Crystal Springs

Here are two of wife's paintings that was at the Crystal Springs Tomato Festival this year. The green tomatoes won honorable mention in their show. Wife found out from Ms Redneck we just missed each other at one of the vendors that we both bought goods from like the eggplant.
We ate the green tomatoes and they sure were good.

Green Tomato Casserole courtesy of Cassie

We have made this twice now since we got the recipe from Cassie's site at in Amazing Graceland to check out her site look at the side bar she has some beautiful pictures.
The first time we made it was to bring to our jam night and as we like to bring something new this fit the bill alas we did not get any pictures. This time we got some. We also peeled the tomatoes the second time to make it easier to get out out the dish.
The picture of the green tomatoes at the top is one of wife's set ups so I took a picture and thought I'd post. See what I have to put up with she steals my produce to use in her paintings.

4 thick french bread slices,torn into small pieces about 2 cups
1 teaspoon of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
4 medium green tomatoes cut into 1/4 inch slices (we pealed them the second time)
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese
1 Tablespoon butter
Preheat oven to 400. lightly grease a 1 1/2 quart casserole or deep dish pie pan
place bread in food processor and pulse to a course texture
Combine sugar, salt, and pepper in a small bowl mix well.
Arrange 1/3 of tomatoes slices in bottom of pan sprinkle 1/3 of sugar mixture
1/3 of bread crumbs and 1/3 of cheese. repeat till you have three layers, leaving of the cheese on last layer, add dots of butter on top and cover with foil.
Bake for one hour, uncover and add last 1/3 of cheese and bake uncovered for 5 minutes or till cheese melts, remove and let stand 15 minutes before serving.

Southern Fried Green Tomatoes and eggplant

We had a dish a while back of tuna and orange white beans that was not as good as we thought so we gave it a try again and much better with fresh basil and a a better orange. See the side and click on tuna to see the recipe.

No..... the star of this meal was the fried green tomatoes as they are in abundance at the farmers market we go to. We also picked up an eggplant. Our tomatoes are coming in now but we wanted them to be ripe to taste as they are new to us.

Now we have cheated as we love Zatarains fish fry and used it in our of flour and corn meal. Made it spicier. Now we do sweat our eggplant and for those who don't know that is where we slice it and sprinkle salt on both sides and let stand for about 10 minutes. We do find this takes our the bitterness.

Seafood, Fried Green Tomatoes with Remoulade Sauce

Seafood feast
We ate at a restaurant in Vicksburg that is known for their fried green tomatoes with a crab remoulade sauce. We thought they were good but of course, we thought we could do better. We like ours food a little more spicy than some so we did add a little more red pepper. In fact, we could have used more. We found another recipe that we may try later. But for now, this was very good. We used more corn meal with our tomatoes than the restaurant because that is the way we like it. We had a few spicy steamed shrimp and crawfish with corn and new potatoes.

Remoulade sauce
1/3 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons chili sauce
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1-teaspoon spicy brown or Creole mustard
2 green onions
1/8 ground red pepper.
Mix altogether cover and refrigerate.