CAPRESE CON SPINACHI

Caprese con Spinachi -- a beautiful fresh garden tomato and bull mozzarella salad served over a bed of baby spinach greens.  Easy, low fat and delicious.  Makes a wonderful dinner all by itself or as an accompaniment to any summer dinner.  Since I have bushels and bushels of tomatoes coming in my backdoor, we eat this frequently as supper.  It's light, but filling.  Quick to fix and always satisfying with those garden fresh tomatoes.  If you don't have or can't get fresh summer tomatoes, I recommend you use nice, red, ripe Romas.  Pick the reddest ones you can find.  Yield: 2 or more servings

Caprese con Spinachi Salad

Ingredients:

2 medium-large fresh tomatoes, peeled & cored if desired
1 sleeve of BelGiosi water pack Mozzarella (usually in Deli section)
Fresh Baby Spinach leaves
Red Wine or Balsamic Vinegar
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Fresh Basil (snipped or cut into chiffonade)

Directions:
Put a very healthy handful of baby spinach in the center of two dinner plates. Slice your tomatoes and lay around the edges of the plates.  Interlace slices of mozzarella between the tomatoes.  Scatter cut, fresh basil over all.  Generously salt (I use coarse sea salt) and pepper (fresh ground is best).  Drizzle EVOO over both plates; then drizzle vinegar over both plates.  Voila!  Ready to serve.

If you have extra tomatoes, and love them like we do, pare another medium tomato and cut into 8ths, not cutting all the way to the bottom.  I do this holding the tomato in my hand.  Spread out in center of plate.  Add some chunked up mozzarella and season when you season up the plates.

This is also excellent service with Triscuit crackers. We especially like with the Garlic Parmesan crackers and maybe a fresh green onion on the side and a big ole glass of cold tea.

Enjoy~
~~Aunt Betty

Tomatoes Everywhere!

This winter's supply cookin' up!

Tonight's Tomato Bounty

We normally harvest in the evenings and this is a small sampling of tonight's harvest from our garden. I'll bet I have already given away about 8 bushels of tomatoes and at least 3-4 bushels of Zucchini and Squash.  Thank goodness the zukes and squash are slowing down (getting too hot in this Texas heat).

But the tomatoes are still coming off gangbusters.

This is my big stainless mixing bowl (on the left) and as you can see it is overflowing with rich, ripe goodness.  There were more cherry tomatoes, but I couldn't resist and ate a bunch of them after washing.  

And for the rest that had a few spots, were super ripe or were misshapen, into the pot they went and they are cooking away now.  Winter is always good at our house because I have lots of summer veg put up.  But we need 'super fan' in the kitchen during canning season.  All the burners going it gets hotter than a firecracker in there!

Don't worry about peeling your tomatoes. 

Get the bad spots out, peel off any funky peel or areas of the tomato, slice up and put in a heavy bottom stock pot.  Cook until they are reduced by at least half.  Run through a wire mesh sieve and any seeds and skins will be retained. 

I usually sieve into the giant Tupperware bowl that I've had since the early 1970's and then put it all back into the pot and cook about another 15-20 minutes. 

Have your hot sterilized jars and seals ready and ladle into prepared jars.  I add 1 tsp salt and 1/2 Tbs lemon juice to the top of  a pint jar (leaving 1/2" headspace), (or 1 + 1);  wipe the rims and seal.  Set on a tea towel on the counter and wait for them to seal.  You will hear them popping.  Double check after 24 hours to make sure they all sealed.  If you have one that didn't seal, stick it in the fridge and use it within a few days.  Once completely cooled, I remove the rings and store.  I never store my canned jars with the rings on because sometimes they get so stuck on you can't get them off later.  At least that's the way I learned.  DO NOT RETIGHTEN the rings once you tighten them.  There will be some contraction usually after they seal.

If you are a novice to canning and preserving, I can strongly recommend the 'bible' of canning:  Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving, available at most book retailers, Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, Target and places like that.