Tomato on toasted bun with basil

Homemade hamburger bun made earlier. Not used for one of two  hamburgers, so, toasted here. 

Regular bland Philadelphia cream cheese instead of butter. Maybe goat cheese would be better.

I do not know what to do about tomatoes this time of year. They sure are pretty but utterly banal, nearly mealy. They contribute nothing. 

Earlier I put old hard dried raisins in a pot of beans with Swiss chard. The liquid revived the raisins that I almost threw away. I'm thinking sun-dried tomatoes can be similarly revived, and perhaps chopped up and used as substitute with more flavor than sad tasteless hothouse tomatoes. I do not care so much for tinned tomatoes. They are okay for soups and stews when added near the end so that they do not dissolve completely. I don't know. It's a problem.

The basil is from the Aerogarden that is only just started. All the plants are quite young, the mint slowest of all to start. But basil grows faster than anything else. Two stalks came up and now both have already been trimmed to encourage them to bush out and to allow the rest of the plants time to catch up. The light is still at its lowest position for the benefit of the slower growing plants. The Aerogarden is coming along nicely. 

Peach, basil, spaghetti, shrimp, pean salad

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/8 cup rice vinegar

1/8 cup honey

1/4 cup peanut butter

* chile flakes

* garlic

* ginger

* black pepper

* fish sauce

* sesame oil

* black pepper

The idea was to combine peaches and avocado but I forgot the avocado.

The second idea was to use more basil than lettuce along with something else like cilantro. Mint would work too. 

The third idea is cold noodles marinated in Asian dressing.

Basil grown from seeds

Transplanted today.

The Aerogarden helped, its lights and its timer, but not its basin nor its pump.

The plants are sprinkled throughout the balcony planters mixed among common annual flowers. So common the whole thing is fitted out with plants from Home Depot.  

Pork and rice omelet

Basil from the heroic three month old grocery store plant shown here.

Pork chile shown earlier here and many more times since.

Masa cooked earlier for tamale eggrolls here.

Rice and peas as a side for a steak earlier here and a few times since.

Grated Italian cheese from  ...  the store, silly.

Two eggs from the cloacae of two separate female chickens but I'm trying not to visualize that, darn it, just did. 

Angel hair pasta, tomato, basil, sausage

I signaled the nearby waiter and he slid over to my side and then leaned downward so that his face broke into the personal space of my own face and I whispered directly into his ear so that the woman sitting at the nearby table would not accidentally overhear,  

"If I may ask, what did that woman over there order?" 

The waiter stood back up erect, looked at the woman, looked at her bowl and looking back directly at me but without bending down he said, 

-pause-

"Oh, she's having the Capellini Pomadoro. That would be angel hair pasta. Yeah, it's got tomato, basil, and shaved Parmigiano."

Cringe.

Busted. The woman looked up. She recognized her lunch being described. I grinned and waved acknowledging the bust. You know, from where I was sitting at the time it looked to me like Pad Thai. So now I'm wondering what's up with the chopsticks, Lady. But then I knew why I would have passed it up when scanning the place's chalkboard menu back there. It's the sort of thing I do myself. And now that I know she ordered something I regarded as too simple to bother I lost interest and wished I hadn't asked. 

This here is more of the 20% fat ground beef flavored with things that could go in a sausage. That's all. Pasta water is carried over to the sizzling pan, its starches interact with the beef fat which along with a little rice vinegar forms a thin flavorful sauce. Then fresh tomato, basil, and hard cheese tossed in at the end. So those last things are not actually cooked, just warmed through. Carryover heat melts the hard cheese which thickens the sauce.

I am so happy to have some fresh herbs around here. This bunch said 'grown hydroponically' and came with its own little patch of dirt. That did not make sense completely, its rootball is tight, squarish, and quite dirty. So I gave it some hydroponic fertilizer for plants in their vegetative growth stage. I also gave it a hydroponic light to extend its life and so that I could watch it and appreciate the greenery like a regular plant. These leaves were picked off that. 

Hamburger, blue cheese, basil and mint, buns

Are these gigantic photos overkill? La la la. 

Here are the buns wot bin made at home.

Top round steaks, rather large, ground earlier here then seasoned and frozen.

The hieroglyphic means "h-t-p"  + "t" +"p", a bit of redundancy there. It depicts a loaf of bread set upright on an offering mat, its sound value is "hotep," some say "hetep," and that means "satisfied." It is an important sign that one sees a lot in names, usually as in,  "[some god] is satisfied," Ra Hotep, Amun Hotep, Aten Hotep, etc.

Balcony pepper and basil

Rice and beans

With banana, garden tomato, and balcony basil.

Tomato

Spinach spaghetti with basil

The spinach is inside the noodles.