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Posts Tagged ‘2009’

Besides cooking stuffed tomatoes, I made

tomato sauce,

stewed tomatoes,

tomato chutney,

homemade salsa, …

The weather seemed to go from summer to winter here.  The leaves just starting to turn colour, no glorious fall colours this year!.  In fact it was one of the ugliest falls that I ever recall.  We just managed to bring in three huge bags of green tomatoes that can ripen before snow fell!

A wide variety of tomatoes filled my kitchen.

bowls of a variety of tomatoes

In the spring of 2009, we were given a wide variety of tomato starting plants. 

Here is a “small” sample of the crop.

Tomatoes of 2009

funky colours of the scarlet runner bean

The lime green of the been inside the skin reminds me of a mini-dress that my girlfriend kept borrowing from me.  It was funky too.

Scarlet Runner Kidney Beans on a White Plate

Too bad necessary cooking blands the colours.  Resist the desire to present them in their colourful form.  They contain lectin and
cooking them properly is extremely important:

Raw beans should never be eaten.  Boil for a minimum of ten minutes. Even green beans, such as French or runner beans, contain a small amount of lectins and should not be eaten raw.  Do not cook in a slow cooker as the temperatures will not get high enough and can become even more toxic than in the raw form.
More info – read Curse of the lectins.

I pre-cooked them along with dried chick peas which I had presoaked (however I could have soaked them much longer)  and threw them both in the stuffing for my baked tomatoes/zucchini.

Little known fact:  The plant is a perennial with tuberous roots.  It is usually treated as an annual.