The Food Brie Cooked and Baked

Recipe source: Allrecipes.com

Even though this dish goes together really quickly, it still has that restaurant-quality taste.

I used pesto that I made this summer (using basil from our garden) and froze.

penne with chicken and pesto

Recipe source: PickYourOwn.org

The other day, BP brought home a bushel basket full of Roma tomatoes from his garden. That is a lot of Romas.

We decided to make tomato soup with them – so that I could eat it for lunch during the winter. BP doesn’t eat tomato soup, at all. But I think he really wanted to use our new food grinder attachment for the KitchenAid stand mixer, so it was a good excuse for him to test it out for the first time.

BP likes the new food grinder attachment

As you can see, he was thrilled with the results. Even I was impressed. Put your tomatoes in one end of this little gadget, and out from the other end comes a bowl of nice, smooth juiced tomatoes. The “guts” plop out from a little hole in the side. If we’d have had this when we made our spaghetti sauce, things would have gone much more quickly.

Anyways, I now have eight pints of tomato soup (plus more in freezer bags) waiting in the pantry!

tomato basil soup

Recipe source: Allrecipes.com

If you have an abundance of summer garden produce at your disposal, then you really need to make this dish.

I stumbled upon this recipe a few years ago, and I’ve made it every summer since. It’s perfect for when you have a lot of vegetables ready to go in your garden. I generally follow the recipe almost exactly, but you could substitute in whatever vegetables are ripe in your yard.

This time, I found everything I needed in our garden except for the yellow squash, so I doubled the zucchini instead.

Also, the recipe calls for farfalle pasta, but I didn’t have any, so I used a box of rotini I had on the shelf.

pasta primavera with Italian turkey sausage

Recipe source: Allrecipes.com

Mmmmmmm …. feta. BP and I love feta.

And this is the most perfect way to eat pork chops.

Garlic, tomatoes, basil, a little balsamic vinegar – add the feta – and there you have it. Pork chop perfection.

I served the chops with some roasted red potatoes on the side.

pork chops with fresh tomato, onion, garlic and feta

Recipe source: my friend Sonja

If you’re looking for a way to use up some of your garden produce, this might just be for you.

Make this the night before you plan to eat it, then boil some pasta and serve this over top. A super easy, summer-fresh meal.

I used tomatoes and basil from my very own garden and served over cheese tortellini, but you could use any kind of pasta you wanted.

Little Brother and The Girlfriend seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. They ate it up pretty quickly.

pasta with tomatoes and basil

Recipe

Combine 2 c. tomatoes (seeded and chopped), 1 c. chopped basil, 5 minced garlic cloves, 1/2 c. olive oil, 1 tsp. salt and 1/2 tsp. pepper.

Cover and refrigerator at least four hours or overnight. Heat over medium heat. Serve over pasta. Top with freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese.

Recipe source: Rachael Ray’s “Express Lane Meals” or print it from her website

When I decided I needed to learn how to cook a couple of years after BP and I had been married (spaghetti and frozen pizza get really old), I picked up Rachael Ray’s “Express Lane Meals” and started on page one.

Luckily, it gave me the incentive I needed to continue experimenting in the kitchen, and the recipe has remained one of my favorite quick meals (though, when I started teaching myself to cook, even this one was not quick for me!).

This also is the recipe that BP can blame on my love and devotion to the classic Italian combination of tomatoes, garlic, basil and mozzarella. YUM. If it were up to me, we would eat some version of this combination much, much more than we do now. But, BP is a good guy, and so I do try to throw in variety for him.

the insides of the quesadilla, just prior to completion

Recipe source: none

Using pesto I made (using this recipe) with basil from our very own garden, BP made me this easy pizza. We used store-bought pizza crust because we’ve been out of town and I hadn’t taken the time to make any myself. BP topped the crust with pesto, shredded chicken and mozzarella cheese.

It’s a delicious, quick, easy meal for a summer night.

pesto chicken pizza

Recipe source: Simple & Delicious, January/February 2010

Throw some pesto, mushrooms and olives on top of some chicken and bake, then add provolone cheese on top. That’s it. And you’ve got a really tasty chicken dish.

Just be sure you don’t buy giant chickens – they won’t be done within the recommended baking time of 15 minutes.

I ended up having to put mine in the microwave to finish them in time for supper. (I’d invited my mom over, and I wasn’t going to make her wait another 30 minutes!) I couldn’t even remember the last time I ate meat cooked in the microwave. It’s not something I recommend, but in a pinch I guess it’ll have to suffice.

Potatoes were also super easy to do – the most time consuming part of the entire meal prep was chopping the potatoes. Then, you bake those, throw a horseradish/mustard/butter mixture on top and bake ‘em a little more.

pesto-olive chicken and tender roasted potatoes