Fantabulous Food! Biergarten Tomato Salad

When my husband and I are lucky enough to go to Epcot, we always try to have dinner at The Biergarten Restaurant in Germany. It's a buffet (so you can have as much of whatever you want), and everything is completely delicious. One of my favorite foods in the buffet is tomato salad, which sounds silly since I could eat all kinds of fantastically awesome foods, but this is just that good. Imagine how happy I was to find the recipe on AllEars.Net. The original recipe is for a crazy ridiculous quantity (seriously, 25 lbs of tomatoes!), so I did a little math to convert the recipe into a more manageable amount. Since I'm the tomato lover of my family, I just like to make this with 1 lb worth of tomatoes so I can eat it all over the course of a few days before it goes bad. I could eat the whole recipe as one meal though - make it for yourself and you'll see what I mean :)

Biergarten Tomato Salad:

Ingredients:

• 1 lb plum tomatoes
• 1 tsp minced onion (1/2 tsp if using dried)
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp chopped fresh basil (1/2 tsp if using dried)
• 4 tsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• 2 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper

1. Chop up and core your tomatoes - cutting out the core is up to you, but I prefer to remove most of them to minimize excess juice.

2. Combine tomatoes with all the other ingredients. Stir until evenly incorporated. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Enjoy :) This is seriously such a simple recipe, but for a tomato lover like me it totally hits the spot. Allowing the salad to refrigerate for 30 minutes lets the vinegar soften the tomatoes a bit and lets all the flavors kind of congeal together. It's delicious!