Heirloom Tomatoes, Chicken and Eggs

I spent a really fun day at Granville Island Market with my “food hubby” Sean last week.  There’s more coming on that in a later post but, while I was there I bought a bag of beautiful heirloom tomatoes that cost me a fortune but I just couldn’t resist.  You see, one of the sad things about my summer is…the tomato situation.

That’s right… we have a situation (said with a booming movie trailer voice echo).

There was a catastrophic tomato failure in the garden this year.  As in I have 4 red ones.  Lots n lots of green ones but because they got such a late start, they’re probably not going to get to that key stage of green where you can at least harvest them and they’ll ripen in the house.

This makes me sad because nothing, nothing tastes as good as the tomatoes you get from your garden.  And it means I don’t get to make vats of my favourite tomato soup recipe.  I’m very sad faced about this.  🙁 <— sad face.

But these beauties were so gorgeous I had to photograph them. Just by fluke when I decided to get my camera out, some beautiful golden light came through my kitchen door begging for something to be put in it. I had to oblige!

Once I’d sliced them all up to photograph, I had to figure out what to do with them.  I decided on my go to lunch when I want something warm: scrambled eggs with tomatoes and whatever else is in the house that I can chuck in.

The poor egg… it gets such a bad rap.  But honestly, I love scrambled eggs.  I eat them maybe once a week.  All fluffy with milk and whatever spices I feel like and other odds and ends I feel like putting in them.  Or I mix them with leftover rice and veggies. They fill me up for hours.

These ones included the tomatoes, leftover chicken, milk, salt and pepper, some curry powder, a little sweet thai chili sauce and a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. Just scramble the eggs with the milk, spices and chicken, toss in the tomatoes when almost done.  Mix in the chili sauce just before plating and sprinkle on the Parmesan. Easy peasy.

It was the ultimate comfort lunch on what felt like a very definite fall day.

The good news is, the rest of the garden is doing juuuuust fine thanks. There’s been many meals where the only thing not from the garden was the meat. The freezer is full of beans and peas and the garage has buckets of potatoes and shelves of squashes all ready for winter (with more to come!) and the veggie crisper if full of cukes.

Anyone want any beans? I might have to resort to nighttime drops on unsuspecting front porches…

I’ll be back soon with more on the whole Granville Island trip.  It involved fries cooked in duck fat at Edible Canada.  Enough said, right?  Right.

Food Photography Tips

There’s too many photos here to give the details for all of them but, I’m quite pleased because there was almost no post processing except for the potatoes (see the Lightroom tutorial from earlier this week!).  The tomatoes and the light were just so beautiful it was hard to go wrong.

I used an old baking sheet so I’d have some really strong contrast for the tomatoes – they called out for it with their strong, vibrant colours.  And the bowl was a thrift shop find from my trip to Sechelt with Ethan from Feeding Ethan.  $4.  It had great texture and colours in it and was perfect for the tomatoes!