Since the summer vegetable season is starting to come to a close (at least the tomatoes, which are pretty much giving up!), we decided to try out some different takes on cooking with veggies this week.

First up, we made a vegetable tart for dinner on Saturday night. There wasn’t really any recipe, just what came out of our heads.

I made a whole wheat pie crust for the base of the tart. Then we spread about 1 cup of ricotta cheese (homemade from my parents’ milk!) on the crust. On top of that went thinly sliced squash, purple peppers, and onion. We decided after the fact that we could have put about twice as many vegetables into it.

We topped it with some roughly chopped Swiss Chard leaves and a parmesan cheese-herb blend. Yum!

Here’s the finished tart. It’s not quite as beautiful at this point, but it was really tasty! We were planning to put some bacon on it, but decided not to. It would have been good with the bacon too!

Our other culinary experiment this weekend was making a Chicken Tagine with Tomatoes. It’s a recipe from a North African cookbook, and it turned out pretty tasty, if a little sweet. I got delinquent with my camera, so all I have to show for it is a single picture after we have everything but the chicken in the pot.

A tagine sounds really spiffy and scary, but it is really just a stewed bunch of vegetables with braised meat. Yum!