Road Grill: Crab Salad Stuffed Avacados

We were watching Road Grill with Matt Dunnigan of all things over the summer and came across this fairly easy recipe for a light, cool meal.

1. Drain and rinse a can of crab meat, making sure to check for shells.
2. Add a decent sized dollop or two of Miracle Whip or Mayonnaise.
3. Zest a lime directly into the crab. Reserve some juice to brush the avocados then juice the rest into the crab mixture as well.
4. Add a generous amount of your favourite hot sauce.
5. Season with salt and pepper.
6. Mix and adjust to taste as necessary.
7. Slice, skin, and de-stone two avocados so you end up with 4 half avocados. Brush with reserved lime juice. Any remaining lime juice can go into the crab mixture.
8. Spoon crab mixture onto avocados.
9. Top each avocado with green onion or chives.

And voila!

Sun Dried Tomatoes

The Italians have lied to us for years! For that matter, most of the Mediterranean nations have been stretching the truth to us "westerners!" There is no such thing as sun dried tomatoes! There are dried tomatoes, and they have a sweet, concentrated tomato flavour, but there's no "sun" involved, that's just a flowery name for them.

Nope, sun dried tomatoes are dried in the oven. Any tomatoes will work, although I find cherry and grape style tomatoes work the best. Simply wash and dry tomatoes, then slice them all in half and combine them carefully in a medium/large mixing bowl. Drizzle them generously with olive oil and add salt and pepper. Use your hands to mix them gently. Take a cookie sheet/baking tray and arrange the tomatoes skin side down so none are touching. (If you're wondering if you need to grease the tray, you need to go back and add more oil to the tomatoes!) Then put the tray in the oven or toaster oven at the lowest possible setting for several hours, preferably overnight!

When they come out of the oven, the tomatoes will have shrunk, concentrated, and become tiny morsels of goodness! Just make sure they go straight in the fridge for maximum shelf life!

A Gardener's Nemesis

If there's a sure way to rain on a gardener's parade in the mid to late fall, it's the arrival of his/her nemesis Jack Frost. After having such an unbelievable September and finally having things GROW in the garden, I was really hoping that our first frost would be delayed according. Unfortunately, the day after I start cleaning out the garden it's forecasted. Well, my tomatoes are stripped and my pumpkin is covered....everything else is just going to have to withstand Jack's touch. I guess this means I can pick the turnips now...

Although, another several dozen green tomatoes after several dozen ripe tomatoes yesterday? What's a chef to do? "Sun" drying!

Change Of Season

Almost hard to believe that it's time to think about autumn chores around the garden. Sure, school started almost a month(?!!) ago now, but things are still growing and we're just finally ending our summertime temperatures...which hadn't even started until Labour Day! Made it very hard to accept today when I realized that I should be planting next year's garlic in the next 2-3 weeks!

Anyways, things I did today to facilitate the changing of the seasons...
-dug the last of the garlic and all of the red and spanish onions, setting them up to dry in the garage for at least a week
-harvested the last of the Juliet tomatoes and all of the ripe Snow White and Sungold tomatoes; still lots of flowers and green ripening fruit on the latter two plants, so we may get a few more yet depending on the weather...
-brought the Tomatillo into the house - maybe I can get some actually fruit off of it now that it won't go below 50 F at night!

And with the tomatillo came some indoor gardening chores...
-adding soil to the former pepper pot and planting my next indoor fruiting olive tree :)
-redoing my aloe vera pot and replanting all of the plants that were trying to escape
-getting the tomatillo established indoors
-reawakening the Amyrillis

Oh well, at least colder temperatures mean I get to dust off my chili recipes... ;)