Home Grown Tomatoes: Longing for Weather

Soba Noodle Salad and Grilled Pesto Pita Pizzas

Home Grown Tomatoes is a weekly Vegan/Vegetarian column written by Giovanina Bucci

Let me be honest with you.  This post will be short and sweet.  Because all I have on my brain right now is finishing two giant papers (by Friday), so that I can be done with my first semester of graduate school.  I haven't written a 20 page paper in over 6 years, not to mention TWO of them.  Which leads me to the context of today's post, whereby I had to go through the ol' food picture archive and dig up some of the oldies but goodies, because school is sucking out all of my creativity.  (It is not, however, preventing me from squeezing in a spritzer here and there - and thank god for those.)  

Our very small, very cluttered, very "we're both in school and work full time"/have no groceries apartment is not quite the ideal space for putting on the apron and diving into delectable new recipes right now.  Soon enough.  On a random side note, have I mentioned that it snowed on Sunday - which I would honestly like to follow with a whole bunch of swear words...but apparently I'm too classy for that (Ha!).  I'm much more into mother nature when she's less confused about time of year it is...then again, I guess we can't have it all. 

This recipe for the Soba (Udon) Noodle Salad was first introduced to me in St. Thomas by my boss at the time, Mary.  I love this woman for a number of reasons, and this recipe is one of them!  She also turned me onto Taste Spotting, which if you haven't been to - be prepared to get lost in a sea of excellent food pictures and recipes.  Anyway, that's where this recipe came from and it's super refreshing, light, and perfect for this time of year.

Grilled Pesto Pita Pizzas

A few years back I was watching Bobby Flay on the Food Network.  He created a version of these pita pizzas, which he made look so mindless to make and delicious to eat.  Turns out, he was right!  The pizzas in the picture, I made with real cheese (hence, the melting), but of course, could easily be made vegan.  I found whole wheat pitas, used two different kinds of pesto as the sauce, topped them with cheeses, like dill infused and pepperjack, and threw them on the grill.  I made these for a girlfriends' birthday party and they were a great and easy appetizer.  If you're growing an abundance of basil this summer, then you can enjoy making some of your own fresh, homemade pesto.

Ideas for pesto:

traditional garlic pesto

sun-dried tomato and mozzarella

roasted almond and asiago

artichoke and parmasean

red pepper and cilantro pesto

(and you don't have to stick to pine nuts to make a great pesto, try almonds, cashews, walnuts, etc.)

And although I haven't had cheese in about 4 years, the taste lingers in my mind...trust me :)  I tried to find cheeses to use other than cheddar and mozzarella (which would inevitably be tasty) to make the pizzas a touch more creative.  And grilling the pitas just gives them that extra bit of love!  I hope the grilling season is up and sizzling in your neck of the woods!

Enjoy,

-Giovanina