I made a big batch of pesto on Sunday, but accidentally ground up part of my pink silicone spatula in the Cuisinart. Fortunately it was not a green spatula, and the pieces were easy to locate. The basil was from the farmer’s market, as was the cheese–absolutely delicious raw milk Trader’s Point Fleur de la Terre–and I used walnuts instead of pine nuts because the downtown Bloomingfoods doesn’t carry pine nuts. Booo! I put two Tbsp of pesto into each Saran wrap-lined cup of my muffin tin, and froze the pesto into little cakes, and put the frozen pesto cakes into some Ziploc freezer bags so I can enjoy the taste of summer basil all winter long.

Dinner tonight will come from one of my favorite cookbooks, Lindsay Bareham's Supper Won't Take Long. Sort of, anyway. It's a dish called Brown Tom; the only reference I could find to this on the internet came, coincidentally, from Martinsville, IN: the Morgan County Longrifles site informs us that "Brown Tom was the nickname given to the standard ration bread issued to the British military." Bareham's recipe is for a gratin of tomatoes, brown bread, flat leaf parsley, garlic, and onion. My onions seem to have dissolved into a goo at the bottom of my crisper drawer, so I ended up using lots of garlic instead, and I had no flat leaf parsley. Also, I ignored her advice to peel the tomatoes first.

So my Brown Tom is really pretty different, and I don't know if you can really call it the same thing. I pureed some of the white and whole wheat rolls my mom made while she was here (I've been eating them, but there sure are a lot of them) into bread crumbs, minced about four cloves of garlic, and mixed the crumbs and garlic up in a casserole dish with slices of red farmer's market tomatoes, salt, and pepper. I sprinkled some parmesan on top, drizzled the crumbs with soy sauce and olive oil, and stuck one of my pesto-cubes smack in the middle. I hope it tastes good. It seems like it should, in theory. I will find out soon.