Classic Gazpacho from Gourmet - 1964

I suppose this recipe can be considered "vintage."  It must have come from the first Gourmet I ever encountered.   I've been making it since the early days of marriage, or at least since a blender entered our happy home.  Assume a food processor would work this as well. 

This is a great recipe for August, when the garden is bursting with cukes, tomatoes, and parsley.  Maybe you grow peppers, too, in which case you almost have a free meal. 

Gazpacho

In the container of a blender, combine 5 very ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped, 1 cucumber, peeled and chopped, 1 green (or red, orange or yellow) pepper, seeded and chopped, 1 onion, chopped, 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley, and 1 garlic clove, crushed.

Cover the container and blend the mixture until it is almost smooth. Stir in 1 1/4 cups tomatoes juice, 3 T. olive oil, 1 T. vinegar, 1/4 t. paprika, and salt and pepper to taste.  Chill the soup thoroughly.

Serve the gazpacho in individual, chilled soup bowls.  You may serve diced tomato, peppers, cukes, etc. all peeled and seeded as above.  Homemade croutons are also a nice accompaniment.

Last fall when we were in Spain we ate Gazpacho for lunch every day and never encountered the same recipe twice.  Always different, always good.  And we didn't gain any weight due to the light lunch and all the walking.  Seville's was best in my opinion.

We're serving a thin-sliced Polish ham with ripe melon (99 cents at our supermarket) and eggplant salad.  It's easy to eat healthy in the summer.

Bon Appetit! 

The Cheeseparer

Photos to follow!

Going Bananas

We were gifted probably the world's worst banana bread this week, and I fed it to the little herd of Scottish Highland Cattle who are very big on that kind of food.  This banana bread looked all right, but it had no taste of bananas, it was dry, and there were weird "off" flavors of cinnamon and who-knows-what.

People, banana bread is a slam-dunk, and I am here to provide you the World's Best Recipe, bar none, and probably the world's simplest.  The recipe was given to me years ago when I had a baby and we lived in an apartment in Elk Grove Village, Illinois.  Right under the O'hare Airport instrument runway and across from United Airlines Flight Attendant Training Facility.  The Elk and their grove were down the road and there was a pump where you could fill you own water bottles

  Nita’s Banana Bread

1 cup sugar
½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened
pinch salt
2 eggs, beaten
3 ripe mashed bananas
3 Tablespoons sour milk, buttermilk, plain yogurt or sour cream
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups white flour

Cream butter, add sugar, mix well and add bananas.  Mix salt, flour and baking soda and add to banana mixture alternating with sour milk.  Mix together lightly.  Pour into a 9 x 5  inch greased loaf pan.  (Non stick is great!)
Bake in slowish (325 degrees Fahrenheit) for 45-60 minutes, until tested inserted in middle comes out clean.   Cool on rack and remove bread from pan.  Eat and enjoy.
A handful of blueberries or raisins may be added after dry ingredients.


Please don't do anything dumb like substitute margarine or oil  for butter or only use 2 instead of 3 bananas, or you will not longer be baking the world's best, and in fact you may be baking the world's most ordinary.  Just a friendly word of caution.  And for God's sake, don't substitute applesauce for the butter or anything culinarily criminal like that.  Or we can no longer be friends.

The Cheeseparer