I can’t believe that everyone doesn’t love tomato sandwiches. I love tomato sandwiches so much that I took pictures of my first tomato sandwich of the year, back on June 11, and am happy to share my “top-secret” technique for making these divine delights.

Step One: Start with a juicy homegrown tomato, preferably an heirloom. But anything homegrown is probably OK. If you can’t grow your own tomatoes, visit a farmer’s market. Don’t bother with the store-bought tomatoes. Those are horrid—not worth eating and certainly not worth spending money on.

This is a Cherokee Purple tomato I bought from Andy of A & P Farms at the East Lake Farmer’s Market on June 11. My tomatoes weren’t bearing at that time.

Step Two: Rinse the tomato, then slice. No peeling necessary.

Step Three: Place two slices of bread on a plate. I prefer whole wheat or some type of whole-grain bread.  At this point, most people seem to want to slather the bread with mayonnaise. I loathe the taste of mayonnaise, so I don’t contaminate my perfect sandwich with mayo. Suit yourself. Place the tomato slices on bread. Sprinkle with a bit of salt (or not).

You really need a plate because the juice will make a napkin very soggy, very quickly.

Step Five:  Eat.

Like I said, perfection. (And no longer top-secret).

East Lake Farmers Market is also on Facebook.

Related Posts:

How to Make Fried Okra

How to Make Squash Casserole

Where Food Comes From: June, 16 2011 Edition

I went in as soon as I woke up, on an empty stomach (dumb move!). By the afternoon, my hunger was almost worse than the abdominal pain that took me there. After being told I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything (how am I supposed to fill that little cup without a beverage first, people?!), I accepted defeat.

Then by 4pm the nurses switched shifts, and I befriended the new one helping me. To my happy surprise, she cruised around a corner at lightning speed, dropping a plate of saltines on my bed. FINALLY!!! Breakfast/lunch/dinner was served!

Meal 1: Styrofoam plate of individually packaged crackers. Twelve crackers in total.

I got home, slept a billion hours, and woke up today ready to get back to cooking! And I was lucky enough to start the day off right, with one of my all time favorite breakfasts ever. It’s so simple I wouldn’t even call it a “recipe”, rather an assembly of a few ingredients.

Behold: The avocado and tomato open-faced sandwich! 

Meal 2: Avocado and Tomato Sandwich! WINNER!!!!

INGREDIENTS:

• two slices of a good, bakery bread (egg and dairy free!); today I used marble rye, mmm!
• Earth Balance (like butter) or Vegenaise (like mayo) for the condiment
• tomato, thinly sliced
• 1/2 avocado, cut into 7 or 8 thin slices
• sea salt
• fresh chopped cilantro (optional; I love this stuff!)
• fresh lime for garnish

I’ve been snuggling that little guy a lot in the past few days.  He has parasites, and you can feel every one of his ribs as a result, but the fluffy factor makes him a pretty irresistible bag of bones.  It’s hard to adequately describe the charms of a sleepy puppy.

Exhibit B is the dog who is currently training the puppy how to beg his way onto a couch and sneak out of a fence:

Apparently, nap time is a big deal for the canines of this household.

After a serious morning of dog hangout time, we made some lunch.  This is where I learned how to cook:

My mom is a great cook, I promise.  She and I both just happen to forget that things are in the oven sometimes.  Life happens and cute puppies distract you.

Or you pop into the garden for a second to check on your dinner.

And use your shirt as a harvest basket.  It works.

And you admire your cherry tomatoes.  And your artichokes.

And don’t forget about the squash blossoms.

Before you know it, you’re eating slightly charred sandwiches, and who cares when you get to look at this out the front door?!

(I almost forgot that there was eclair consumption today, too.  Check.)

The first year we were married, my husband grew a garden at my parent’s house – we lived in an apartment so there was no place for us to plant. It was a massive garden! Eggplant, green peppers, zucchini, summer squash and TOMATOES…lots of tomatoes. The funny thing is, my husband doesn’t even like eggplant! But he thought it was pretty and it grew well, so we had lots of eggplant to give away.

That was 28 years ago (which makes me feel really old right now!) and quite frankly, we haven’t had a decent tomato sandwich since! We’ve grown all the favorites, Big Boy, Beefsteak, we even tried growing some of the yellow ones….they just don’t match up.

This spring, my daughter-in-law’s mother Joyce, who with her husband Roland have extensive vegetable gardens at their home in Maine told me she would grow heirloom tomatoes for me to help with my search for the perfect sandwich tomato. She grew Purple Cherokee, Brandywine and another variety. We got about 10 of them from her last Saturday, along with a loaf of homemade bread and some fresh grown basil. This was exciting! That night we sliced the bread, added the mayo, sliced up one of the juicy tomatoes and ate…now I don’t want to be an ingrate…it was so sweet of Joyce to plant, grow, coddle and protect from the chipmunks these red orbs of flavor, we truly appreciate it…

but they’re not it…

after all the anticipation, that flavor isn’t there…don’t get me wrong, they were tasty, it’s just not what we remember. Maybe we’ve been waiting so long for the perfect tomato sandwich that we no longer really know what it tastes like? Could that flavor lurking in our memories be just that, a memory? I’d like to think it’s not, that I will one day discover that perfect tomato flavor for my sandwich….one of Joyce’s was close, of course I have no idea which variety it was! Looks like we’ll have to do some more research….until then,

the search continues…

Aunt Suzy says

Another great no-cook recipe to beat the heat!  Salon.com has a recipe contest every week called Kitchen Challenge.  Two weeks ago the theme was “your tastiest raw tomato dishes” and this recipe was chosen as the best.  It caught my eye because it used many of my favorite ingredients all put into a sandwich – and it comes with a great story!   This is the second time we’ve made it – and we might make it again this summer as long as the tomatoes are so delicious.   This is one of those recipes that you can add or subtract the ingredients you use to your taste.  For example, we did not use the hard-boiled egg and we added sliced Hungarian peppers to give it a little zing.

I know that many people are growing and buying heirloom varieties (which I love), but I must say a classic red, round homegrown tomato will be the ticket for this recipe.  We served it with both a Spanish Rose wine (last time) and yesterday with a white Cotes du Rhone.

Sliced ripe tomato

2 hard-boiled eggs, sliced

Italian tuna packed in olive oil

Cooked cannellini beans

Green or black olives (or a combo), sliced in half

Thinly sliced red onion

Fresh mint and basil leaves

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Crusty sourdough or ciabatta (rolls or loaf)

Slice the bread in half and toast to desired doneness.  Sprinkle each side with a little olive oil.  Put all or some of the ingredients on the bread in any order that you want.  Dig in!!

Here’s a pic of my sandwich using a sourdough roll from Trader Joe’s.

And below is a photo of Randy’s sandwich on ciabatta.  We agreed that we liked the ciabatta better, but both were good.

Click RECIPE TUTORIAL to view the video on Associated Content.com.

And I believed it. It sounds great, right? Really inspirational! I was ready to take on the world at the age of twelve!

But what happens with you just can’t put your mind to it? What is a kid supposed to do when they can’t follow a lesson because the window is so much more interesting. There’s birds out there! They’re flying and catching bugs! Hey look, that kid has a piece of paper sticking out of their bag, maybe I should tell them. I wish I wore different shoes today, these totally don’t match my shirt. Oh crap the teacher just asked me to start reading but I don’t know where we are, I already finished the book while we were sitting here. I can tell you how it ends! They throw a party while the Pigman is out of town, and he is disappointed in them and kicks the bucket. And something about a monkey. There, can I just take the quiz now? Oh good they’re leaving me alone, I can write a note to…

Sound familiar?

So, I have attention deficit disorder, predominately innattentive. I was quiet and kept my head down at school, and so it wasn’t diagnosed until I was twenty-two and had a panic attack when I tried to sign up for a college class. Apparently, I developed some extreme school anxiety while I was an adolescent. Whoops!

I would like to do a great many things with my life. For instance: I used to want to become a midwife. It sounds good when you tell someone that’s what you want to do. They’re always politely surprised and interested in the process.

I don’t think I could ever do it, though. Not with the current educational system. If I could apprentice with a midwife, instead of having to go through nursing school and all of those lectures that would DRIVE ME COMPLETELY INSANE, I would do so in a heartbeat.

But the world doesn’t work that way, anymore, and so it will have to wait until my mind can be put to it.

It’s going to be a while.

I want instant gratification, I want to know something NOW. If I try something, and I’m not immediately a prodigy at it, I lose interest. And you don’t have to tell me that’s completely impractical, because I already know. I can’t help myself.

Have you ever not been able to help yourself? And I’m not talking about that extra cookie you can’t resist because you are STARVING YOURSELF [that's for another post]. And I’m not talking about a tick, or a compulsion like touching doorknobs or tapping a stair three times before you step on it.

I’m talking about sitting down with your book for school and having to read the same paragraph six times because you have no idea what it just said because you got up to check your alarm at least three times because you can’t actually remember if you set it.

ADD has become a joke in todays world, and not without reason. I will be the first to admit that having a conversation with me can be amusing. I will babble at you for a good twenty minutes and not have actually said anything important. I may jump up and perform some menial task whilst relaying word-for-word a conversation I had with someone you don’t know, just because I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the task needed to be done.

But I know that I did it, and it won’t help me if you tell me not to.

People with ADD aren’t without metacognition. We know we don’t always explain ourselves well [it makes so much sense in my head!] and if you asked us why we just did something that doesn’t make sense to you, I’m sure we could provide a detailed list of our reasoning, possibly starting with a craving for a tomato sandwich we had two days ago and ending with a conversation we just had about fleas.

But we’re smart. We’re sometimes smarter than our teachers, which is the MOST frustrating thing in the world, for all parties involved.

We just can’t help ourselves. And if I could fix one thing in the world – one monumental and important thing – I would make sure teachers everywhere don’t punish us for losing attention.

Because I don’t judge you for wanting that cookie. So don’t judge me for needing to get up and sharpen my pencil six times. It wasn’t perfectly pointy, and I can’t concentrate, anyway.

When I was 7 or 8, I discovered Harriet the Spy. What a movie! What a book! After seeing it, I tried as hard as I could to become Harriet, even asking Santa Claus for a spy kit and a full-time nanny (even though I had/have a perfectly good mom). The nanny never came, but I got a deluxe spy kit, complete with mirrored spy glasses and chalk dust for fingerprinting. (Come to think of it, I wonder if my desire to be a successful childhood spy has anything to do with my embarrassing obsessions with crime shows like CSI: Miami and Law and Order: SVU. I’d say it’s likely.)

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Anyway, one of the most memorable scenes of this film was the process of Harriet making a tomato sandwich. The entire thing lasted approximately 73 seconds, but the novelty of a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich on white bread struck me. My school lunches up until that point had been prepared with something from my grandparents Italian deli, and white bread was never an option. Only “Dr. John bread,” as my mom would call it: whole wheat, just as my pediatrician ordered. So this evening, with only the heel of my “Dr. John bread” remaining and an heirloom tomato begging to be consumed, I had a tomato sandwich with mayo.

I have always been a lover of the tomato seed juice that tends to squirt out of tomatoes. Many people get rid of it before eating their tomato, including Harriet, but I found that it combined with the mayo was pure succulence. Both seeped into the toasted heel of bread, and few things are better than when toast begins to reconstitute its moisture with other flavors: balsamic vinegar, marmalade, butter, and in this case, tomato seed juice (does this have a real name?) and mayonnaise.

I’m not the only one to feel nostalgic about this sandwich; a quick Google search led me to this Epicurious blog entry and a host of other recollections and recipes, so at least I know I’m not a crazy person who remembers a tomato sandwich from some flick she saw in first grade.

*Bragging rights: A picture from the sandwich post on Best I Ever Had was featured on FoodPornDaily. I nearly cried with excitement when I found out, and I was obvs so proud of photographer Scott. Funnily enough, the featured sandwich also had heirloom tomatoes, but that’s actually not funny at all because a consistently-fruiting heirloom tomato plant is one of my desert island items. I lub dem.

Tomato sandwiches (and no, I don’t mean tomatoes from the supermarket) are hands down my favorite food on the entire planet. That’s it. Foie Gras. Sweetbreads. Chocolate cake without icing. These things don’t hold a candle to a good tomato sandwich in my mind.

For the past several years I have gone without. Summers past I haven’t had a garden and without one its hard to find a good tomato.

THIS summer is different! Thanks to my husband who devoted and entire weekend, or two, to building my vegetable garden I have been able to enjoy tomato sandwiches for the last month!

When you take a bite of a tomato sandwich and the juice drips out the side of your mouth and runs down your arms you know that life is good!

Tomato sandwiches should only be prepared in ONE way. Mayo, salt and pepper. That’s it. No basil. No cheese. Not served warm. Slather the bread in mayo, add the tomatoes, sprinkle on some salt and pepper. Consume!

Unfortunately, it is now mid-July and tomato season is long gone. I’m lucky that I am still getting a few but I know the days of fresh tomatoes are numbered. The plants are starting to yellow and very soon they will be gone. That will be a sad, sad day…until then though I’ll be eating a tomato sandwich EVERY SINGLE DAY!

]]> http://tarasfoodblog.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/summers-best/ Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:43:07 +0000 Tara Cruz http://tarasfoodblog.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/summers-best/ Forgive me for the return to blah pictures but my husband has needed the camera the past couple days and I’m back to using my iPhone. I have pictures for posts on the camera but since he has it with him I haven’t had a chance to upload them, hence the absence of posting for the past two days!

Today is a gorgeous 70 degrees and sunny day! The only thing more beautiful was the bounty of fresh summer fruits and veggies I hauled home from the store! Of course, I had to make a salad! Crisp, tasty leaf lettuce + cool cucumbers + zingy green onion + crunchy green pepper. All the veggies were so fresh and were full of flavor, no bitterness or watery dull taste here. I thoroughly enjoyed this green salad. I got out a tomato to add some color since it was SO green but then I had an idea…

Tomato sandwich! I have been waiting for this day for months! When the tomatoes taste like sunshine and are so juicy that it runs down your arm when you bite into one. Whole wheat bread, an entire tomato sliced up, and a slice of cheese, plus a smear of mayo. That’s good stuff.

Then I set these sweet, perfect summer strawberries aside for dessert so my children didn’t inhale them with the rest of the quart they put away. Unfortunately, after my amazing salad and sandwich I was so full I decided to save them for a snack later. Good weight maintenance philosophy, right? I’m full so I stop eating. This was, however, a bad Cruz household philosophy since when I went in the kitchen to clean up after lunch I saw the last bite of the last berry going in my son’s mouth. So enjoy the picture, it’s all I got to enjoy too!

I almost never complain about the weather in the South. It’s always hot and sticky in the summer and cold and dreary in the winter. Every year. But this year we got August heat in June. And it’s not going away. It has been close to, or over, 100 every day for the last week.

But it did get me to thinking about how some Southerners deal with the heat. If you were a person of means back in the day, you simply left town. That’s how the resorts of the North Carolina mountains got to be resorts. They were just littered with hot people from the flatlands.

I recall a friend of mine telling me the story of his aunts in Charleston who would sit on the veranda of their house sipping straight gin they kept in the freezer. I’m not sure that would cool you off, but you’d feel pretty happy being hot. There actually is a lot of alcohol involved in keeping cool in the South. The Mint Julep comes to mind.

The proper Mint Julep is one of those lovely three-ingredient Southern recipes: Sugar, mint and Bourbon. It’s a mojito with bravado. You simply put a little sugar in the bottom of a glass (sterling silver is the standard, but how many of us have sterling silver cups?). Then you add a wee bit of water and the mint and muddle it. Next comes the Bourbon and then shaved ice. Ta da! Southern men, in particular, have been known to start their day in the summer with a Mint Julep. Makes them forget how dang hot it is.

Southerners are constantly getting criticized by Northerners for moving so slow. We move slowly in the summer because it’s the smart thing to do. No need coming down with heat stroke for the sake of briskness. Besides, after a few Mint Juleps or straight shots of ice cold gin, it’s not easy to move fast.

As for me, I lose my appetite when it gets hot. At least until the tomatoes come in and you can have a tomato sandwich, which always makes you feel better no matter how hot it gets. A tomato sandwich is my reward for maintaining some semblance of movement in blistering temperatures. You see, you cannot have tomatoes without heat. Tomatoes thrive in high temperatures.

I cannot lay claim to an original recipe for my favorite way to make a tomato sandwich. I read it in Saveur a few years ago and tried it and have not made a ‘mater sandwich any other way since. The trick is that it involves toasting the bread and buttering it and then adding mayonnaise. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Tomato Sandwich

(Courtesy of Christopher Hirsheimer of Saveur Magazine with some additions by me)

1 really ripe tomato

Butter

2 thin slices of good toast (think Pepperidge Farm)

Mayonnaise (Duke’s naturally)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Sugar

1. Thickly slice tomato. Butter toast, slather a thick layer of mayonnaise on both pieces, then lay on two or three tomato slices and season with a generous sprinkle of salt, the tiniest pinch of sugar, and a few good grinds of black pepper.

2. Roll up your sleeves (or just take off your shirt), lean over the sink, and bite through the crisp buttered bread and creamy mayonnaise, and into the sweet taste of summer. Abandon yourself. And let the juice run down your arms.

Bryan’s BBQ in Cave Creek is known for their pecan smoked meats, traditional but creative sides (olive-studded coleslaw) and a fine bottle selection of craft brews. In fact, I reviewed them for Phoenix Magazine last year.

I just tasted a new tomato sandwich chef/owner Bryan Dooley and his sous chef Rob Olson put on the menu for summer.

Holy smokes.

What’s BBQ-y about this sandwich? Nothing.

Well, maybe the fact that they smoke the sea salt sprinkled on the tomatoes in the pecan wood oven.

And the djion mustard sauce has a smidgen of molasses. And they’re serving it with the soft white bread that comes with all the barbecue plates.

Of course, they’re slathering said bread with butter and toasting it to perfection on the griddle.

The watercress garnish? Well, they are a couple of trained chefs.

There isn’t anything fancy about this sandwich, though.

It’s just one delicious bite of summer.

Bryan’s Black Mountain BBQ
Tomato sandwich ($7.95, with 1 side)
6130 East Cave Creek Road, Cave Creek
(480) 575-7155

Last night for date night, Mr. Wonderful and I went out to the patio grill like we love to do on our nights together.

The herb garden is beginning to take off, and the basil needed to be picked before it flowered.

We took my cast iron grill with us.

And we made grilled cheese sandwiches. 

I am not a huge grilled cheese fan.  Typical fare consists of plastic-wrapped processed cheese on plain, white sandwich bread.  This may have appealed to me as a kid, but now, I wanted a little something fancier, and less …well….unprocessed cheese-like.

Enter the Caprese Grilled-Cheese Sandwich.

It’s really simple to assemble.  You only need a few things. 

Melt a half of a stick of butter and grab a basting or pastry brush.  Add a thinly-sliced loaf of french bread, some really good sliced tomatoes, one ball of sliced ,fresh mozerella cheese, some fresh basil leaves and basil pesto.  You can buy your pesto, or use my recipe to make your own.

Oh yes, and grab some salt and pepper to season up the tomatoes.  Even if I’m putting them on a salad, I always season my tomatoes to make them extra delicious.

I stacked all of this up on a tray and took it outside.

We used our cast iron skillet for this on the grill, but you could just do this inside on your stove if you wanted.  I just love the way a cast-iron pan grills a sandwich. You should have your heat on medium to medium -low because you don’t want burnt bread and unmelted cheese. 

Start by brushing 4 pieces of the bread on one side only with the melted butter.   Place them buttered side down in your skillet.  Four should fit perfectly.

Now (moving quickly!), layer on some of your sliced cheese.

Mr. Wonderful was being stingy so I added more.  We ended up using an entire 8 ounce package.

Now layer two sliced tomatoes onto each piece.  Sprinkle some salt and pepper over the tomatoes.

Then add some fresh basil leaves.

Take your other four slices of bread, and spread them generously with basil pesto.

Lay them (pesto side down) on top of your sandwiches, and brush the top side of them with the melted butter. 

Then flip them over carefully.

I usually find the second side of a sandwich finishes faster than the first, so check them after 30 seconds or so.  You’re looking for brown and golden and crispy, not soggy and not black.  That’s why we used melted butter.  It crisps better than cold butter and won’t leave your bread soggy.

When they’re done on the second side, remove them quickly to a platter.

The outside is what grilled cheese should be, buttery, crisp and golden- brown.  But the inside …

Can I just show you the inside of one of these babies?

Gooey, fresh mozerella, red-ripe tomatoes, oozing with warmed basil pesto?

This is what I called a grilled cheese sandwich.

Katie’s Printable Recipe- Caprese Grilled Cheese Sandwich

"Grainy mustard, sharp cheese, and some crunchy apples."

"Baguettes filled with pickled carrots and daikon, fresh cilantro, and meat or tofu."

"Hearty, satisfying and surprisingly versatile in these eight recipes."

"Nothing fancy — no bacon or lettuce or even toasted bread. Just plain, white bread, lots of mayonnaise, salt, and pepper."

For more ideas, feast your eyes on the rest of The Kitchn’s sandwich roundup.

Praise for In the Palms of Angels:

“More than a poet, Terri Kirby Erickson is the best friend you always wanted, the kind you can count on both to tell you the truth, and to help you bear it. Her poems shimmer like moonlight on water in the farthest corners of your soul.” –Sharon Randall, syndicated columnist and author of Birdbaths and Paper Cranes

Terri Kirby Erickson’s In the Palms of Angels invites us to enter the world of everyday life made numinous by the poet’s voice. “Heaven,” for example, becomes a real place with white curtains billowing, the cry of gulls, the sizzle of bacon, a place where one wakes up among the things and people one has loved. Her poems become metaphorical palms in which angelic encounters are cradled.” — Kathryn Stripling Byer, former Poet Laureate of North Carolina and author of Wildwood Flower and Coming to Rest

“There is no store-bought redemption pasted to the ends of these poems, but neither will you find hopelessness, self-pity, a turning away from the world. What you will find at the core of all these poems is the timeless North Carolinian’s beneficent but ungilded witnessing.” — Ron Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author of Mark Twain, A Life,  co-author of True Compass and Flags of Our Fathers

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE IN THE PALMS OF ANGELS NOW!

View Press 53′s video about their FIRST LIMITED COLLECTOR’S EDITION HARD COVER BOOK:  In the Palms of Angels, only 53 copies available, signed by Terri Kirby Erickson and Stephen White: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKYQfcvIyaM&feature=player_embedded

“…Telling Tales of Dusk, by North Carolina  native, Terri Kirby Erickson… I carry this in my purse to pull out at airports or offices or any place a poem comes in handy.  It never fails to deliver…” Sharon Randall, Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C.

This book was #23 on the Poetry Foundation Contemporary Best Sellers List in 2010.

Wowser!  A new twist on Avocado!  Delicious!

You can make this sandwich toasted or non.  I prefer toasted.

To make this sandwich, first mix a light mayonnaise with some lemon juice (enough to give mayo a nice zippy flavor).

Spread onto toasted healthy bread. I don’t recommend spreading on butter, you simply don’t need it.

Here is my all time favorite bread It is certified organic, and there is no flour used! It is so light and delicious, full of healthy ingredients,  and only baked in British Columbia. But I’m sure you can find something similar in your part of the world, or make your own healthy bread.

Add leaves of spinach <—optional, but oh so good, slices of avocado, & slices of tomato.  I like a dose of black pepper as well.

Serve for lunch for your girlfriends.  They’ll think you are amazing!     Oh, I forgot.  You ARE amazing!  (AND Jesus loves you)!

All you need is good, crusty bread, a fresh tomato, mayo, salt, and pepper. And about 5 minutes.

I don’t have much to say other than TRY THIS IMMEDIATELY. Seriously. It’s so surprisingly good. You should definitely buy a good, ripe, firm tomato–mealy, bland tomatoes simply won’t do. A lot of grocery stores sell them individually, and I bet in the summer you’d be able to get some killer varieties at farmers’ markets.

I used bread that Mike picked up from When Pigs Fly, a bakery with a store in Davis Square. It was crusty and delicious. I think any substantial bread would do; just don’t use the stuff that comes from the baking aisle! It’s too soft and weak to hold up the awesomeness of a tomato sandwich.

Oh, and don’t be afraid of the mayo. Use it with carefree abandon. Trust me.

Tomato Sandwich

1 heirloom tomato, cut into 1/8″ slices
2 pieces crusty bread, lightly toasted
1-2 Tbsp mayo
Salt and pepper to taste

Spread the mayo on both pieces of bread. Layer the tomatoes on one slice. Sprinkle with salt and pepper (you’ll need less salt than you might think, because of the mayo, but don’t be afraid of your spices!). Place the second piece of bread on top, smush down, and cut in half. Voila! Heaven.

Did I mention how well this went with my organic chemistry studying?

It was good, but the dressing did not have much taste. I had to add my own fat free Catalina, and that really spruced it up a bit. So deli-sh!

And a piece of whole wheat or rye bread on the side. (I couldn’t tell what kind it was)

This is a big salad, and I finished the entire thing! So good.

Oh and I had a small bag of Garden Salsa Sunchips that I snacked on as well. Sorry my camera ate the picture.

Last night I FINALLY went grocery shopping. Oh thank Goodness. We needed it! Look at all the festive fall squash I picked up.

I also picked up a ton of fruits and veggies (including lots of honeycrisp apples), and Arnold High Fiber Bread that was buy one get one free! Good lean meats, and low fat cheeses, and some other random things. Good grocery trip all together.

And when I got home I had a package waiting for me at the door. I LOVE packages. The guys over at Little Ragghi’s Crackers sent me some of their awesome flatbread crackers to sample. I was able to try a few of these at my store. You can read my review here, but because my co-workers got to them before me, I basically only got the crumbs. I couldn’t wait to try these out for real this time. However, just from the crumbs I had, they were outstanding! The perfect wine cracker.

This morning I couldn’t wait for pumpkin oats, so that is exactly what I made myself. Now that we have more food and fruits in the house I added a banana to my oats this morning.

It sure was yummy!

Lunch was a cheese and tomato sandwich-my fave! I took 2 pieces of Arnold Double Fiber Bread and 2 pieces of part skim provolone cheese and toasted them with some honey mustard. Then I added my tomatoes and toasted some more.

I had 1/2 of a Honeycrisp apple on the side.

It was delightful!

Back to busy work!

A plethora of tomatoes from the Farmers Market: multi-colored heirloom cherry tomatoes, Green Zebras, yellow grape and bright red Early Girl tomatoes.

Alright, so I was a little excitable at the Farmers Market recently. Tomatoes were in and I had to have every shape, size and color available. Each stall was better than the last. Needless to say, I came home with pounds of tomatoes. I mean, look at them. Could you resist?

One of my all-time favorite food memories is the first time I brought home a perfectly ripe tomato from the Farmer’s Market and bit into it like an apple, juices running down my arm and into my kitchen sink. It was like candy and I was in heaven.

Since then, one of the rights of passage of summer for me is a Tomato Sandwich with the best summer tomatoes I can find. Nothing simpler. Nothing better.

Does it warrant a recipe?

French bread layered with garlic aioli, heirloom tomatoes, a drizzling of balsamic vinegar and parmesan shavings.

No. Probably not.

What I do is slice a mess of tomatoes (remember my tip for slicing small tomatoes?) Different sizes and different colors are best cause it just looks so summery.

Then I grab some good, crusty bread.

Slather on a layer of (cheater’s) garlic aioli*.

Then load it up with tomatoes, a sprinkling of sea salt, some shavings of Parmigiano-reggiano, a drizzle of the best balsamic vinegar I’ve got on-hand and voila.

The best summer sandwich imaginable.

And an alternative on toasted baguette rounds for an easy appetizer.

*Cheater’s garlic aioli = store bought mayo + a clove of crushed garlic. Summer is for relaxing my friends.

Enjoy!

Ms. Pantry Raid