Rustic Roasted Garlic Tomato and Avocado Toast

Every summer when I was a kid my parents would ship me off to Hamilton, Ontario (Canada) to spend a few weeks with my grandma. I loved visiting her, but I absolutely dreaded the food that I was going to be forced to eat. She was the healthiest of the healthy. She had severe macular degeneration deeming her legally blind, but that didn’t stop her from constantly reading health related books. She bought an electronic-magnifying-glass so that she could satiate her curiosity. She knew all about the health fads we are currently observing decades ago (i.e. flax, quinoa, millet, juicing, plant based diets, dairy free diets etc.). She was curious, fearless and independent: maintaining a huge vegetable garden, greenhouse, apple orchard, apricot trees, strawberry patches and endless rows of raspberry, blueberry and blackberry bushes by herself while living (alone) on 125 acres. Needless to say, she hardly ever needed to go to the grocery store!  Looking back, I would give anything to spend a month with her on that farm. Picking her brain while picking fresh strawberries. During those summer weeks I was literally living off of the land: digging through the garden for crispy cucumbers, munching on raspberries and then picnicking in the apple orchard with all of my freshly harvested organic produce. Sounds like a dream right? But when I was 8 I didn’t realize how insanely lucky I was.  I wanted chocolate not sweet potatoes or Medjool dates. I wanted sugary cereal and milk, not millet with raisins and soy milk (all the things that I love now). There was one snack that she made that I absolutely loved and it was mashed avocado mixed with garlic on toast. Maybe that’s why I love this recipe so much! It brings me back to those summers that I wish so badly that I could re-live. And it’s just so incredibly tasty I know that I’ll be making it every weekend for years on end.

Ingredients:

12 Tomatoes (I used a mixture of brown tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and heirloom tomatoes)
1/4 cup of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
4 cloves of Garlic
2 mashed Avocados
Sea Salt and Pepper
5 slices of bread

Directions:

Heat oven to 450ºF.
Cut tomatoes in half and place face down on a baking sheet.
Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over tomatoes.
Mince garlic and sprinkle over tomatoes.
Salt the tomatoes.
Roast for 30 minutes.
To assemble: spread a generous amount of mashed avocado on toast and top with roasted tomatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste.