Uova al Pomodoro (eggs cooked in tomato sauce)

On Saturday morning I went for a walk with a couple of good friends and after an hour long walk and a leisurely cup of coffee it was time for lunch.  I have been craving eggs recently, I am not sure why, but if I have a craving for a certain food I try to give my body what it wants.  So I made this dish for the two of us, we had it for lunch, but it could easily be for breakfast or even for dinner in my case.

Feeds two for breakfast or lunch one for dinner

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1/2 yellow onion chopped

10 small tomatoes (I used strawberry tomatoes but any small one would do)

2 ribs of celery

1/2 hot chilli pepper

2 eggs

Heat up the olive oil in a non stick frying pan, and the onion and cook until translucent then add the remaining ingredients, except the eggs and some salt and pepper.

Stir and cover for about 5 minutes.  You want the tomatoes to be collapsed and the celery softening.  Taste for seasoning, and add a little more salt and pepper if needed, tomatoes do really love salt and pepper.

Egg baked in Tomato

I saw this idea on Katrina's Blog Daily unadventures in cooking and thought is was brilliant. I love eggs and there is not much better than roasted or fried tomatoes so the combination.  So on the long weekend we decided to make this for breakfast to replace or regular boiled egg.

This did make a brilliant breakfast dish, but actually I think it would make a good light dinner or lunch as well.

For 2
2 tomatoes
1 tablespoon grated cheese (we used Romano)
2 green onions chopped
salt and pepper
2 eggs

Hollow out the tomatoes and sprinkle with salt and pepper, tomatoes really love salt and pepper, then place half the cheese in the bottom of each tomato.

Place the hollowed out tomatoes in to your baking dish and break an egg in to each one.

Sorry a bit blurry, but I can only blame the photographer

Home made granola

A friend of mine very kindly gave me a bag of her home made granola a couple of weeks ago. I have been enjoying this on my yogurt every morning, but when it ran out I missed it, so I figured I had better make some for myself.  I did a little research and it looked like this would not be too hard to do.

The base of all granolas seems to be rolled oats, but over and over I was told not the quick cooking type so I bought 2 cups of traditional rolled oats.  After that it seems to me it was about what nuts and fruit you like, so this is what I used, but from what I can gather it really does not matter which nuts or which dried fruit.

2 cups of traditional rolled oats
3/4 cup of slivered almonds
3/4 cup of pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
3/4 cup of maple syrup (or you could use honey)
2 tablespoons of sunflower oil or melted butter
1 cup of dried fruit - cranberries, crystalized ginger, blueberries, crystalized orange peel

Combine the rolled oats and nuts.

Combine syrup and oil in another bowl and then thoroughly mix all the ingredients together.  Spread the mixture out evenly on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet.

orange stewed prunes

I know what you are thinking stewed prunes! But actually I really like prunes and I was looking for some fruit to eat on my yogurt for breakfast.  I have committed to eat only local fruit in season for breakfast for a year, I have some stewed rhubarb in my freezer and also some whole blueberries that I froze in season.  But this will only last for so long and so stewed prunes are something I can make any time of year I just have to check on the package to see where they are from.

So all I did was put 1 cup of dried prunes in to a pot and added enough orange juice to almost cover them.

Then I added the grated rind from one orange and simmered together slowly for about 20 minutes until most of the orange juice had disappeared.

Stewed rhubarb

Rhubarb is a much underrated fruit, and it is one of the few that is still for the most part seasonal.  You only see it in the stores in the spring and early summer and it grows very well here in south west Canada as well as in my home County of Yorkshire.  As a little girl I would visit my Grandparents in Tingley Yorkshire (the rhubarb capital of the world) where there house backed on to a rhubarb field.  we would climb over the stone wall, steal rhubarb and eat it raw dipping the ends into sugar cradled in our hands.

On Sunday morning before the rains came my husband and I went for a walk and bumped into some neighbours who said they had a surfeit of rhubarb and was I interested.  Oh yes I was interested and told them I would take as much as they could spare. I was dreaming of stewed rhubarb on plain yogurt for breakfast.