Yesterday I went nutty with new recipes and made the scramble for breakfast and then roasted some tomatoes for lunch. I first tried these at a friend's retirement party when they were served on little toasted slices of french bread. They were amazing. So I tried to reconfigure them in a way that is more healthy and less bread-y. They are NOT as good as the little bread bites, but still pretty yummy.

Betty said that she has made them with plain old olive oil and with salad dressing so I tried both and did a head to head taste test!

Here is the ingredient centerfold:

 And they look like a friendly face, don't they?

So when I made them with dressing I used a tablespoon of Paul Newman's light balsamic. For the olive oil, I used one teaspoon. And then I jiggled the ramekins a little so that the tomatoes were all coated. Then I put them in a 350 oven not to be seen again for 35-40 minutes.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I put a teaspoon of garlic in my favorite pan. I didn't add any oil and in the end I didn't really miss it. There was a little moisture from the garlic and that was enough for the zucchini strips.

I used a potato peeler to make strips of zucchini. Since I was making a double recipe I used two cups. And I mixed the yellow and green because it looked pretty! I put in a tablespoon of water to steam them up first then took the lid off and turned up the heat a little to cook them down.

Then I split them in half because it was a double recipe.

I took the tomatoes out and I have to say that the olive oil ones were significantly prettier. And apparently pretty was very important to me when I was crafting this meal.

I put the zucchini on the bottom of the bowl and dumped the tomatoes on top so that the juice could get on the zucchini, too. I topped each serving with two tablespoons of fat free ricotta. However, I would recommend not using fat free. It was grainy and gross. It is fine as in ingredient, but regular ricotta is worth the extra calories. I used regular ricotta for the nutritional information. It is still pretty low-calorie. I ended up eating all the olive oil serving and only a couple bites of the salad dressing one.  This was fine for a light lunch but I might eat a little chicken or something with it for dinner. 

Next up, a watermelon salad that made the five feet of snow in my backyard disappear and not only that, an in-ground pool formed itself from the earth as I ate the salad. The sun shone, the birds sang, lightly oiled body builders flexed in the shallow end. But then I finished the salad and the blizzard resumed. It was beautiful for awhile, though. Stay tuned!

Betty's Roasted Tomatoes

A delicious snack reworked as an entree. You can serve it on toasted french bread like my friend Betty did rather than zucchini if you aren't avoiding carbs!

Ingredients

• 15 ml water (1 tbsp)
• 14 grape or cherry tomatoes
• 1/8 cup ricotta cheese
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 cup chopped zucchini

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Put 14 grape tomatoes (about 3/4 of a cup) in the bottom of an oven safe bowl or ramikin. If you are making multiple servings, you can use a bigger pan. 4 servings would be perfect for an 8x8 pan.
3. Drizzle 1 tsp. olive oil over the tomatoes and put them in the oven for 35-40 minutes.
4. Using a potato peeler, slice your zucchini into strips. Brown a minced garlic clove in a medium heat pan. Add 1 TBSP water and the zucchini. Cover and steam for 5-10 minutes until desired consistency.
5. When the tomatoes are done, put them on top of the zucchini in another bowl (you could add them to the tomato bowl, but you want the tomato juices to mix with the zucchini.
6. Top the tomatoes with 1/8 cup of ricotta cheese. You can use fat free, but it has a grainy quality, the extra 30 calories are totally worth it!