Tomato Cobbler with Blue Cheese Biscuits

Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes
This is my favorite part of the summer growing season. I am experiencing a tomato explosion in my garden. It’s awesome. But I do tend to get tired of just popping the cherry tomatoes into my mouth, or eating the slicer tomatoes like apples. So when I saw this recipe for a tomato cobbler on one of my favorite blogs, I was intrigued and excited about making it. All my favorite flavors are there: tomatoes, basil, balsamic, and caramelized onions….and don’t forget the blue cheese!

I am fairly certain that the kids will go nowhere near it, but I also have a strong feeling that this will be served for dinner up at Tahoe next week to those of us who are over 5 feet tall, and have a more sophisticated palate than the chicken nugget crowd.

I encourage those of you who have the same backyard tomato largess to give it a try…
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Watermelon Gazpacho With Chile and Feta Cheese

That’s Usin’ Your Melon!
After an extended vacation and a lot of driving, we’re back home and I am looking for some good “real” food. It can be fun eating out, but eventually I get tired of shouting in a clown’s mouth and want to have a normal, family dinner around our kitchen table. I know. How very Norman Rockwell…

I gotta say, I’m pretty tired. So as much as I want a real meal, I also want it to be easy and perfect for the warm weather. Luckily, I have a recipe that covers both.

Last month at our Tyler Florence cookbook dinner, one of the recipes I went crazy for was the Watermelon Gazpacho with Chile and Feta Cheese. Just so you know, I don’t like watermelon—which makes my love of this recipe weird. But it’s good…really good. And it is made almost entirely in the blender. Nothing is easier than that. Add to that the fact that my tomatoes are abundant and melons are at the peak of their season, and you just can’t go wrong with this one. Read more…

Feast or Famine Mac ‘n Cheese

Feast or Famine

April is the month of budding fruit trees, tulips, nasty yellow marshmallow birds and, sigh, taxes.

Some years we look forward to April ‘cause we naively think that Uncle Sam will contribute to our “Butt on a Beach” fund. (By the way, this is a cause I believe in wholeheartedly. Donate now!)

Other years? Not so much.

We’ve all been there. One week we’re cruising down our beautiful “well maintained” highways (that shrine to our tax dollars at work) on our way to a dinner of filet mignon with lobster. And the next week Turbo Tax is telling us that there is a Costco size case of Top Ramen in our future.

So, in honor of Feast or Famine month, I offer you two of my top recipes for a comfort food favorite, Mac & Cheese. True, the desperate can go the blue-box, plastic cheese route. But the real deal is easy to prepare, and you can make extra for the freezer.

For those whose fortunes have been favored, I offer a decadent version, and suggest you enjoy it with your favorite bottle of bubbly—while using your best Thurston Howell III voice. Read more…