Creamy Coconut Gazpacho, Vegan & Gluten-Free

I am super, super excited to say that our garden is growing so well that we have more tomatoes and cucumbers than we even know what to do with!

If you’ve been following along with me on Instagram, you’ve probably already heard me talking about the backyard garden that Ross and I started this year. Since this was our first year in a real house with a sizable backyard, we were so excited to take advantage of the space and finally embark on the journey of grown our own food.

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Ross and I met at a bar in Brooklyn at my 25th birthday party waaay past midnight🥂 . I never, ever would have guessed that 7ish years later we would happily spend our Saturday night (and by “night” I mean the period of time after the babies go to sleep and we go to sleep at 9pm) harvesting lettuce in our tiny garden in the suburbs🥬. Our garden is very new and we mostly have no idea what we’re doing, but it’s been so magical to connect to the earth in this new-to-us way and watch these plants grow! And to be able to actually harvest and eat them? Pure magic! ✨

A post shared by Ilene Godofsky Moreno (@thecolorfulkitchen) on Jun 8, 2019 at 5:29pm PDT

We did a little research, talked to a few friends and neighbors, and put a few seeds in the ground. Some of the things we planted didn’t do so well (stay tuned for more on that in my first garden season recap coming soon), but our cucumber and tomato plants have been growing, growing, growing!

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Tomato plants taller than me, long and tangly cucumber vines, new bean sprouts and an entire romaine harvest under our belts- summer in our new and tiny garden is off to a great start! ✨ . We’ve had many hiccups along the way, lost our entire kale, chard and cabbage plants to bugs, but we’ve also had fresh herbs and salad 🥬 for days, harvested two huge cucumbers already and have tons of tiny tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and zucchini on the way. . Baby V loves to do “a quick plant check” on her way in and of the house, and she loves to water everything with her own little watering can. She will tell anyone within earshot about the “tahini” (what she called zucchini 😂), cucumber and tomatoes she’s growing. She’s already so much more connected to mama 🌏 than I was as a kid and I hope the magic of tending to the garden never wears off for either of us ✨

A post shared by Ilene Godofsky Moreno (@thecolorfulkitchen) on Jul 8, 2019 at 6:01pm PDT

With so many tomatoes and cukes on our kitchen counter this week, of course I had to make gazpacho! And not just any gazpacho, but the creamiest, dreamiest batch you’ve ever tried.

Today’s Vegan and Gluten-Free Creamy Coconut Gazpacho is made with just 10 super simple ingredients, but trust me when I say that it is true summer perfection in a bowl. The secret ingredient is the cream from a can of full-fat coconut milk, which makes the gazpacho beautifully thick and melt-in-your-mouth creamy.

Let’s talk toppings, because we all know gazpacho is really all about the toppings. I like to load mine up with bread, cucumbers, tomatoes, fresh herbs and corn- you can’t go wrong with any/all of those! I really like to use leftover grilled corn because it gives an extra pop of flavor, but even raw sweet corn (if it’s really juicy) will do the trick.