Tomato salad

[two or three months ago]

Sprouts is having a sale on cluster tomatoes! My favorite, err second favorite, heirloom tomatoes are still the best. 69 cents per pound! Woohoo!

Ree Drummond of Pioneer Woman started her Food Network tv show this morning. I don't normally read her blog, but I read another blog that linked to another blog (you know how it goes) that mentioned her Food Network show. I looked up a clip online and she made this tomato salad and well it had me at Hello.


recipe
I bought a mason jar just to do the whole frustrated shaking thing. Too bad I'm still frustrated. But the dish turned out pretty good. I added some cherry tomatoes for color.

 

I finally got to the library and picked up some cookbooks. They have the Silver Spoon book I was eying at Borders [hence the fact Borders was still around]. With all my tomatoes I made spaghetti with raw tomato.

Similar ingredients.
Mix 3-4 chopped tomatoes, 4 tbsp olive oil, 10 basil leaves chopped, 2 garlic cloves, salt and pepper. Cover. Set aside for 30 minutes and remove garlic. Cook 12 oz spaghetti in large pan of salted, boiling water till al dente. Drain and serve.

 I like the idea of putting certain things in a dish then removing it. Like the whole point of that ingredient was just to capture the essence. The consumer has a sense of something familiar but can't quite put their finger on it and it's no where to be found. Kitchen trickery. Reminds me of this Fresh Air interview. Is it wasteful to remove ingredients or are we so far the past the point of eating solely for survival that we can be so picky? Did you know Costco sells garlic pills in its nutritional supplement area? What a world we live in.