I was looking through some photos this morning, trying to work out some facts for myself.
We all know that memory can be selective, mistaken, and warped by our own perceptions. Being an impatient person who is always in a hurry, I wanted to know if my garden recollections were correct.
This year, for example, my onions weren’t ready until the middle of July and I probably pulled them too early. I was sure that I normally had them pulled, braided and in storage by the beginning of July.
I was wrong. Some years, yes, they were safely hung in the cave by the 1st week in July. Other years it was the last week or the middle week or even the first week in August.
The same for tomatoes.
I have a vivid memory of taking a big sack of colorful tomatoes to our friend in Spain for his birthday, which was July 8th. When August 8th slipped by this year without so much as a hint of a ripe cherry tomato, I started to wonder if I would ever see a ripe tomato in my garden.
In looking back at photos of my countertop covered in big, ripe tomatoes I discovered that the dates went from the first of July to the first of September. That’s a full 2 month range.
I’ve been picking lots of tomatoes all week. I’m going to quit worrying about whether they are early or late and just enjoy them.
At least I’m going to try the ‘quit worrying’ part…..
Click here to Pin Tomato & Goat Cheese Salad
PrintTomato & Goat Cheese Salad
Tomatoes and mozzarella are a classic pairing…. but why not goat cheese?
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Total Time: 10 minutes
- Yield: 2 servings 1x
- Category: First Courses
Ingredients
- 1 – 2 large tomatoes, cut into chunks
- aged goat cheese (chevre) 3oz (90gr), sliced, slices quartered if large
- 2 tbs fresh, snipped chives
- 2 tbs fresh, snipped basil
- 1 1/2 tbs salad olive oil
- 1 1/2 tbs white Balsamic vinegar
Instructions
- Place all ingredients in a bowl and stir gently.
- Spoon onto plates and serve.
Notes
I used 1 large ‘Orange Queen’ tomato. Use any color or size you have – enough for 2.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1/2 recipe
- Calories: 275
- Sugar: 3.3 g
- Sodium: 192.3 mg
- Fat: 24.1 g
- Saturated Fat: 10.8 g
- Trans Fat: 0 g
- Carbohydrates: 4.3 g
- Fiber: 0.7 g
- Protein: 10.4 g
- Cholesterol: 35.6 mg
Keywords: tomato salad, goat cheese
I had a brilliant idea while working in the potager this morning…..
At lease it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time.
I have found myself make more simple dinners / dishes lately. I’m losing the urge to spend 2 hours in the kitchen making some intricate, fussy dish. I still enjoy doing it but not as often. I’m really getting into easy.
Regardless of how tasty those simple dishes are I don’t take the photo and post the recipe. In my mind it’s so easy, why would anyone need a recipe? But what if other people just don’t think the way I do? (ahem) Or don’t want to think about cooking at all?
And it would be kind of embarrassing, as a food blogger, to post a recipe with only 5 or 6 ingredients. I could compensate by posting 12 photos from different angles but that would just be irritating, plus defeat the purpose of simple.
So…. enjoy my first, official, ‘Simple Dish’. Let me know if you like the idea.
I’ll set up a category and index page when I’ve done a few more.
This is just for fun: I fell in love with this house on our last bike ride…. Modern house, on the canal, next to a crumbling, walled garden.
It ticks all the right boxes!
Simple…oh so good.
Tomatoes to be enjoyed whenever they’re picked.
We eat as many as we can as often as we can this time of year.
I like your ‘simple dish’. When the ingredients available are so good a simple dish is often the best to highlight the flavours. A dish like that would not be the same using an average supermarket tomato! Although all my tomatoes succumbed to blight this year I still have access to two suppliers of excellent tomatoes.
Since I’ve had a potager here, I have recorded everything I’ve done and the results on my laptop. – all five years have been different and so far no pattern has emerged. I know from my years recording rainfall in Africa, there was a definite 10 year cycle of drought and excess but that might not apply any longer. We have spent every summer here since 2004 and not one has been as cool as this one and I can only recall one when we seemed to have as much rain. It is only in the last week our grass has started to go brown.
My winter squash succumbed to powdery mildew but, so far, I have managed to keep blight away from the tomatoes. It’s been a tough year with all the cool, rainy weather. All of my white onions got black mold. I didn’t even know that was something to be concerned about until this year. The red and the brown seem okay so far.
As to the grass…. We have never mowed so much. We look forward to the brown lawns in July and August!
Love simple…look forward to more !
Simple & easy is my new mantra! I’m becoming a minimalist lol
I love Caprese salads and I really like goat cheese. Never thought to try it this way, but I’m sure it’s delicious so onto my rotation it goes! I used to make ‘simple’ dinners when my girls were young and I had to worry about schedules to get everyone where they needed to go and also get my husband fed when he finally got home from work. But my simple dinners are delicious, even if there’s only a few ingredients so I’m looking forward to yours. I still make the simple dinners and the more I can offer, the better 🙂
That house is cool! Is there another behind that wall?
I don’t know what is behind the wall – but I think it’s the church. The church in this little French village is the proud owner of a Rembrandt. It’s displayed, very well protected, in the vestibule.
I can’t seem to get my self inspired for fussy dinners anymore…. maybe when the gardening is done for the season.