when’s the eating

I’d been really wanting to cook a lot of little things from a Spanish Tapas book I have sitting around and so after church one Sunday in August, Matt roasted a large piece of pig and I fussed around a lot of little dishes. First up are these egg stuffed tomatoes. Each tomato has an egg, heavy cream and Manchego cheese mellowing in its interior and was baked for a while until the egg was creamy and gorgeous. The end pictures weren’t remarkable at all but over all…what an amazing way to eat egg and tomato. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and remember it.

Then, it turns out, you can deep fry sweet peppers without any kind of batter. I dropped these into hot hot oil for a bit and waited for them to turn a stark beautiful green.

Oops, turns out they actually turned brown and wrinkly. However, when I cut into the first one and tasted it, I thought perhaps I would cry, but then I thought, how stupid to cry when you can just have another bite and another and another. 
I lathered these all over everything I ate that day and the day after.

I should also say, these were grown locally by a couple who who belong to COGS.  Every Sunday, as the summer rolls gently by, a table in the Parish Hall is laden with the contents of their garden and with glorious eggs from their chickens. You walk in to see people hovering prayerfully over all the beautiful vegetables and praising God.

This wasn’t in the cookbook but the combination of butter, mushroom and Manchego was not to be resisted by me. I kept adding butter as the mushrooms absorbed them…I wouldn’t be able to tell you how much butter because I lost track after a while.

When it came time to sit down together for dinner, Matt told all the children that these mushrooms were so disgusting that we were doing them a great favor by not making them eat them. They seemed dubious but there was so much pork and bread mounded on their plates some of them eventually forgot. This, along with a whole avocado, we managed to eat silently and completely. Its so difficult, having to share food with children or other people.

And then I roasted some baby tomatoes from my garden with thyme, garlic and olive oil.

Matt also took the innerds of the egg stuffed tomatoes and mushed it around with some fresh herbs and poured cream all over it. And then we just stood there and ate it with spoons, again, very quietly, because the stupid baby loves tomato and squawks like an out of control raging duck when she sees one. I tried to photograph it but it came out badly every time.

So here is the long wait before dinner. Marigold and The Fat Baby of Binghamton sat for something like 45 minutes hoping for food.

And here is Elphine photographing the food along with me. Not sure what she planned to do with the pictures but she made a little news report later on the same camera.

And what am I doing photographing during prayer? Doesn’t he look pious? Don’t be deceived. The second the prayer was over he asked if he was going to have to eat everything. “Oh no no,” I said, “You get to eat pork and bread. Everything else tastes funny and is bad for you.”
“Oh,” he sighed heavily, relieved.
Elphine narrowed her eyes at me and insisted that she loves mushrooms. Irritating child.

I’ve been trying to get this post up every day for the past week. IN FACT, I had promised myself I would blog every day, without fail. But instead of blogging I recalibrated our homeschool day and plan and continued trying to get ready for the start of Sunday School, which is tomorrow. Just as soon as Sunday School is humming nicely along I can face the Great Autumn Clothes Change Over of 2012. It is at these moments that I long to live in a temperate one temperature climate. And now, I will arise, and have another go at those Sunday School Rooms because those little sheep are not going to dust and arrange themselves. Have a lovely weekend and Go To Church!