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An important part of this dish is the texture: it should be smooth, almost like a gravy. So to that end, we’re going to do something a little special and actually blend this chopped onion into a fine pulp. Onions contain a fair amount of water, so you ought to be able to do this in a regular blender if you want.

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Next, pour the onion puree into a large, deep pan and start sauteeing it gently. You can add a little oil if you want, but you may find it’s not necessary since we’ve gone and released all the liquid from the onion already. Incidentally, this trick will work for a wide variety of dishes if your kids don’t like onions.

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Add in one Tablespoon of minced ginger…

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1/4 teaspoon of cumin…

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and 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon.

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While your onion paste is cooking, chop up 2 medium tomatoes, then dump the whole cutting board’s worth into the pan, seeds and all.

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Turn the heat up a bit and stir frequently for 10-15 minutes. The goal is for the tomatoes to disintegrate completely. Also toss in 1 teaspoon of McCormick garam masala when you get a second. Don’t be thrown off by the foreign name; it’s a common spice blend and you’ll easily find it in your grocery store. But like all blends, cheapo-brands may try to cut it with plain flour, so be careful. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

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Stirring, stirring, stirring. This is a good cooking task to let a kid help out with, because it’s so shallow they’ll have a really hard time sloshing any over the side of the pan.

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Okay, we got the “Indian” part, now for the “Kidney Bean” part. You can use two cans of drained and rinsed beans, or go all out and cook your own (starting with 2 cups of dry beans.) If you use canned, double-check that they contain nothing but beans, water, and salt. Most brands are going to be plain like this, but every once in awhile you’ll find one that includes “natural flavors,” or unidentified seasonings… all sorts of potentially-glutenous crap. Why? Beats me. Just sell us beans, for Pete’s sake.

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Finally, add in roughly 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Canned beans will already have a certain amount of salt added, so go with your tastebuds on this one. It’s a very rough estimate.

You can serve this as a main dish with rice as is traditional, or make it a fantastic side. It’s especially good as a pot luck dish, if you ever find yourself attending that sort of thing.

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Happy Eating!

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Indian Kidney Beans (Rajma)

1 onion
1 Tbs minced ginger
1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp McCormick garam masala
2 tomatoes
2 cans (about 4 cups) cooked kidney beans
1/2 tsp salt

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In my defense, I do call it Tomato Carbonara to help avoid confusion. So it should not surprise you to learn that there are, in fact, tomatoes in the recipe. 4 small-to-medium ones, to be precise.

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Quarter the tomatoes and throw them in a blender. You do want to slice off the little stem bit at the top, but the rest should go in, seeds and all.

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Chop up three or four big leaves of real basil, and add 2 cloves of minced garlic.

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1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 Tablespoon of olive oil, and you’re ready to blend! Don’t forget to put the lid on.

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Now me, I like to do this part ahead of time, and save it in the fridge until I’m ready. It makes my last-minute dinners that much more triumphant. But there’s no reason you have to do that. If you’re going to use your sauce right away though, you should be more efficient and get the bacon cooking before you work on the sauce.

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Take a pair of kitchen shears and cut cross-wise several times over a whole package of Hormel Natural Choice bacon. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!] The pieces will separate as it cooks, and now there’s no need to wash a cutting board. Notice that it’s a deep pan, so it can hold everything else once the bacon’s done.

Of course “done” is a very subjective term when it comes to bacon. I like mine pretty soft, while others like it burnt to a crisp. I’ll leave the negotiations in your family up to you.

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At any rate, once it’s reached the state you desire it to be in, just dump in your tomato sauce and 12 ounces of cooked gluten-free noodles (pasta shape negotiations are, again, up to you.) These King Soba brand, if you’re curious.

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Let it simmer a bit until everything’s warmed through. If you want to make your dish taste like something gourmet rather than gussied-up marinara sauce, add 1-2 Tablespoons of white cooking wine. I usually serve the kids first, and then add this to the pot for the adults at the meal. For one thing, the kids don’t appreciate the flavor, and for another, you have to boil something for a good 20 minutes if you want the majority of the alcohol content to be cooked away, and the whole point of this meal is it’s not supposed to take that long.

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Happy Eating!

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Tomato Carbonara Pasta

4 medium tomatoes
3-4 leaves fresh basil
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp salt
1 TBS olive oil
1 pkg Hormel Natural Choice bacon
12 oz. gluten free pasta
1-2 TBS white cooking wine (optional)

Anyway, my nightly cooking has reflected this uncontained chaos, and the truth is I haven’t been cooking much at all, let alone trying to experiment with new recipes. On the other hand, I was forced to be a little more creative most nights given my lack of time, and did actually manage to throw together something that turned out unexpectedly great.

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First, start grilling two chicken breasts in a pan with a little olive oil. Make sure you are looking at something more important when you season them, so you waste a bunch of salt and pepper in the pan like I did. Don’t be nervous about seasoning without measurements, it’s only salt and pepper. Just make it look like the picture does.

Resist the urge to turn them too early; you want the cooked part to be crawling more than halfway up the sides, and the underside to be good and browned before you flip them over.

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Meanwhile, start boiling about 4-8 ounces of gluten-free pasta. Given the color I’d say mine was at least partially corn-based, but the truth is I have no idea what brand this was.

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After it’s cooked and drained, drizzle 2 Tablespoons of olive oil in and stir well. I’d blame the steam for the blurry photo, but really it was just my unsteady hands.

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Now then: lazy secret ingredient number one. This is a random jar I found near the spaghetti sauces in my grocery store. It’s basically chopped up artichokes, garlic, oil, and salt. I think it’s supposed to get dolloped onto little toasty rounds of bruschetta at a fancy dinner party or something. But instead, I scooped about 1/2 cup of it directly into my pasta. I bet your store has something similar. Of course you should always be extra careful to check the label on any unfamiliar foods you buy.

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And lazy secret ingredient number two, a pre-made pico de gallo, which you may remember seeing before. I’m nothing if not consistent. Adding in the mango bits is a local thing, but if you’re too far north of the border to get anything remotely like this, you could always make your own. It’s literally just one red onion, one tomato, one small jalapeno, (one mango,) and a little cilantro, diced finely. I think I probably dumped in about a cup. I was not measuring this evening, believe me.

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Around this time your chicken breasts should be close to being done.

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Cut them into slices, lay them neatly across your bowls of pasta, and you might even get away with looking like you put some effort into this.

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Happy Eating!

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The GFCF Lady’s Artichoke Pasta

2 chicken breasts
salt and pepper
4 ounces gluten-free pasta
2 TBS olive oil
1/2 cup diced artichoke mix
1 cup pico de gallo

The author’s pretty proud of herself, even going so far as to name and patent her “new cooking method.” Who knew that all those frontier settlers using their dutch ovens in the 1800s were guilty of copyright infringement? Anyway, even if her “revolutionary” method is nothing particularly new, it’s still a great collection of very easy recipes, and the vast majority of them happen to be GFCF, or are very easily modified. (Who cooks hulled barley, anyway? Just substitute rice.)

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This is a variation on a recipe in the book called Cajun Fish, which turned out so delicious that it made me rethink my position on sweet potatoes — which prior to this meal had been, at best, indifference. First, peel and cube one sweet potato, and layer it in the bottom of your greased dutch oven.

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This recipe introduced me to another new experience as well: eating whole cooked cloves of garlic. Not for the weak of heart (or kids, for that matter,) but they’re easy to remove after cooking if you want to. I really do recommend trying it at least once though. You might be amazed like I was. Either way, just snip the ends and peel about 6-8 whole cloves of garlic, and toss them on top of the sweet potato pieces.

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Lay 1-2 pounds of fish filets over the garlic, and sprinkle them liberally with McCormick cajun seasoning blend. Do be aware that other brands of seasoning blends might contain gluten as an anti-caking agent, so you can’t just pick one willy-nilly. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning, so always check your labels!]

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Next, cut two roma tomatoes into quarters.

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You can cut the little stem connections off, but leave the insides and seeds, because that moisture is going to add to the steaming factor inside the pot.

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Layer about 1 cup of frozen green beans over the fish, then place the tomato quarters face down on top. Cover with the lid and cook in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes.

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I wish I could do the texture of these sweet potatoes justice with my description here. They are soft, yet not mushy; savory, but still retaining a little of their natural sweetness… and most amazingly, they are completely and totally smooth, not a single string to be found. It’s really quite amazing. Oh, and the rest of the meal’s pretty darn tasty, too.

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Happy Eating!

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Cajun Fish

1 sweet potato
6-8 whole cloves garlic
1-2 pounds fish filets
1 Tbs McCormick Cajun seasoning blend
1 cup frozen green beans
2 roma tomatoes

Guess what, y’all? Today is this website’s one-year anniversary. Happy birthday to us! To celebrate, I’m going to have a little giveaway. All you need to do is post a comment below, telling me what kind of recipes you want to see more of in the future: maybe it’s dinners, or desserts, or maybe you’ve just got a pile of rutabaga sitting in your kitchen and you need a good GFCF recipe to use it in — you tell me!

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I’ll draw one post number at random to receive this Cuisinart immersion blender, in the winner’s choice of white or chrome. This handy little tool is truly indispensable in my kitchen, and I use it to make smoothies, soups, and most especially, to puree veggies to an absolutely smooth consistency so I can hide them in a variety of places in my children’s diet. I want to share my blending joy with you, so post your comment below, and then make sure to check back to see if you won! The contest ends at 9 PM Central Time (US) one week from today, on May 2nd, 2010.

And just to get your imagination working on what amazing things you’ll be able to do with your new immersion blender, here’s one way you can use it!

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The key to chicken and garlic soup is neither the chicken, nor the garlic. Well, the garlic is pretty important. But the key for us is the mirepoix, which is just a fancy French word for starting a soup with a base of common aromatic vegetables. Of course 18th-century French children didn’t get the modern advantage of having their veggies turned into pureed ninjas, they just had to suffer.

In this case, I’m using zucchini, onion, and celery, but the more traditionally-used carrots will also be coming in a minute. Right now that’s one peeled zucchini, four stalks of celery, and one onion, sauteeing slowly in a little olive oil. Plus 2 cloves of minced garlic there in the middle.

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Meanwhile, heat 6 cups of gluten-free chicken broth (Pacific Foods is one safe brand, or you could always make your own) in a giant soup pot, and submerge 3 whole chicken breasts to start cooking. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

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Dump in one chopped carrot, and an 8-ounce container of sliced mushrooms. Now, I throw these big pieces in because my kids don’t care about carrots or mushrooms. But if yours do, just put them in the sautee pan with the other veggies instead, and it’ll be our secret.

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Add 1 Tablespoon (or roughly 6 cloves) of minced garlic to the soup pot…

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1/2 teaspoon of pepper…

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And 1 teaspoon of celery salt. Since this is technically a spice blend, there’s a chance some off-brands will add a gluten ingredient to keep the grains from sticking to each other. McCormick spices aren’t all gluten-free, but they have committed to always disclosing any source of gluten on their labels, so we can check that this one is safe.

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Once your sauteed veggies are nice and soft, probably a good 15 minutes on medium-low heat, spoon them into your blending container, keeping in mind that you may have to do multiple batches.

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You’ll need to steal a couple of scoops of liquid from the pot to make it blendable. Be careful not to burn yourself like I did, unless you like wearing bandaids. (Actually, as a kid I loved the smell of Curad plastic bandaids. How weird is that?)

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Immerse your immersion blender, and fire away!

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If I’d sauteed the carrots and mushrooms instead of dumping them in whole, this concoction would be a lot more brownish-orange instead of light green. Feel free to switch up the vegetables to your liking, or put in two or three times as many to beef up the nutrition content, it’s not really going to make much difference: it’ll still taste like chicken and garlic soup in the end.

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Eventually your chicken breasts should be cooked all the way through, at which point you can drag them out with a pair of tongs, dice them up, and throw the pieces right back into the pot.

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I also like to add in a drained can of diced tomatoes. (This is one of those foods that should have nothing but tomatoes and maybe a little salt listed on the label, by the way. Don’t even bother with anything else.) The tomatoes are just kind of a nice addition, though, not a dealbreaker, so if you’re not a fan of tomato chunks in your soup, then by all means, skip it.

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Near the end, add in about 1/2 teaspoon of sage, and 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt. If your soup has been simmering for such a long time that the broth has become more concentrated, you may need to adjust these spices downward a bit. Or alternately, you could add a little more chicken broth to thin it out. When it comes down to it, as long as the chicken meat is cooked, you can simmer for as little or as long as you like. I like to get it going in the late afternoon and then just let it hang out on the stove until I’m ready to serve dinner. Much easier than trying to tie everything together at the last moment before eating.

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Those are Boulder Canyon rice & adzuki bean chips that I’m enjoying with this delectable bowl of soup, by the way. They may claim to be “natural salt” flavor, but they have a definite kick to them. My kids still like them, but my kids like salsa too, so keep that in mind.

Don’t forget to post a comment to enter the giveaway!

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Happy Eating!

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Chicken & Garlic Soup

1 medium onion
4 stalks celery
1 small zucchini
2 cloves minced garlic
1 carrot
8 oz. sliced mushrooms

6 cups Pacific Foods chicken broth
3 chicken breasts
6 cloves minced garlic
1 can diced tomatoes (drained)
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp McCormick celery salt
1/2 tsp sage
1/2 tsp salt

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Thankfully, I have this thing called the grocery store that keeps me stocked up year round. I like to use about 10-12 roma tomatoes for this recipe because they’re firmer, but you could use a smaller number of larger tomatoes if you wanted. Cut them in half and scoop out the insides with a knife, spoon, thumb, or whatever you have available.

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Lay them out on a kitchen towel and sprinkle the insides liberally with salt. This will help draw the moisture out a bit.

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Then turn them upside down on the towel so they can drain. Sure, you’ll have to wash the towel after this, but I’m such a messy chef that I have to break out a fresh kitchen towel almost every night anyway.

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While the tomatoes drain, mix up your filling. Start with 1 container of coconut milk yogurt, and add 1 teaspoon of basil, 1 teaspoon of parsley, and 1 teaspoon (or 2 cloves) of minced garlic.

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No need to use a separate bowl, just mix it all right there in the container.

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Turn your tomatoes onto a baking sheet with parchment paper, and liberally brush the herb yogurt mixture into your little canoes. We’re not looking to fill them all the way, because the end result would be extremely messy. Just a thick coating should be good.

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Now crush up about a cup of Rice Chex. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change recipes without warning. Always check your labels!] I used to do this in a ziplock bag, but my bags always got little holes poked in them as I was crushing and then chex dust would leak everywhere. It works much better to just gently punch it in the bowl with your hand.

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If you’re serving these to guests, you might want to be more diligent in your crushing so they don’t necessarily know your bread crumbs are really Rice Chex. But I’ve got nothing to hide.

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Once they’ve all got a good crumb coating, give each tomato a very quick drizzle of olive oil. But be quick about it — I hesitated on this one trying to get the action shot with my camera, and it ended up with too much olive oil. You want less than what’s in the picture.

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Then just pop the tray in a 400 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes. The end result can be served several to a plate as a side dish, or individually as appetizers. Not that we ever deal with that sort of thing around here, but maybe some of you still have a social life that involves entertaining non-relatives in your house. But if not, don’t worry, these things will still disappear from your kitchen like ninjas, even if you’re the only one eating them.

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Happy Eating!

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The GFCF Lady’s Roasted Tomatoes

10-12 roma tomatoes
1 container So Delicious coconut yogurt
1 tsp basil
1 tsp parsley
1 tsp minced garlic
1 cup Rice Chex
olive oil

I know you already know how to assemble your basic GFCF taco, so really this is about the preparation of the fish. Step one is to rinse the slime off your fish filets. Always rinse your fish — for one thing, it’ll help any seasonings or marinades absorb better, and for another, you won’t be eating slime.

Make sure you pat them completely dry with paper towels on all sides. Then slice them into decent-sized chunks for tacos. At this point, of course, you could roll them in GF breading and make fish sticks, but we’ll save that for another time.

Melt 2 Tablespoons of Fleischmann’s Unsalted (not Original) Margarine, then mix in 1/4 teaspoon of cumin…

…And 1/8 teaspoon of garlic powder. None of the appropriately-sized measuring spoons were clean, so I improvised. I don’t have it in me to run the dishwasher more than once a day, or do dishes by hand just because we don’t have any more. If this means I’m serving something like hamburgers in bowls, so be it.

Lay your fish pieces in a greased baking dish, and brush the garlic butter liberally over the tops. Then bake in a 450 degree oven for only about 4-7 minutes, until the fish is flaking apart easily when you poke at it with a fork.

And the rest is just dressing. Or fixins, as we say down here. Corn tortilla, rice tortilla, salsa, guacamole, beans, whatever you fancy. Your fish is ready for it, bring it on!

Happy Eating!

Fish Tacos

2 fish filets
2 Tbs Fleischmann’s Unsalted Margarine (not Original)
1/4 tsp cumin
1/8 tsp garlic
Toppings as desired

Granted, plain white potatoes are not really that nutritious in the grand scheme of things, but they can be an excellent vehicle for a wide variety of toppings. Like a lot of meals, they aren’t traditionally GFCF, what with all the butter and cheese and sour cream, but who wants to be traditional anyhow? A little creativity goes a long way.

But before we can revel in our topping choices, we have to get our potato into a baked state of mind. First, jab it liberally on all sides with a fork. (If you don’t, you will have yourself an exploding potato instead.)

Then wrap it loosely in a paper towel, and microwave it for 4 and a half minutes. Now, this is important: take it out of the microwave and let it sit for another 5 minutes. It will continue to cook as it rests, so that by the end the middle will be perfectly cooked without the outside being overdone.

If you are making several potatoes instead of just one or two, you may want to do it the slow but simultaneous way, which is to put all of them in a 350 degree oven for one hour. Of course you don’t want to put a paper towel in the oven, but the fork-jabbing step is still quite necessary, believe me.

Now, on to the toppings! Today I decided I was going to go with kind of a modified version of a BLT, because I had some leftover bacon in the refrigerator. “Leftover” is a bit disingenuous, actually, since it’s always part of my plan when I make bacon to cook a few extra slices so I’ll have some ready to use in a salad or whatever later in the week. See here for a description of how I make bacon in the oven with zero effort and very little mess. Unfortunately, this wasn’t destined to be a true BLT, because I didn’t have any lettuce, and I wasn’t convinced the texture would be that good on the potato anyway.

But I did include what I consider to be a vital part of a BLT, and that’s chipotle mayo! The chiles in Sriracha (also sometimes known as Rooster Sauce) are not truly chipotles, but they get the point across. You could mix in real chipotles in adobo, or even dried chipotle spice or chili powder, whatever you have on hand. The proportions are a little fuzzy; start with 1 teaspoon of spicy stuff in 2-3 Tablespoons of mayonnaise, and go from there. Not all mayonnaises are gluten-free, but Hellman’s actually prints it right on the label for us, isn’t that nice of them? [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!] And, if you mix it up in one of these tiny single-serving disposable tupperware things, then you can just pop a lid on whatever you don’t use and save it for a sandwich or GF tortilla wrap later in the week. Efficiency is your friend!

And here we have my completed Bacon-Tomato-Chipotle-Mayo potato. (Read that out loud once or twice, it’s fun.) I was really wishing for some fresh green onions to go with it as well, but my empty refrigerator mocked me in this regard. But what’s important to understand is that anything, absolutely anything, can go on a baked potato. Meats, beans, veggies, GFCF dressings, guacamole… If you’re not up for baking gluten-free hamburger buns, for example, you could just fill a baked potato with ground beef and hamburger fixings. Or rather than always buying the expensive gluten-free pastas, you could fill one with chicken and spaghetti sauce. Why, just a few days ago I even made one with Thanksgiving leftovers:

That’s turkey, cranberry sauce, and some extra deviled egg filling I still had hanging around after I’d already filled all my egg halves to overflowing.  This was one of my favorite baked potato combinations I’ve ever eaten, and believe me, I’ve made a lot.

Happy Eating!

First, start with one onion and one shallot. A shallot is like the unholy love child of onion and garlic, so I like to think of this as a little mother-and-son family portrait. Well, if you pretend the knife isn’t there I guess. That does make it kind of weird.

Chop them up and start to sautee them with some olive oil, in the bottom of whatever passes for a giant soup pot in your kitchen.

While those cook, it’s time to prep the tomatoes. You’re going to want about 15 to 18 standard-sized hothouse tomatoes. You could also use roma tomatoes, but you’d probably want to toss in some extras to make up for the size difference. First, cut the tops off, then cut them into fourths. You may notice I messed up and forgot to cut the top off this one first, but the picture came out so nicely I decided to use it anyway.

Now, stand them on their flat side, and run the knife through in a C-shape to remove the inner guts. It’s a lot of cuts, but it goes pretty fast this way. If your tomatoes are super ripe, you won’t even need the knife, you can just swipe your thumb through and it’ll come right out.

Also roughly chop up about six to ten leaves of fresh basil.

When the onions are translucent, dump in all the tomatoes and the basil, and add 4 cups of gluten-free chicken broth. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

Bring to a boil, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Now whip out your immersion blender, and start pureeing everything in sight. Would it be possible to transfer portions of this to a regular blender and do it that way? Maybe, but I’m pretty sure you’d be left with big chunks of tomato and basil in there. At the very least, you would probably want to peel the tomatoes before cooking them if you’re going to do it that way. (You would do that by plunging them into rapidly boiling water for about a minute, after which the skins should slide right off and you can add them to the soup pot for simmering.) But it’s a wasted effort if you’re using the immersion blender, because those things can pulverize everything you throw at them.

Now add 2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar. Real balsamic vinegar ought to be gluten free, but it’s always a good idea to double check. Make sure it’s not really just “flavored” vinegar, and it doesn’t have the word “malt” anywhere in it.

Then add one cup of almond milk. It will probably need about 1/2 teaspoon of salt as well, but that will depend on how salty your brand of chicken broth is, so you may need to adjust that measurement a bit.

I’ve already expressed my feelings on fake cheeses, but if your kids like them, by all means, bust out the gluten-free bread and make it a classic grilled cheese and tomato soup meal. I like it with these slightly spicy Rice & Adzuki Bean chips, personally.

Happy Eating!

Tomato Basil Soup

1 onion
1 shallot
15-18 whole tomatoes
4 cups GF chicken broth
6-10 leaves fresh basil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 cup almond milk

I know you’re not supposed to wash mushrooms directly in water, but the whole rubbing-with-a-wet-rag thing just doesn’t get them clean in my experience. Plus it takes way more work, and who wants that? I just make sure I rinse them really fast, so there’s no chance for the little guys to absorb any water.

I like using whole mushrooms and quartering them, but you could buy sliced ones if you’d rather. I’m just too lazy to stab half a dozen mushroom pieces onto my fork with each bite, is what it really boils down to.

That’s 8 ounces of mushrooms in my pan, by the way (just one of those standard pint containers.) Start sauteeing them with a good amount of olive oil, maybe 2 Tablespoons. Don’t worry if the pan is a little overcrowded, because they’re going to shrink a lot.

Meanwhile, prepare the marinade in a little side cup. Mix up 1 Tablespoon of balsamic vinegar with 1 teaspoon of Grey Poupon dijon mustard. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change their formulas without warning. Always check your labels!] I’m a huge fan of Grey Poupon, in case you couldn’t tell. Sure, they had dumb ads in the 80s, but they had a point: the taste really is superior to those bourgeoisie brown mustards.

It’s also a good time to mention that while most vinegars in general are gluten-free, the one kind that is not safe is malt vinegar, because it’s made with barley. (Balsamic vinegar is made with grapes, rice vinegar is made with rice, etc.) If the word “malt” is ever anywhere in an ingredient list, it isn’t safe unless it specifies that it is corn malt (which is uncommon.)

When the mushrooms are done, just pour in the marinade and continue to cook for another minute or two so it can thicken.

And that’s it! These things have the perfect amount of tang to them, my kids love them. The flavor goes especially well with fresh tomatoes, by the way. If you want to be really fancy you could even cut off the tomato tops and scoop out the insides with a spoon to make a little tomato bowl for the mushrooms. But crudely dicing them up and tossing them haphazardly on the plate works too.

Happy Eating!

Sauteed Mushrooms

8 oz. mushrooms
1 TBS balsamic vinegar
1 tsp grey poupon
diced tomato (optional)