Tricolore Salad with Eggplant, Peppers, Tomatoes, and Mozzarella

This is another delicious recipe from Plenty. It's a really great, light side dish. The mix of textures is really nice - the soft eggplant and mozzarella and the crispy peppers. It seems like a lot of capers, but they get mixed in and it's just right. The cilantro adds a nice, fresh flavor on top. Can't wait to eat the leftovers for lunch!

Ingredients:

4 small eggplants, sliced into 1/2" circles

olive oil

salt and pepper

1 yellow pepper, in about a 1/2" dice

15 grape tomatoes, quartered

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

3 1/2 tbsp capers, plus 1 tbsp of the brine

5oz fresh mozzarella

1 cup roughly chopped cilantro

Grilled Feta

I wanted to make grilled halloumi but couldn't find any, so I bought some feta and found that you can grill it as long as it's in a little tinfoil packet. This is a great appetizer or accompaniment to a light dinner of Greek salad and chicken souvlaki. You can really add in whatever you want for seasoning. I kept it pretty simple with grape tomatoes, herbs de provence, lemon, and garlic, but you could add cooked tomatoes, capers, chilies, olives... The cheese gets hot and melty and it's super tasty, and couldn't be easier.

Vegetable Garden Week 9 - May 7

We've got radishes! They're just itty bitty radishes, but I needed to cull them a bit so it was great to have a little something to nibble on. The first harvest is always fun. This is why radishes are great - you get them so early compared to everything else! The French Breakfast radishes (the long and skinny ones) were much milder than the regular round red radishes which had a lot of spiciness. I made a batch of radish butter which is a really great hors d'oeuvres on some crackers. 

Garden Plan

Even though this weather is horrendous, I'm excited to go out and garden this weekend. This is the plan for the two big garden beds (the two little beds are already planted with snap peas, lettuce, radishes, strawberries, and zucchini). I'm hoping we'll have a few minutes where the rain lets up so I can run out and plant tomatoes, eggplants, and hot peppers. I bought a few at the farmers market on Wednesday and am planning to get a few more today. I'm searching for Black Cherry Tomatoes - I think they're my favorite. So sweet and tart and delicious. This will also be our last weekend out in Long Island pre-baby so I need to get as much done as possible!

Not much more room in there!!

Chia Seed Meatballs and Meatball Gratin

These were delicious! With the gestational diabetes, I can't have carbs so I gave chia seed meatballs a try (using chia seeds instead of breadcrumbs). It worked really well. They were super flavorful and you don't really notice the chia seeds, but they bind the meatballs together, and are apparently super good for you. The fennel seeds give them a bit of a sausage flavor and the sundried tomatoes give them some umami and richness. I topped them with marinara sauce, fontina, and pecorino and threw it under the broiler - so tasty! For Jamie, I made a meatball sub.