey wants to fill in the garden with grass seed next year because he thinks I'm going to fail. He *loves* hot peppers). I already have a pepper on one of the plants. I'm not sure if it's ready to pick yet because it's still green. It's been out there for at least a week or two. Do I have to wait for it to turn red to pick it? When is that going to happen?







Okay...there were two. I lied.

Comments

[soulofajedi.livejournal.com]

Yay kittens! What a cutie.

That salad looks tasty... I'll have to make that. I have some basil drying and some more that'll be ready for pruning soon.

The "Salmonella Be Damned" salad makes me laugh. When the Salmonella thing was really scary, my FIL made it a point to order tomatoes with every meal... just to prove he wasn't scared. He's a lobbyist and wines/dines clients, so he eats out a lot. It sort of struck me as the epitome of American hubris.. So if there was Salmonella Be Damned salad, he'd have been all over that.

[nekosensei.livejournal.com]

Personally, I found the whole tomatoes and salmonella thing obnoxious because I'm limited on what kinds of veggies I can eat thanks to the rat poison drugs I'm on. Tomatoes are one of the few veggies (okay, not technically a veggie) that I can eat. One of the reasons I'm growing tomatoes is that I knew I could pretty much eat as many of them as I wanted.

I'm definitely going to have to make more "Salmonella be Damned" Salad. I miss being able to eat salads...especially garden salads topped with thousand island dressing. Mmmm.... Guess what I'm going to be eating a lot of once I go off the rat poison in January?

By the way, losing weight when you can't eat salads and other greens is obnoxious. I seem to be doing it somehow though. I've lost 20 pounds since mid-April. I'm so proud of myself! It's a lot of work though because I can't seem to do it without walking a bajillion miles.

peppers and dan

[forestdruid.livejournal.com]

You can pick the peppers when they are green. In fact, they will likely be hotter than they will when they are ripe. You essentially trade heat and a nice, fresh green flavor for a milder, more complex-rich one later. The hot oils are basically there to prevent anything with molars from eating the pepper. Birds, strangely enough, can eat all they want and are not affected. They tend to dribble a lot when they eat, and have a tendency to pass whole seeds through their digestive tract. Mice, on the other hand, would crush those seeds until they were quite dead and useless for reproduction.

Re: peppers and dan

[nekosensei.livejournal.com]

Cool. I'll pick it soonish and feed it to him. He'll be very pleased.

[jackytar.livejournal.com]

*succumbs to kitty kootness*

The tomato dish looks lovely; too bad I wouldn't be able to partake. Unless, of course, anaphylactic shock is viewed as fun...

[silme711.livejournal.com]

mmmnomnom balsamic vinegar. I used to eat that with feta cheese instead of mozzarella because I personally don't like the rubber-like taste of it :)

[nekosensei.livejournal.com]

I'm the opposite. I like mozzarella, but not feta cheese. I just don't like the taste.

But I do like saganaki, which is similar to feta. Go figure.

[(Anonymous)]

you can eat it green but it is hotter after it changes color.
None of our peppers have gotten big enough to eat (just little starters) I cant wait :)

[jharter41.livejournal.com]

I did not know I was not log in. I thought they were hotter ripe (guess that shows how much I know.. lol) I guess I should have read the replies before I posted