Roasted Tomatoes

It's a pretty simple idea: roast tomatoes, sliced, for a while until the water evaporates somewhat and the sugars concentrate. The tomatoes get buttery rich and shrunken, but not leathery like a sun-dried tomato. I've seen a few variations: Alton Brown does his with tomatoes cut in two, tossed with herbs and sugar and baked at 170 for 10 hours, I've seen a recipe for 250 for 3-4 hours. But this is the one that I've tried that I like the best:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Core and slice tomatoes. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, sliced garlic, kosher salt and pepper and bake 30-60 minutes until juices have evaporated. Store in plastic zip-top bag in fridge or freezer.

Pretty easy, but I've learned a few lessons from doing this a couple times already. I get my tomatoes from the farmer's market. They sell them here right now for really cheap for the less-than-perfect toms. I got 6lb for $5, and if I had gone up to 10 or 15 lbs it would have been even cheaper per pound. I've tried both romas and the big round tomatoes and I like the round ones better.

As for the parchment paper, I normally replace parchment with my silicon mats, but I think in this case it's better not to. The paper soaks up some of that liquid so it doesn't leak out all over my oven. Also, instead of a baking sheet, I think I'll try a glass or pyrex baking pan from now on, for the same reason (to keep the juices in) and that if you don't clean the metal baking sheet right away the acid will do un-good things to the metal. I think I will also skip the garlic from now on. It gets too bitter with all that baking. Or, maybe I'll toss a whole one in there with the paper still on so that the tomatoes get the aromatics, but the garlic doesn't burn. Hmm...

The first time I did it, I has some problems with some pieces shriveling and charring while other pieces were still juicy. I thought if I cut the pieces with a mandolin that would keep everything even, but the tomatoes were too ripe for that. So I just tried really really hard to make them all the same size, and I put the thicker pieces on the edges and the thinner pieces in the middle. That helped a lot. I think it's better to undercook than overcook these, as the charred tomatoes aren't very good at all.

After I roasted them, I cooled the pans on the counter and then put them in the freezer. When the tomatoes were frozen I picked them off the pan and put them in a bag. I think if you wanted you could just put the unfrozen pieces in a bag and freeze them like that: after all, you're probably going to use the whole bag at once, right? not piece by piece? I might do that in the future, the frozen tomatoes were not easy to peel off the sheets.

I kept a batch unfrozen yesterday and saved it for dinner. We just tossed them in some pasta with some olive oil and mixed it up to sort of mash the tomatoes. It was really sweet and velvety. I loved it, and even Chris liked it even though he doesn't normally like sweet food. Anyway, I plan on putting some up every week until the tomatoes stop being cheap, and that way we can have some during the long, cold winter. You could also use them for pizza or bruschetta or as a side dish.

Now that I'm 30, I've been trying to keep an eye on my cholesterol (oh, the irony of moving to the dairy state!). Chris and I are going to get burgers tonight at Red Robin, and I noticed their website has a customization option where you can see what the nutritional value of the burgers are and what happens if you add things or take things away. I've been trying to keep my cheese-eating to what I've been thinking of as high-impact cheese (meaning, cheese that is delicious and important to the dish or meal). Example of high-impact cheese: a platter of delicious cheese, fondue, pizza. Example of low-impact cheese: those cubes of "cheddar" that you get in the ziplock bag at the grocery store, sandwiches and wraps, most cheese on Mexican food. I've decided that cheese on burgers are, for me, mostly low-impact (the exception being blue cheese or feta). So, on this Red Robin site I just wanted to see what would happen to the nutritional value of a burger if I took away the cheese and mayo. It is astonishing! I'm literally blown away at the difference. I have no more face, because it has been blown away. Also shocking was how unhealthy a restaurant salad can be. Seriously, most of the burgers had fewer fat and calories than the first salad I clicked on.

Anyway, not to get all healthy and whatever, I was just astounded. It was a "no way!" moment. Plus, the website has fun sound effects.

Weather Update

So I know the weather here in west central Wisconsin is of concern for some of you (specifically the cold weather). Here's an update so far:

Today the high is going to be 84 (for comparison, I think the norm high for July is in the mid-80s). The normal high for today is 71, so we're having a bit of a warm spell. I think I'm already shifting my mentality because it seems almost oppressively hot. When I lived in DC, oppressively hot didn't start until the triple digits.

Anyway, a very few of the leaves are starting to turn. Mostly big maples. The locusts in my backyard are starting to think about it, but aren't ready yet.

As for how this winter is going to be, it depends who you ask. The Farmer's Almanac people say it's going to be colder than normal for the upper midwest, but the National Weather people say warmer than normal (due to El Nino). Normally I'd give more weight to the people using the scientific method to predict weather rather than the people using the phases of the moon, but I've seen such shoddy weather predictions for the midwest that I'm willing to give the moon a chance.

House projects

Chris has finally gotten his lifelong dream of having a workspace big enough for a workbench. Although our garage is huge, it's really only going to be usable until, oh, late October and then it'll just be too cold. We plan on eventually insulating the garage, which will also help keep the house warm, but until then Chris is trying to squeeze all this high priority projects in now. He's already built an incredibly stable workbench (not even a millimeter of wobble on that baby), a DVD case, and some stairs for Harper to use to climb onto the window seat. The stairs have since turned into a plant stand because Harper doesn't like them. I made a window seat cushion so she would be a little more comfortable on the seat, but I think I've used it more than she has (my longtime dream has been to have a window seat, so Harper and I have been competing over it). The cushion turned out much better than I expected. Pictures below! I stained and poly-whatevered the DVD case. It looks even better in person, unless you get real close and then you can see streaks. All in all, though, pretty good for our first projects, I think.

I just got back from a two-hour bike ride around town. I'm no bike-ride connoisseur, but I would rate that ride, on a scale from 1 to 10, somewhere between 8 and awesome. I rode around the lake and along the river. Some of the leaves are juuuust starting to change, and the weather was nice and warm. Very nice.

The only hard part was a section going south on State Street where you have to take an underpass under Clairemont, which means you then have to go back up to get level with the rest of the city. Which is about 1/4 mile at, I swear, a 45 degree slope. I was cruising around on the north side trying to see if there was some other way across Clairemont (like some sort of intersection situation instead of an under- or over-pass), and I found a party of bicyclists and asked them. They laughed, knew immediately what I was talking about, and then I got mocked by the 80-year-old man who said that if he "could pull State Street," then I could pull State Street. This is not a phrase I'm familiar with, but I got the gist.

I could not pull State Street. However, in my defense, he was all decked out in riding gear with biking pants and those biking shirts, which I'm sure help when climbing hills.