Heirlooms- have you tried them?

With the rising price of gasoline and hence food and other products, there's now a big push to grow your own fruits and veggies. With the latest salmonella scare happening across the country with tomatoes, I've got and bought a yellow heirloom tomato plant. I put it in a large terracotta pot with hopes of it not attracting chipmunks, prairie dogs or little bunnies to it's lovely fruits. I thought about giving strawberries a try and will look at some while I'm at Menard's this morning.

Now to get with the Heirloom plants- they're a bit different looking that the regular ones you can get tomatoes, apples, cucumbers and various squash plants. Check your local nurseries to see what they have available. Give them a try, you'll be happy you did!

Panini- another word for YUM!

Last week I was watching Giada and she was making Panini sandwiches using cantaloupe, prosciutto and brie cheese. Here's the link to the recipe on the foot TV site-Prosciutto and Melon Panino. I changed mine a bit and made it to suit my own tastes...I omitted the baby arugula (too peppery for me) and just used the melon, the brie on the top and bottom of the sandwich and substituted salty Virginia Ham thinly sliced for the prosciutto. I bought my focaccia bread at Safeway in town (the one in Baken Park-their bread is always fresh).

Now for those that do not have a panini press (believe it or not, I don't have one) I used my George Foreman Grill- no joke it worked perfectly! Give it a try, you'll be surprised how easily it works! It put the grill marks on the bread and melted the cheese and made it all ever so delicious!

I made these for lunch today and they were so good that I made them again for dinner. Okay so Hannah passed on having another panini so I made some Bruschetta- it's VERY simple to make...
Use a package of grape or cherry tomatoes, cut into small pieces making sure to squeeze the seeds out, fresh basil chopped (it takes quite a bite of fresh basil), some sea salt, red wine vinegar and some olive oil and ¼ cup fine chopped red onion. You're going to hate me but I didn't measure anything...I'm guessing that I used ¼ cup red onion could be more. I like to cook "to taste", that is that I taste a lot during the cooking process. Go easy on the salt, it doesn't take very much, maybe ¼ teaspoon a couple of tablespoons for the red wine vinegar and same for the olive oil. Let everything macerate (flavors blend) in a covered bowl in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour- it helps to take the bite out of the onion. Serve on sliced baguette. If you want to have authentic Bruschetta brush olive oil on each piece of diagonally sliced baguette, place on baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes at 350º they will be toasted and ready for topping!

For dessert - somthing very simple and is our daughter's favorite, fresh strawberries rolled in sugar YUM!