The theme of this week’s CSA box was TOMATOES!  This is precisely why I decided to learn to love tomatoes.  If I didn’t like tomatoes, this box would’ve been totally wasted on me… and Mike would’ve be forced to eat more tomatoes than he really wanted.

- Red Seedless Watermelon
- Little orange peppers
- 4 ears of sweet corn
- Green bell pepper
- Red onion
- Plum tomatoes
- Red round tomatoes
- Baby heirloom tomatoes

Let’s start with the highlight: pizza!

I slow roasted some of the plum tomatoes.  Heat your oven to 325.  Slice the tomatoes and remove the seeds.  Coat with olive oil and sprinkle with dried basil, dried oregano, and dried thyme.  Let them roast for about 30 minutes.  The smell will fill your house!  These tomatoes were awesome.  I made my usual pizza crust and got it ready to go.  As I was heating up my grill to make an awesome pizza, the propane ran out.  So… Plan B.  I went down to the basement and found my pizza stone.  If you don’t have one, a baking sheet will work fine.  Heat the oven to 500 with the pizza stone inside.  Once it is heated, sprinkle some corn meal on the stone and add the crust.  I then add sliced mozzarella, the roasted tomato slices, and a little fresh basil.  It cooked for about 10-15 minutes.  Keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn.  Remove. Slice. Mmmmm…. it was pretty good even though it wasn’t on the grill.

I told you about my yummy black bean turkey burgers with the corn and tomato salad.  So that used two ears of corn and the round tomatoes.  It was really good.

The watermelon was a crazy color!  Super red.  And delicious.

I made a stir fry with the green pepper with some tiny little eggplants I got from the farmers’ market and some shitake mushrooms — a little sesame oil, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, Sriracha, and a splash of fish sauce.  That was lunch for a couple days.

I did my usual quick weeknight meal of pasta with a fast tomato sauce.  This time I made it creamy.  I made a quick roux in a pan – one tablespoon of butter and one table spoon of flour.  Added a little milk (I only had skim — something else would’ve made it thicker), some garlic, some quartered baby heirloom tomatoes, and some fresh basil.  Let that boil and I had a sauce.

I also did my usual chicken sausage dish.  This was on Thursday night and our fridge was nearly bare.  I had the little orange peppers, one tomato, and the onion left.  I had no eggs for a frittata.  We already had pasta.  Bring me the chicken sausage.  Browned the sausage, sauteed the peppers and onion, added the tomato.  It is a pretty good meal, I must say.