Adventures in Budget Cooking: Episode 2

So sometimes I have to eat something. Most of the time, that involves dealing with being out of the ingredients for known cohesive meals, but luckily I plan ahead for these times and stock mass quantities of staples. These staples don't look like much to the naked eye, but with my skills--and my ability to bike down to the garden for veggies--it becomes a feast.

Episode 2: Tomato and Basil and Chicken Vinaigrette a la Megan left chicken at my house.
Eaten: August 19, 2008.

There is a fantastic show on NPR called The Splendid Table. It airs Sunday afternoons in Michigan. Naturally, I am on the mailing list, and recently they sent out a recipe for a baked vinaigrette something-or-other with bread crumbs. I sat down to make this delicious meal and realized I didn't have all the ingredients I needed. This was a job for Adventures in Budget Cooking!

I gathered ...some... of the same ingredients. I had spaghetti in my pantry, along with (lucky me) a white wine vinegar that Hilary left at some point (she pretends it's accidental, but she just wants me to eat well). I mixed the vinegar with some olive oil for the vinaigrette. The previous night, Megan left some chicken at my house, and of course I had to eat it before she asked for it back. I threw on a nice cocktail of spices, which I believe included oregano, cumin, salt, and pepper. There were more, but this was a week ago. Come on people.

Then came the most important ingredients--those from the garden. I grabbed some of this nice zesty variety of basil we have growing, along with a bucketful of the literally hundreds of grape tomatoes that took over our garden this year. I keep meaning to take pictures of it to post here, but (A) I keep forgetting to take my camera with me and (B) it isn't working well, and I can only get about 3 pictures at a time and 10 per pair of batteries. The red ones in the photo are nice and sweet, and the bright orange ones are probably the best tomatoes you'll ever taste in your life. We have some tomatoes that are even smaller. We call them the pea tomatoes. Little runts. Anyway, this dish was freaking delicious, and I felt like a freaking genius afterward until I realized I stole all the ingredients from my friends and the recipe from Lynn Rossetto Kasper.