The Joys of Food!

I love food and thankfully some of my random food dislikes have even dissipated as I've gotten older...maybe the only positive thing about aging. I used to never eat tomatoes and didn't even really like red sauced pastas but now I am obsessed with fresh and tasty tomatoes and love popping cherry tomatoes for a snack. I also used to very much dislike dark chocolate but now I have to be more convinced to eat milk chocolate and I keep my dark chocolate stash on my nightstand. My dislike of black olives and goat's cheese is still alive and not budging, but I'm ok with that since olives are easy to pick out of anything and goat's are just plain terrifying!

Living in Scotland meant that most of our food was most commonly organic and untampered by hormones. Now that we are in Ireland, we are extremely spoiled to have The English Market which is like a huge farmer's market with lots of local meat, produce and fish at better than grocery store prices! Of course this does mean that we have to pack our lovely food 1.25 miles back to our house, but quality food at cheap prices with a 'workout' included can't be too bad right?

With tomatoes in season in Italy and Spain hitting our grocery stores, I am doing something out of my norm and putting in a recipe I made up while having a major craving for tomato salad. It was super easy and amazing tasting! All you need is:

Fresh and tasty tomatoes
Bacon
Onions
Mushrooms
Seasonings (I used salt, pepper, dried coriander (for Americans this is cilantro), dried parsley, onion powder and garlic powder)
Olive Oil

Roughly chop up your tomatoes then season them with your salt, pepper and fresh or dried herbs. Let that sit in a bowl while you prep everything else. Cook up your bacon. I used rasher bacon but I don't remember seeing that in the States when I lived there so it probably doesn't matter. Chop up your bacon into bits and put aside. Fry your chopped onion and chopped mushrooms in olive oil; I seasoned these with pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. When they are cooked to your liking, dump everything (including bacon) into your tomato bowl and mix. Badda bing badda boom, You have amazing tomato salad! My husband and I ate this for lunch with some buttered toast but you could also have it for a side dish. It is quick, easy, and most likely you have all the ingredients already. You may notice that I don't give any quantities of your ingredients because I don't measure anything. Just do what you like and taste as you go!