Back-up Plan

It's a good thing I had a back-up plan in mind for last week, because my meal plan started to unravel before I left the grocery store.  The advertised mushrooms - the key ingredient for Mediterranean Baked Mushrooms - were not worth buying.  Thankfully, I knew we could work around it, and I didn't have to try to rethink our meals while coughing on everything in the produce aisle.

I still bought the cherry tomatoes and the spinach called for in the recipe, since I needed them for Monday's Chickpea, Tomato and Spinach Curry.  That meant we had lots of tomatoes and spinach leftover, so Wednesday's baked mushrooms became 5-Ingredient Spinach Parmesan Pasta from Two Peas & Their Pod.  We served it with a side of cherry tomatoes and dinner was done.

That took care of the spinach, but there were still tomatoes lingering in the fridge.  No worries.  I figured we could have a few on the  side with our soup and sandwich on Thursday, and then we could snack on the rest until they were gone.

Except...

By Wednesday I was feeling much better and was ready to get back in the kitchen.  I ditched Thursday's plan for defrosted soup and grilled cheese for a different soup and sandwich combo.  Broccoli soup with bacon, alfalfa sprout and cherry tomato jam sandwiches.  

I had never heard of cherry tomato jam before, but figured it had to be a thing, so I consulted Google and found this recipe from Chatelaine . I chose it because I had the ingredients on hand.  It was yummy, and jam-i-fying the tomatoes kept them from rolling off my sandwich.  The 1/4 batch I made used up most of the remaining cherry tomatoes. Bonus! It gave us enough for two sandwiches with leftovers for toast the next day.  Double bonus!

If you choose to make this, be aware that I did sub a pinch of sweet smoked paprika for the sriracha.  Also, the breezy instructions to "Cook over medium, stirring often, until saucy, 16 to 20 min." are a bit misleading.  The 16 to 20 minutes was pretty accurate, but you really need to babysit this while it is on the stove.  "Stirring often" became "stand over the stove breaking up tomatoes with your spoon as you go".  I also needed to add splashes of water from time to time to keep it from sticking.  Perhaps I should have halved the cherry tomatoes.  The recipe doesn't call for it, but there is a handy video with a neat trick for halving cherry tomatoes after the recipe.  Maybe that was a hint.  If so, I missed it.  

(*Note:  I don't get anything for the links above.  They're there for your information.  Hope you find them useful.)