Bruschetta from the Garden

For our last Girl Scout meeting I was in charge of bringing Veggies. 

All of the sweet treats had already been signed up for.
I was planning on bringing some baby carrots and ranch, but I REALLY wanted to find a way to use my fresh garden yields. 

I decided to trick them! 

bwa ha ha ha ha

I made some super fresh bruchetta. 

I was able to make a dent in our tomatoes as well as some basil. 

First things first-washed the ingredients...

next came figuring out the most efficient way to finely dice that many tomatoes....

First, I tried like my mom showed me, but that wasn't making them small enough AND it was taking too long.

So I decided to thinly slice the entire tomato. Then stack the slices and dice from there. This worked perfectly form me. 

there we go...

Time to chiffonade the basil (to avoid bruising the delicate leaves)

First you roll it up.

Then slice...

Then it was GARLIC time! Yay! 

I don't know about you, but I LOVE garlic. I add it to everything savory. If I find a really good recipe and don't see garlic on the ingredients list, I just assume they forgot to put it because garlic is so essential (I figure, the author of said recipe must have been applying the rule that "the garlic is silent:") 

This looks like a fair amount to me....

Next it was time to add a little EVOO (not much)

Then some Balsamic vinegar and a little lemon juice. 

Just a splash of each

add a little salt and pepper, mix well, and let it sit over night. 

I made S&P adjustments the next day. 

voila!

One thing I did do the next day was dump a lot of the excess liquid.

I bought some little garlic crustini toasts from Publix (literally they do all the work and it was only like $2)

This disappeared so fast! Not just by the adults, but the kids were tearin it up as well. 

Hope you try it, and like it!