A Sunday Drive...and a recipe!

This week was mostly uneventful.  We both worked a lot and decided to spend our Sunday on a drive out east along the North Shore of Long Island.  About 45 minutes east of our house, there is a lot of farm land.  We stopped today at a vegetable stand along the side of the road and bought some tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet corn, bell peppers and plum jam.  I love roadside vegetable stands, there's something really quaint about stopping to buy a local farmer's produce.  

This farm stand is gearing up for the fall season of pumpkin picking.  They already have several ready to buy.  Eastern long island reminds me more of home.  It's a lot quieter and rural.  The really nice thing about the north shore is the fact that there are about 8 or 9 wineries that you can visit and do wine tastings. We're planning a group day to the wineries soon.  Today, we stopped at the Pindar vineyards to pick up a case of wine.  Marc loves their "Mythology".  It is a meritage and very tasty.  Since we were all the way out there, we figured, why not!

We came back to the house and then went to the grocery store for the necessities.  Since we bought those lovely veggies at the farm stand, the wheels in my head were turning as to what I could create for dinner using some of the gorgeous (and sure to be tasty) vegetables we bought.  I came up with: vine ripened heirloom tomatoes stuffed with sausage, bell pepper, shallots & garlic topped with fresh mozzarella cheese, fresh corn on the cob, and grilled london broil.  It was so, so, so delicious!!!  


Those tomatoes had such depth of flavor, and the sausage stuffing was a perfect addition.  You can never go wrong with fresh mozzarella.  It might just be my kryptonite.  I'll try it on anything...I've even had it in a grilled cheese sandwich with bacon and Nutella!!!


So, since those tomatoes were so good, I thought I would include the recipe and pictures.  
First, preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
Gather 2 very large tomatoes (cut the stem and top off and remove the "guts" leaving the edge completely intact), 1 bell pepper (Dice), 2 shallots (dice), 1 clove of garlic (mince), 4 slices of fresh mozzarella cheese, 1/4 cup shredded pecorino romano cheese, 1/2 cup of bread crumbs (I used whole wheat), and 1 pound of spicy southern style sausage (jimmy dean works great).

Once the "guts" are removed from the tomato, put your sausage, shallots, garlic, and bell pepper in the skillet and cook until the sausage is done throughout.  Add the bread crumbs and mix thoroughly. 

Fill each tomato completely full with the sausage mixture, then top with the romano cheese and mozzarella cheese.

bake at 400 for 15 minutes.  When the 15 minutes were up, I turned on my broiler to brown the top of the cheese just a little bit.

It's really simple and super delicious.  Let me know if you try it and how it turns out!!

I hope y'all have a great week! I'm really happy that my razorbacks won the first game of the season and I can't wait to watch some more football!!! GO HOGS! WPS!!!


Cheers,
Kelli