Glorious food

I went to the Northampton farmers' market on Saturday and I got seriously the best peaches I think I have ever eaten. And the tomatoes were great too. I always either underbuy or overbuy at farmers' markets - I can never seem to accurately gauge how much vegetables I'm going to want to eat in the next few days. I guess I didn't completely underbuy this time; I still have most of a head of lettuce in the fridge, and half a cucumber, and there's another farmers' market today. But I definitely didn't buy enough tomatoes.

These weren't heirloom or anything but they were the kind of tomatoes where you cut into them and you are just startled by the rich, gorgeous color of them. And they taste... dang. I ate them in salad with a little vinaigrette, mixed some, chopped, into guacamole (perhaps a waste... I'm not sure), made salsa (so good).

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a bunch of kale that someone from work had gotten in a farmshare or something and did not want. I am not a huge fan of kale. First, I made the mistake of trying to just eat it sauteed. This is not a good way to eat kale for me, especially summer kale (winter kale can be a bit sweeter). Then I mixed some of the leftover sauteed kale into pasta with pesto and tomatoes (not the glorious tomatoes, just some pretty good tomatoes). That wasn't bad.

Then last night, I thought, you need to either use that kale or throw it away, and it might have too much oil on it to compost even. So I made a bread pudding with some bread ends I'd stuck in the freezer. It was so good, I ate the whole pie plate full (which wasn't quite as bad as it sounds... though it was still a lot of food).

Here's my recipe for bread pudding with kale:

Ingredients:
1-2 cups of cut up bread (supermarket baguettes in my case, but any bread will work)
2/3 cup of milk (would have used more but I was running low and wanted to save some for coffee)
2 eggs
2 oz or so of cheese, grated or cut into 1/4 inch dice (I used gruyere)
1 cup precooked kale, chopped into bite-sized pieces
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350.

Put the bread in a 8-inch baking dish or 9-inch pie plate.

Warm the milk (should be hot, but not boiling or burnt) and pour it over the bread. Let it soak in for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, lightly beat the eggs with the salt and pepper.

Add the eggs, cheese, and kale to the pie plate and stir until everything is pretty evenly distributed.

Pop it in the oven for about 30 minutes (or go work on adjusting your TV wall mount and forget all about it until it starts smelling delicious). When it's done it should be golden on top, and if you put a sharp-bladed knife into it it should come out fairly clean.

Chow down.