Homemade tomato sauce and Girls' Night

Homemade tomato sauce
with Italian sausage
& fresh basil

Derek has been working like a fiend all weekend, so I’ve had some time to play with photographs for the blog.  Now that I’ve (finally) learned how to use technology to get pictures here, I’ll probably go a little crazy-obsessive with the camera for a while.  That’s what usually happens when I learn something new and creative. It’s likely I’ll drive everyone crazy for a while.

I made some tomato sauce with peppers for dinner last night, and Derek will be proud of me: I used all tomatoes from our garden – no canned tomatoes or tomato sauce!  OK, I did use a little canned tomato paste to thicken it up.  Is that cheating?  I put fresh parsley and basil from our garden, and jazzed up the flavor with some ground fennel and some sweet Italian sausage.  Before the pasta, we had a green salad of various baby lettuces, cucumber, zucchini, celery and avocado dressed with my basic garlicky Red Wine Vinaigrette

Green Salad with Red Wine Vinaigrette
(and some red wine)

Next weekend Derek is going to Montana for a guys’ camping vacation with his brother, nephews and brother-in-law.  My sister is coming up here to visit from New Orleans for the first time since I moved here four years ago, and I’m having my first Indianapolis girls’ night here.  Like most of the country, we’ve had a hellish heat wave/drought, so I’m thinking about what I can serve at the party without having to spend all my time in a hot kitchen.  Our tomatoes are prolific this year and incredibly delicious.  We have cucumbers, too, and of course, a full range of fresh herbs, which makes me think of gazpacho. I think I’ll garnish it with spicy boiled shrimp, and if I can get Derek to make some of his homemade tomato juice before he leaves, it could just turn out to be the best gazpacho in the Midwest.  Since we have chives in the garden for garnish, I think I’ll make vichyssoise, too, which is refreshing and very satisfying.  I can make almost everything the night before and put it in the downstairs refrigerator to chill.  One of my friends offered to bring Sangria, which will be perfect.  I’ll make some kind of big salad (Caprese, maybe), some of my favorite grilled Ciabatta and buy some miniature frozen cream puffs and éclairs.  It’s beginning to sound like a party!