Pulled from Pinterest: Baked Parmesan Tomatoes

Hi All-

Just wanted to do a quick post on a yummy and easy recipe I tried over the weekend for Baked Parmesan Tomatoes.

This is a great recipe for all of those tomatoes we get from our CSA.  I love tomatoes, but no one else in my household is a fan which means I need to find creative and super easy ways to eat them on my own.

You can find my Pinterest boards here, and you can find the original blog post for this recipe here.

Baked Parmesan Tomatoes

Ingredients:

2 beefsteak tomatoes, sliced into 1/2 inch horizontal slices

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon of oregano

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

4 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 450° F. Place tomatoes on a baking sheet. Top with Parmesan, oregano, salt and pepper. Drizzle with oil and bake until the tomatoes are tender, 15-20 minutes.

So I had a few modifications to the original recipe.  I did not have any beefsteak tomatoes so I used roma.  They were not nearly as large.  In fact, they were a perfect bite size.

Another tip that I don’t think the initial recipe suggested, and maybe it was because I was using different tomatoes, was to lightly spray the foil with cooking spray.  I did not; which resulted in my tomatoes sticking and then having to pry them off of the cookie sheet.  They did not look very pretty….hence no photo.  But honestly there was no need for real presentation since I was the one eating them I didn’t care.  They may have looked pitiful, but they tasted wonderful!

If you try this recipe let me know what you think!  Do you have any quick go to tomato recipes?

Happy Eating!

Advertisement

Summer CSA: What are we doing?!?!

Happy Friday!

So a few months ago one of the moms at preschool asked me if we had decided to participate in a CSA this summer.  Being me I answered that I hadn’t considered it and then in my head I’m thinking – what the heck is this chick talking about.  So me being me I went to my car and googled it on my phone and realized that it stood for Community Supported Agriculture.  I put it to the back of my mind and went about my day, but then it kept popping up…now that I look back, I’m thinking it was the sleep deprivation.  Caleb was not sleeping through the night at this point.  So while you read on, remember I was a sleep deprived mommy.

I did some research and found out that there are a lot of CSA programs in our area.  I don’t know why I found this to be odd; after all, we live in farm country…kind of.  So I did a bunch of research and had this brilliant idea that we were going to participate in one of these things.  I’ve tried to grow things at home…it has been sad.  After talking to Michael, we came to an agreement that we would participate in the program and I would give up my “garden.”  For the record, my garden consists of one tomato tree and two pots of peppers…a farmer I am not.

Now before I go any farther, we are not “farm” people.  I like the city.  I like the grocery store.  We do not eat exclusively organic, eat a lot of granola, or drive Subarus.  For Earth Day we plan on expanding our carbon footprint as much as possible…we’re probably not the normal CSA participants.  Again, let’s just chalk this up to a decision made under sleep deprivation.

So for those of you who are still wondering what a CSA is and what the heck are you doing…I’ll explain a little more.  Community Supported Agriculture is in essence buying a share in a farm.  You pay a farmer a fee and each week during the growing season you pick up fresh vegetables.  In the CSA we are participating we will get eggs, chicken, pork, and a baked good.  Anyway, the season is approaching for the produce to start rolling in and I am freaking out!

What was I thinking when I signed up for this!  I don’t even cook that often!  Seriously!  My idea of cooking from scratch is pulling out all of the different pre packed items from Schwans and heating them all at the same time.  Michael and Maddy don’t even like most vegetables!  Can I cook?  Sometimes.  Do I like to cook?  The jury is still out on that one.  Am I going to cook this summer since we have all this fresh produce coming?  Um…I don’t think I really have a choice on this one do I?

So when this CSA stuff actually starts I’m going to be blogging about it.  There will probably be some laughter and tears along the way.  If anyone has had an experience (good or bad) with CSA food I’d love to hear about it!  I have high hopes for this summer and our food habits, but a great deal of how this will go relies solely on me.

This is going to be interesting…