stuffed tomatoes with grilled kale and drunken fruit

As I mentioned, last Friday Nic and I were invited over to our friend's house for a BBQ. We ended up bringing veggie burgers for ourselves to grill (plus two extra in case our friends decided to take a dive and try my crazy food) and a huge bowl of fruit - but not just any bowl of fruit. More on that in a second.

The veggie burgers I made were just slightly adapted from Oh She Glows "Perfect Veggie Burger."

My modifications included:

• I did not saute the onions and garlic
• used two cups of black beans, and processed 1/2 of them in the food processor
• toasted three slices of french bread and made bread crumbs
• subbed in cilantro for the parsley

This is a great recipe and easy to put together as well. I just chopped everything in the food processor and then mix it all together (oatmeal first, 3 slices of toasted french bread, carrots, onions + garlic and half of the black beans). I baked four patties at 350* before were cooked them again on the grill. They were amazing!

So on Saturday night, after Nic and I were done working on the basement, I took some of the left over veggie burger mixture and stuffed it into three halved and de-seeded Roma tomatoes (from my garden!) and baked them at 375* for 30ish minutes.

Delicious.

We grilled a few stalks of kale that had been massaged with a bit of olive oil and rounded out the meal with some of that fruit salad I mentioned above...



The fruit salad was a hit at the BBQ on Friday, and it was nearly gone within 30 minutes of serving it (it was a HUGE bowl of fruit).

So, what is the key to get grown adults to choose a serving of fruit over another can of beer?

Champagne.

I was inspired by this recipe, but it is really just a method: take a bunch of your favorite fruit, chop into bite sized pieces, place in a large serving bowl or pitcher and cover with a bottle of champagne. Spoon into glasses and give everyone a spoon and watch them devour their daily serving of fruit.

Seriously, while one of our friends was recounting a story from their work, another friend very randomly looked over at the near empty bowl of fruit and exclaimed - I have never seen a bowl of fruit disappear so quickly!


#1 - clearly he has never been to our house were fruit disappears the day we buy it
#2 - I have got to figure out how to make a huge bowl of vegetable disappear just a quickly....vodka maybe??