Tomatoes on toast, it's a beautiful thing

When I was a kid, my father always grew tomatos in the backyard. One of the things I most looked forward to during the "harvest" was tomatoes on toast. Sounds mundane but it really is a beautiful thing. Well this past weekend, we went to visit our friends P&D at their place near Cambridge. D cultivates the most fantastic heirloom tomatoes and the night we stayed over we took great pleasure in the turkey-platter sized tomato salad with chevre and tomatoes in green, yellow, orange, red, and cherry black. Both a feast for the eyes and a feast for the tummy.

They were kind enough to share their bounty and we came home with about a nice box of their tomatoes and all I could think about all the way home was having tomatoes on toast the next morning for breakfast. Which I did.

It's so simple but so fantastic. Get yourself a sharp knife and then sharpen it. You don't want anything getting in the way of the perfectly thin slices. Once you're sure the knife is good and sharp, slice your tomato into the thinnest slices you can. Toast some nice bread up and then dribble some good extra virgin olive oil on there. Add a thin layer of tomato, a sprinkle of salt and pepper and a bit of olive oil and repeat until you have a few layers on there. Then just enjoy. It may be a bit messy but it's worth it. Importantly: slices need to be paper thin and go easy on the olive oil, you want to taste it but not drown everything in it. 

Pumpkin Banana Bread.

Gina is a genius. I don't know her, but man, I can honestly say I love her! I have followed her blog since embarking on my Weight Watchers journey, and her food has yet to lead me astray.

She recently had a recipe on her site for pumpkin banana bread. I love pumpkin bread, but it's my brother's "thing", and he makes the best I've ever tasted. But I am not going home for a month still and it was necessary for me to have pumpkin bread NOW. Gina's recipe seemed like a good place to start... See for yourself...

I made a few changes to her recipe... I used diet margarine, because it's what I had in the house and it's gross on it's own. I only had two banana's, so I used a bit extra pumpkin. In sheer laziness (and my inability to tear myself away from the Sookie Stackhouse books -- finished nine last night -- Eric is the best vampire character ever), I failed to properly mash the banana's, so they all settled in the bottom of my loaf. Hence you only get a picture of the loaf itself.

I am still working with the settings on my camera, so please try to hang in there with my photos. I will get there, I am confident. After two courses at Henry's, I do think I am finally getting the hang of it, but I keep needing to refresh my memory with the notes from the course. I like this one, it's just really dark. Still haven't gotten down the whole no flash thing...

Anyway, go to Gina's site. It's fantastic!