How to eat for a week....

On two boxes of grape tomatoes, and a hunk of cheap mozzarella

You may have noticed that I haven't yet posted my supposedly fabulous recipe for vegetarian kibbeh. Yeah, it needs a little work. The end result was a delicate touch of parsley and mushroom sauté [actually leftover filling from stuffed mushrooms] sandwiched between two think layers of a gummy, grey mass. My lousy rendition of kibbeh used barley couscous mashed with a potato and half a jar of cumin and coriander each, to make it taste like something. Whole-grain barley couscous was not a hit at my dad's store, and as such, I have about 15 boxes on my shelf. As much as I wanted couscous and bulgar to be the same thing, they clearly are not.

My kibbeh was...heavy. I ate it, of course, but it wasn't very good.

And then there was "fun with indoor grilling" adventure I had last week. Thinking that I could fashion my own inexpensive grill pan by placing the teensy rack from our toaster oven directly on our gas stove gives me points for ingenuity, but I was not winning any cooking contests. I brushed corn on the cob and red peppers with a spicy yogurt based marinade and chard them until they were black. And they tasted, well, burnt. And chewy. And boring. My roomates were also not thrilled that I f-ed up the toaster oven rack, and it took a full week until the kitchen was restored to full usability.

It was time, I decided, to do something simple. There are whole books written about how to cook with three ingredients and a drizzle of olive oil. As fun as it is to invent new combinations of flavors and textures, its important to honor the old standbys, the tried and trues. And so, here is one weeks worth of tomato basil ideas, all of which were fabulous and satisfying.

For all of these, I used quality Lebanese olive oil and generous sprinklings of course sea salt. Good olive oil is key. If you wouldn't take a shot of it straight, its probably not worth your time.

Monday: Tomato Basil Mozzarella Salad
Ann took the reigns on this one, diced the tomatoes and mozzarella, and chopped the heck outta some basil. It was almost as fine as being run through the food processor. My original vision was a chunkier salad, but this turned out to be really great, almost like a salsa that you can eat on its own, or spooned on a cracker.

Tuesday: Tomato Basil Sandwich
Just like it sounds, with a smear of mayo and some salt and pepper.

Wednesday: Tomato Basil Omelet
What a little light cream can do. I wisked 3 eggs with about 2 tbsp light cream and my eggs were rich and fluffy. I considered sauteeing the filling before I put it in the omelet, but I decided on putting them in fresh instead. It was a good choice-the tomatoes were tender in the omelet, but still had some shape and the basil was fragrant and pungent.

Thursday: Bruschetta
On rosemary bread,and diced tomatoes again, but I just tore the basil and sliced the mozzarella because I was short on time. The key with this was to drizzle the bread with olive oil before and after adding the tomatoes and basil and sticking it under the broiler until the cheese melted and the bread got crispy. Oh my, was it a treat.

Friday: Tomato Basil Pasta

Olive oil. Salt. Spaghetti. Thats it!

Saturday: Tomato Basil Couscous
I used fresh tomatoes, but it would be particularly tasty with sundried tomatoes.

Sunday: Stuffed Tomatoes
The last of my basil will get mixed with breadcrumbs and cilantro and set stuffed into the hollowed out shell of a tomato. Recipe to follow [provided that all goes well].

Cannelloni bean salad with roasted garlic and thyme

Thank you, Progresso, for putting your wide variety of beans and soups on super-sale at the Supreme grocery in West Philly. Without you, I may never have thought to buy two cans of white beans, because all I know about white beans I learned from my days as a server at the Olive Garden,where I had to recite the pasta y fagoli ingredients over and over again to tables of suburban housewives and there drooling, obnoxious children. In an effort to get over my food service industry hang-ups [beets, anyone?], I wanted to do up a nice Cannelloni bean salad.

I acquired two large heads of red-leaf lettuce from an event I helped to pull together two weeks ago . Because its February and not exactly salad season, and I was tossing around the idea of sauteeing it, mostly for the laughs. Lettuce? You can cook lettuce?? Oh Kate...you are such a jokester! I did find a few Chinese-inspired recipes for cooked lettuce, but couldn't bring myself to do it...all due respect my Asian friends! :)

My compromise was a warmish salad, with roasted garlic and red pepper. I have been wanting to try more roasted garlic recipes because I've never had much luck with it. Maybe its because I'm Lebanese and I like my garlic loud and proud, but it is always too subtle to be detected. This salad was still lacking a pronounced garlic flavor, and I wished I used two heads instead of one. Plus, as I scolded my sister who was dousing her bowl with garlic powder and lemon juice, not every salad has to taste like fattouch, difficult as it is for us to understand.

I braved the snow and bounced over to the Reading Terminal after work to pick up some herbs and fancy cheese. Now, as far as cooking goes, I am generally an outside-the-box kind of person. I am first in line to try foods I've never had before, and my idea of adventure sport is hiking to the store to buy fennel bulbs. But when it comes to fancy cheese, I can never bring myself to buy anything but manouri, a rich, creamy sheeps milk cheese from Greece. I know that there is a world of cheeses out there that I'm missing, but I love manouri so much I can't justify spending money on anything that isn't manouri. I only had my credit card, and there was a $10 minimum. I bought a full pound of the stuff without blinking an eye [though now I'm feeling a little guilty about it, because I really can't afford to spend $10 on cheese].

On the other hand, I had no idea that the fresh herbs at Iovines were only a dollar!! I hardly ever use fresh herbs cause I just assume they were expensive [and my dad owns a spice store. Dried herbs are never in short supply]. This is one of those discoveries that will forever change my life. I thought thyme would be nice with the beans, and a chance for my blog to live up to its name.

The salad was great, and got six thumbs up from me and my roommates, which says something because Ann doesn't like beans and Hannah doesn't like peppers.

What I wished I had done:

• less lettuce, more beans
• another head of garlic
• toasting the thyme to give it more flavor? Does anyone know if this works?

Cannelloni bean salad with roasted garlic and thyme

1 large head Red Leaf lettuce
1 large can of Cannelloni beans
2 red peppers, cut into long, meaty strips
2 heads of garlic
1/2 cup red onion
a few marinated artichokes, chopped
fresh thyme to taste
goat cheese, cut into wedges or medallions
sea salt
olive oil
lemon juice

Coat garlic heads in oil and wrap in foil. Roast in the oven at 450. Wash and chop lettuce, combine with onion, artichokes and set aside. Coat the peppers in oil and put them in the oven with the garlic. Drink some wine while you're waiting for them to roast [garlic needs about an hour, peppers need about 40 minutes]. Dip the cheese in a mixture of thyme and sea salt. Once your garlic is done, mix it with the beans and a bunch of finely chopped thyme, douse with a good amount of olive oil and lemon and pour dressed beans onto the salad. Toss well, top with cheese and roasted peppers.