Roasted Tomato and Fennel Sauce for Pasta

Roma tomatoes, garlic, fennel, pine nuts, basil, kalamata olives, capers. (Olive oil, pepper, salt, and crushed red pepper not pictured.)

Preheat the oven to 375. Halve and seed the tomatoes. 

Slice the fennel. Put it all into a baking dish or pie tin.

Put 1/4-1/2 clove of garlic into each tomato half, top with a piece of basil. Drizzle everything with 1 T. of olive oil and 1 T. of balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. 

If you want to have toasted pine nuts and capers, put them into a separate oven-safe receptacle. 

Hello, froggy oven mitt!

Check on the tomatoes and fennel after fifteen to twenty minutes or so. When the fennel has started to get toasty-looking and the tomatoes are soft, flip everything over. 

It's okay if stuff is a bit browner for you. Just toss it back in for another five to ten minutes. 

Peel off the tomato skins and put the tomato flesh, all of the yummy stuff that was in the tomatoes, and the fennel into a small saucepan. 

Here are the toasted pine nuts and capers. The capers will survive up to 25 minutes in the oven, but watch the pine nuts or they will burn. 

Deglaze the roasting pan with water. Add the water to the pot, along with a tablespoon of pine nuts if it sounds good. Let it simmer slowly for about ten minutes. 

Whir with your favorite handheld blender (or do it carefully in your regular blender). Season to taste with salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, fresh basil, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. Add a generous handful of chopped kalamata olive. 

Put the sauce on whole wheat pasta and top with the toasted capers and pine nuts. It is also quite nice with nutritional yeast, or fresh basil, or anything, really. 

Cabbage "Soft Taco"

This is a good, easy snack or meal.

You'll need:
- a whole green cabbage
- a batch of your favorite taco-style TVP or ground tofu (I used Fantastic Foods boxed mix)*
- pico de gallo
- nutritional yeast

Remove a leaf from the cabbage, keeping it as whole as possible.
Put a couple of tablespoons of the taco mix into the middle. Top with an equal amount of pico de gallo and a teaspoon of nutritional yeast. Wrap it up like a little soft taco and eat it.

Yikes!

I really dropped the ball on this blog. More than two months? Shame on me!

I've had a lot going on: brand-new responsibilities at work, Granny in town (93 years old and still the Energizer Bunny!), and Mom getting ready to sell her house and move back to Minnesota. (Happy for her, but sad that I'll be missing out on seeing her every week.)

Anyway, I've managed to gain somewhere between 5 and 10 pounds, which is not joyous. So, for the next few weeks, I'm going to focus on being somewhat more healthy. You'll be seeing more posts, some of which will include misadventures, I'm sure, as I venture into the world of smoothie-making and raw-food-ing.

My plan is to consume smoothies with some regularity, along with upping my intake of raw fruits and veggies.

Pro tip #1: Try sundried tomatoes on your salad instead of whole tomatoes. Yes, they are higher in calories and lower in water. However, they add textural contrast and extra flavor.

Pro tip #2: Try sprinkling nutritional yeast on your salad. It adds an interesting toasty flavor that I found delightful. Next time, I'm going to put it in the dressing and add capers for something Caesar-y.