Stylish, and Luscious food from thin air, not really but read on :). . . . .

Rainbow heirloom varieties of tomatoes

I made a delicious and simple dinner with next to nothing spent on groceries. I only had to buy lettuce, goat cheese, and walnuts at the store, maybe 10-15 dollars spent total.
If you have any meat in the freezer for a roast, like pork or beef  ( you can use chicken too ) you have your foundation ready.

Beef roast with onions after cooking

If you have Mark Bittman's " How to cook everything " you can follow his recipe for pan gravy after you have roasted your meat. I saved the fats from the pan and moved the meat to a covered glass dish on the stove. I had some potatoes boiling during the last half of roasting. I used these delicious little organic " French fingerling" potatoes that I planted this summer. I also love the small size "Russian banana" potatoes for this too.

If you have a bottle of almost finished red wine sitting around making your table top look glamorous you can use this, ( or white wine ).  I used my last cup of wine from a very good four dollar a bottle wine for the gravy. When I removed the roast from  it's liquids I added the red wine and started to to simmer it slowly on very low heat for as long as it took to reduce the fluid to it's original amount ( pre-wine added ) then added a cup of water ( or chicken stock ) and reduced this again the same way.

                                           a butter pat melting into the stock of wine and vinegar

I have discovered that I love to cook with red wine even though I don't like drinking it. There is something so seductively glamorous about the scent of red wine undulating around you as you are cooking. I love the relaxing feeling I get when I cook with it, I turn on NPR or classical music and get into my groove.

So next I added, a quarter teaspoon of salt ( or to taste ), a quarter cup of vinegar ( again to taste ) and a tablespoon of butter and reduced briefly again while the butter melted in thoroughly.Then I finished up the other prep for the salad and plates. I like this sauce more on the tart side so that the vinegar flavor is almost equal to the red wine, but you can also make it with less vinegar or wine so it's more subtle and buttery like a Coq au Vin flavor. Gravy is wonderfully easy and flexible that way.

I put aside the potatoes and covered them on the stovetop to keep warm while I prepared the salad. This salad is so easy too. I didn't do well in the garden this year with lettuce so I bought some, and some soft, mild goat cheese. I realized that I had forgotten the raspberry vinaigrette so I found the pot of strawberry preserves that I had and put about a quarter of a cup of it into a glass bowl and doused it with a liberal dash of vinegar and a little olive oil drizzle. Then I whisked it to make homemade vinaigrette. It worked fairly well. It's not quite as good as the store bottles but a more talented cook than I could probably figure out what to add so that it would be really good.

I added slivered apricots and crumbled walnuts to bowls of bite size ripped lettuce and then I crumbled on lots of  fresh chavrie (  mild, soft goat cheese ) and them drizzled on the vinaigrette. So good! Then I put the slices of roast on a plate with the potatoes mashed just a little to break open the skins, which are delicious and paper thin on these little gems, and then I spread the gravy all over the whole meal on the plate and salted to my desire. A delicious and quality meal with what's around the house!

Our crop from the farm garden this year, French fingerling potatoes,dried lemon thyme from my herb wall garden, and the Rainbow heirloom tomato variety that I tried this year from seed. This red wine is only four dollars and it works excellent in cooking!