Garden fight!

I don't know why I love the concept of my gardens fighting one another, but as I sat down to compare this year's garden and its final tallies to last year's I could only imagine pretty green tomato leaves curling into little garden fists of fury.

"My tomatoes are bigger than yours!"

"Yeah jerk? Well, my tomatoes are more numerous than yours!"

OK, so fighting tomatoes are kind of stupid. Let's move away from this bizarre concept.

What I meant to say was, the garden is done for the season. Including the volunteer potatoes and peppers, which held out way longer than I thought they would, but mostly because I finally tore the overgrown tomatoes out of their way so that they could see the sun again.

Someone get me some fucking sunscreen!

And then what happened? Well, the spindly little peppers which had produced all of an ounce of fruit for me, finally started doing some growing. In October, when it was basically too late for anything impressive to happen.

At least we're still wearing our blossom hula skirts.

I could be a pepperoncini. Put me in coach!

I double dare you to fry me up.

But still - we got some more peppers and AT LONG FUCKING LAST we got two NuMex Jalamundo peppers.

Two.

With which I *could* have made two very overwrought jalapeno poppers and thus fulfilled my fantasy of fried foods, but I did not.

I opted for some end of season salsa verde because of the abundance of the volunteer tomatillo plants and because the thought of firing up a pot of hot oil to fry two measly jalapenos seemed like a greasy waste of time.

Maybe next year! When I just sow them direct in the soil and back away from this delusion of mine that tells me that, despite many years of failure, I can actually start seedlings indoors and successfully harden them off to grow in the garden.

Look. I just can't do this. I suck so impressively at it, in fact, that it could be a new defining characteristic of mine. Seedling Killer. That's me.

Anyway, I did sow them directly in the garden *eventually* and, after a summer of growing in the shade beneath the aggressive tomatillo and cherry tomatoes, I harvested a big two jalapenos.  That particular failure is all my fault and we'll try again next year when I'll endeavor to make more sense in my gardening. Like, I'll sow them in the spring somewhere where they'll see the sun. Maybe! But I'll also probably do something stupid somewhere else in the garden, so don't worry - we'll still be able to have this little end-of-season heart to heart about my stupidity in 2012.

Hooray for that.

In Finny-Doesn't-Suck news, however, this was a banner BLOW THE DAMN DOORS OFF year for the tomatoes.

Seriously, now.

I planted four plants - two standard (Better Boys), one beefsteak (Brandywine) and one cherry (Sun Gold) - and if you remember from my previous year's predictions, one tomato plant = 50 lbs of tomatoes.

50 POUNDS EACH!

GO!

That would mean, if you're following my predictions anyway (which, why wouldn't you? Do I steer you wrong? OK. Sometimes.), that I should have gotten 200 lbs of tomatoes this year.

But what of the cherry tomato? Certainly THOSE can't produce 50 lbs of fruit.

Or can they...

Did they do this, like, 35 times?

OK. No they can't. I mean, *maybe* in someone else's garden they can, but in mine they put out about 15 lbs of tomatoes. Which, frankly, was a bit much. I feel like I spent the better part of my summer sitting under that plant picking until my fingers and nails turned green.

And they never looked bare.

It was terrifying.

Anyway - the tomatoes did well and I owe it mostly to the Better Boys who, in collaboration with the Brandywine who was NOT as impressive as last year, put out 199 lbs of fruit.

Still though, prettiest fruits.

199 lbs of tomatoes. 15 lbs of cherry tomatoes. 214 lbs of tomatoes in total.

That's a lot of fucking tomatoes, people, especially if you only put in four plants.

It was a good year.

What of the rest of the place? Well, let's go through the fun exercise of comparing final numbers:

2010 vs 2011
Gardening costs: $56.26 vs $60.30 = -$4.04 : 2010 wins!
Total produce value: $1,059.45  vs $1,781.39 = $721.94 2011 wins!
Cost per pound to produce: $0.21 vs $0.23= -$0.01: 2010 wins!
Total pounds: 264.31 vs 263.62 = 0.69: 2010 wins!
Total pounds of tomatoes: 147.44 vs 214.04 = 66.60 : 2011 wins!

What the hell have I learned from this? Er...well, the 50# of tomatoes per plant rule works, but not in the way I imagined (the healthy producers make up the difference and cherry tomatoes are growers not showers - ha!) and pound for pound, tomatoes are more valuable than melons.

On an unrelated note, I've also decided that I'm cutting my green bean crop in half next year. We just don't need to go through the rampant bean frenzy that we do every year unless all my tomato taking friends develop a strong desire for green beans. Which I sort of doubt they will. So, unless someone will commit to taking 20 pounds of beans off my hands next summer, I'm cutting that situation in half. Maybe we'll grow cucumbers on the other half of the teepee.

Appreciate your enthusiasm.

But...sick of you.

Or maybe nothing. Or maybe sweet peas. Whatever - it just won't be all beans.

So, next year's plan, which is obviously already being formed in my mind even though I *just* took the garden down and planted the fava beans, will start with a half-sized bean crop, at least three tomato plants but NO cherry varieties and the peppers (both NuMex and Golden Greek) being planted in full sun starting in spring. And, not to spoil the experiment story, but I think I already saw the stupid cherry tomatoes germinating in their volunteer pot, so that may have been a bad idea since there's no way they'll make it through the winter with that behavior.

We misbehave.

Good thing I don't want to plant them again anyway! Take that, jerks.

So, now I'm waiting patiently for the seed catalogs to come out so that I can start my winter fantasizing about what I might plant next year while hopefully picking a lot of kumquats off the suddenly productive plant and staring the new Clementine tree orange because those big green orbs are the biggest teases.

I should be orange soon.

 

 

Me too!

 Which I guess means it's time for winter, skiing, making abominations and behaving lewdly in my kitchen.

Hooray?

Boss Lady

Last weekend I went out to the backyard with the intention of showing the tomatoes who was boss.

And wouldn't you know that there were some dissenting opinions, so that showing has continued into this week.

Meaning that there were so many fucking tomatoes on those plants that I'll be showing them who's boss all week as I freeze/cook/puree/slice/chop/boil/toss them.

Thankfully, at the end of this week, I fully intend to have Boss Lady status - at least as far as the tomatoes are concerned. My status with the other members of the household (yeah, tomatoes are pretty much members of the house now, what with their reserved space in the cupboard and all) is up in the air, I'm sure, as Rocket has informed me that I'm "on the bubble" since she knows her Pelt Removal appointment is fast approaching.

Anyway.

In order to be The Boss of the Tomatoes in an appealing and satisfying way to more than just moi, I decided that I'd just work tomatoes into every single day of our weekly dinner menu so that Bubba could appreciate Boss Man status among the tomatoes, too.

Also, he is good to have around in food surplus situations because he is a boy and therefore can eat impressive quantities of food, even though he keeps up a super svelt frame. The fact that he keeps ratcheting back to the skinner holes on his belt whilst he hoovers up all the leftovers and snacks and always has dessert is just something I'm not going to cover right now because it friggen irks me.

HOW ARE THESE THINGS POSSIBLE? And, how come they don't happen to me?

Moving on...

To first give you an idea of the amount of bossiness I have to force on these plants, let me tell you that during my Saturday morning harvest, I walked away with 32 lbs of tomatoes. I really have to update the tracker with the recent harvests because they've been big ones and I think we may be approaching the 200 lb mark with tomato harvests this year.

In this case, it was more than my cardboard TJ's flat could handle, so I had to call the old broken bucket off the bench.

Put me in, coach!

And in case you can't really appreciate the magnitude of this harvest based on the angle of this photo, this is how much room they took up in my sink as I rinsed them. Which is to say, ALL of the room.

The tomatoes are two and three deep in there. Yeowch.

So, to go about handling all 32 lbs here, I thought first that I'd just freeze them all. Or, maybe, I'd can half and freeze half. Or maybe I'd have a canning-A-THON and can them all. And then rent out one of those POD things for storage.

But then I realized that I'm stupid.

I mean, all winter we make do with homecanned and frozen tomatoes, all the while longing for the coming summer's harvests of fresh tomatoes so that we can have things that you can't really have with canned or frozen tomatoes. Like, say, tomato salad and tomato pie and tomato sandwiches and basically anything you need a fresh tomato to achieve.

You can't be thawing out a frozen tomato to slice up for a salad because that is just nasty and weird.

So, DUH, I finally wrote up a menu of favorite fresh tomato dishes, parceled out the number of tomatoes I'd need to fulfill them and then processed (ie. cut out the stem holes) and froze the rest into gallon sized bags to feed the chesty.

That's eight gallons of tomatoes, there. Yah. Anyone up for chili?

It's funny how the chesty is nowhere near capacity. This thing is fucking scary.

I'm afraid to start stacking stuff in there because it'll get lost and will have to be hauled out with a crane someday.

So far, the menu's working as planned. We started the Tour de Tomato with the "Use While Fresh" basket looking like this:

And last night, after three tomato-heavy dinners, it looked like this:

And in case you're tired of me talking about all these tomato things rather than telling you what we've been doing with all these tomato things, here's the menu.

Sunday night: Tomato Pesto Pie (sans sausage because the store is so far away)

And rather than making a pie PIE, I made individual pie pockets. Well, you'd have to have really big pockets for these, but the crust forms something of a pocket, so just go with me, here.

If you like time-lapse photography, check this shit out - the tomato version:

Slice the dough > Add pesto > Add tomatoes > Add cheese > Add pesto > Add tomato > Cover/Crimp > Bake > Slice > EATYUM

When I make it again, I'll just make it the normal way.

Monday night: Creamy Tomato Soup

This didn't turn out as creamy as promised (by the recipe) because I pussed out and used 2% milk rather than cream but before you get all USE CREAM YOU RETARD! I just want to say that this was due to laziness (I had 2% in the fridge and the cream was all the way at the far away store - see "Sunday night: Tomato Pesto Pie") rather than Fear of Fatness and had there been cream in my fridge I so would have used it.

But, as it turns out, my Fear of Fatness makes the likelihood of having cream in the fridge so slim that I'd advise that you not hold out hope. We'll have to, instead, hope that one day my laziness subsides.

Still good enough for Bubba to eat a gallon of it for lunch.

Tuesday night: Ratatouille with sausage

This is an old standby recipe for those times when I have a crisper full of farmshare and nowhere to turn.

This time I spiced it up with jalapeno sausage from good ol' TJ's and piled on a lot more parsley than you see in this photo. Because I'm self-conscious of my over-parsleying ways, OK.

DON'T YOU JUDGE ME.

Judgers.

I served Bubba's over rice, but this is mine - 100% ratatouille

As for tonight and tomorrow and the day after (and after and after...), we'll be having BBQ brisket and beans courtesy of Chesty and a loverly tomato salad. Tomorrow I think I'm making this tomato bruschetta again and Friday we're having pizza.

And, with any fucking luck, we'll hit the weekend with an empty basket on the counter and HEY just in time to refill it with the ripe ones from the garden because OH MY HELL I went out there this morning and there's more.

Imagine if I'd planted SIX tomato plants? We'd be moving into a POD right now just to give them room.

And when did I become so obsessed with PODS? Weird, that.

Hermits do it in the can

After every vacation, even the ones we go on where we hide out in a jungle and see barely more than a monkey or the inexplicable armadillo, we come home and immediately have a NO PEOPLE weekend.

See, y'all, despite childhood report cards indicating my extreme social behavior and Bubba's super friendly outwardly appearance, we are really just big hermits.

We like to be in our house (which also includes the backyard surrounded by an 8ft fence, thank you) with just each other and the creatures and no one telling us what to do or when are you having kids or hey can we borrow your welding equipment or whatever.

Frankly, going out to lunch (which we love to do even when we have food at home - don't tell my mom) becomes a flee-worthy event because of the stressful human interaction that happens when the dude asks us what we want to drink with our carne asada tacos.

STOP PRESSURING ME!

It's not an official thing, where we press our palms together in solidarity on Thursday night and declare Friday through Sunday a NO PEOPLE WEEKEND, but it might as well be for the amount of socializing we do.

Sometimes I get self-conscious about the fact that it seems like everyone else in the whole wide world wants nothing more than to spend every free waking moment surrounded by other people doing things outside their homes despite the amount of hassle, travel and logistics involved. And then these same people come racing in to work on Monday morning to share with me their breathless accounts of the three bridal showers, two weddings, seven cocktail hours, family bbq and neighborhood block party they enthusiastically attended in between which they shopped for their fall wardrobe and painted the house.

REALLY? And you didn't throw yourself from the roof and/or barricade yourself in the basement?

Me, I get anxious when my weekend is predicted to hold more than one social occasion. And for me, a social occasion is any event outside my home that involves a person other than Bubba and an unexpected return time.

I don't know when I became this way, but it would appear that I'm growing into something of a magnificent hermit and with my 3-0 birthday only a few short weeks away (vomit), I'm no longer going to be able to use my youth to disguise my true identity: Old Hermit Woman.

This is another reason why no more cats.

So whether this post is really about how Bubba and I are hermits or how I'm going to be old soon or why Rocket will likely be the last feline to grace our doorstep, I'm not sure, but what I am sure about is that this Old Hermit Gal will probably eat pretty well even if she decides she can no longer handle the intense questioning of the taco dude because being a hermit means there's lots of time to work in the garden and then can some vegetables.

Because there's nothing that says Young and Vibrant like canning vegetables.

For the record, no, I am NOT sure that I'm not really turning 80. Thank you for pointing that out.

So, during our unofficial but legitimate nonetheless NO PEOPLE weekend, I did some successful canning of two crops going slowly out of control in the garden: cucumbers and tomatoes.

For the purposes of this post, though, I'll just be covering the tomatoes because I have to have something good to report about the cucumbers in the Adopt a Crop post and I suspect people are bored of hearing about the status of my melons - as inexplicable as that may seem.

So the situation with the tomatoes is this, there aren't enough.

We have two very full and healthy and productive plants, which is the same amount we've had for years and by which we've been satisfied if not overwhelmed, and yet it would seem that we've found so many ways to use them that two plants are no longer enough.

We are tomato whores.

So, this weekend's activity was to pick and can as many tomatoes as possible so that when tomato season is over *tears* we will still have tomatoes for sauce and chili and sauce. And did I mention sauce? We make a lot of sauce. It's a food group over here.

And the anxiety about oh my god are we going to have enough tomatoes to can because they're so good we've been eating them at every meal and the need to harvest and can them For Winter when we are destitute of tomatoes had become very real and a little chest-pain inducing.

We are also a little dramatic.

Saturday morning my basket and I harvested these:


And then we, quick like a cat, raced into the house and peeled them which is much messier and time-intensive than this looks:


After which , I (the basket took a nap) ran the canner at a steady boil for the entire afternoon so that we could have four quarts of tomatoes at the ready For Winter as though we live in the Alaskan interior instead of northern California and are running any risk of food shortages.


At the end of the day I happily reported to Bubba, with no sarcasm in my voice mind you, that we had DON'T WORRY, at least four quarts of tomatoes to see us through until spring. Because you know that I will can more if this next crop really comes through (*hint hint* to the plants, I know they read this) and I'd really feel more comfortable if we had more like eight quarts of tomatoes rather than four. NOT TO BE GREEDY, but really now.

And to that Bubba said, "Wow! That's almost more than last year!" which is an excellent observation because it was exactly the same amount as last year because I learned an important lesson in my canning time since 2007 and that is to STUFF THOSE FUCKERS FULL rather than do it all dainty like and end up with tomatoes floating in juice when they could be tomatoes smushed up against other tomatoes in a lewd way.

To be specific, last year I canned 10 pints of tomatoes loosely and this year (so far - remember, HINT HINT TOMATO PLANTS) I canned 4 quarts TIGHTLY.

Which, if you can do Finny Math, means 10 pints = 5 quarts but if you really smushed the tomatoes in the quart jars (which I so totally did to avoid the floating) it's 4 quarts so TEE DAH - same amount.

And there's more on the vine.

WOO!

OK, I think it's obvious now why I'm destined to be The Old Hermit Woman.

"When you say 'Tomato', I eat them."

I've gone to the other side with regard to homegrown produce.

Back in the day, before I became the garden dork I am today, I was of the "That's nice mom, sure I'll take another Food 4 Less sack full of whatever is growing out of control in your garden even though I can't imagine how I'll eat it all." camp.

I would accept this muddy sack of produce miscellany with the enthusiasm one might have toward a sack of old clothes. Sure, I could go to the store and buy clothes that I know I like and will wear OR I can just take these random ones that will probably fit me but might take some creativity to actually make use of.

To put it plainly, it did not excite me. Frankly, it stressed me out. I mean, first, who can eat *that* much zucchini (a question I still wrestle with) and what the hell is *this* thing and I can't eat two quart sized bags of cherry tomatoes and oh my word why are these string beans white instead of green?

It was a challenge to, first, find room in the fridge for bulk quantities of produce and, second, to find room in my belly (and Bubba's) before I had bulk quantities of furry mold monsters edging out the wine and tonic water (priorities, people) on the shelves.

And then I became broke. Irretrievably broke and then unemployed.

Suddenly, paper sacks of produce looked like Heavenly Bundles of Free Groceries from which I could extract endless meals in lieu of having to collect change from the dryer vent for a dicey and unsatisfying trip to Safeway where I couldn't buy anything anyway because there's nothing worth eating for $.35.

My mom's homegrown produce became my savior (well, second to Bubba, he's #1.)

I started to covet the random bags of produce my mom would thrust into my arms as I left her house. What bizarre but also good things could be inside? Bags of blackberries? A squash shaped like a spaceship? A new strain of beans I have no idea how to prepare? A sixteen pound zucchini that demands it's own seat for the ride home? Five hundred cherry tomatoes? Cake mix. (My mom was so thrilled with my newfound enthusiasm that she started clearing the depths of the Costco pantry into the bags, too. And I have to say, nothing goes with Japanese eggplant like Ziploc bags and semi-sweet chocolate chips.)

And so it went on, even after I moved into a place (read: ratty shoebox but with a small sunny yard and garage) and started my very first vegetable growing experiments. I'd go to my mom's, she'd send me home with The Mystery Bag, Bubba and I would eat weird vegetables mixed with tomatoes (everything can be mixed with tomatoes) and be happy.

It never occurred to me that one day I might be the crazed woman with a gardening glove tan more concerned with OMG what am I going to DO with all these tomatoes and do you have any recipes that call for 20 lemons because I have six grocery bags full and YIKES. I just thought my mom would always be this lunatic and somehow I'd be safe because they say that in every family "there's always one of those people" and we already had one, my mom.

I'll save you the suspense, in my family, there's two. And I'm one of them. I've officially gone to the OTHER other side having been first ignorant toward homegrown produce, then grateful for homegrown produce and now the forceful provider of homegrown produce.

Scary.

Yesterday I showed up at my hairdresser's with a bag of tomatoes. I have sent an email out to my team offering to provide them with endless supplies of tomatoes if they want to savor the MOST DELICIOUS HOMEGROWN TOMATOES IN EXISTENCE or whatever just let me know. I have sent Bubba off to work with bags of tomatoes for his coworkers. I have brought them in bags, ironically, for my mom who did not plant tomatoes this year (probably after she saw the Stonehenge Tomato Project I had brewing in the yard). I have even gone so far as to offer to ship them to people in sauce form.

Just to prepare you all, it would appear that August, and perhaps September, are going to be reddish months on this blog as I try to figure out exactly what I DO with a very healthy crop of the best, and most enthusiastically prolific, Better Boy tomatoes.

So, I am at this moment, seeking more individuals like Bubba's angelic coworker who maintain the personal mantra, "When you say 'Tomato', I eat them." as well as any favorite tomato recipes you have on hand. If they call for a dozen+ tomatoes, all the better.

Last week Kelli sent me this recipe for Mellowed Fresh Tomatoes for Pasta which turned out fantastic. I used the advice in the notes which called for using the juices from the fresh tomatoes to finish cooking the pasta in order to give it a LUSTIER flavor.

I love lustiness.

I am so a Frontierswoman.

I went pretty far off my nut on Sunday.

This happened as I stood in my yard under the meek shade of my sombrero (dudes, I do not mess around with sunshine on my nude skin regardless of my thick sunscreen sheen) and stared at the still more-red-than-green tomato shrubs.

How, I pondered, was it possible to give away over 8 lbs of big perfect tomatoes on Friday and 10 lbs of tomatoes on Saturday and YET STILL have over 10 lbs of ripe-n-ready tomatoes hanging right there from the plant for all to see on Sunday?

HOW I ASK?

Well, avoiding all computation (no math no math no math), the answer came simply: The plants are ALSO off their nut (convenient). They are also happy, healthy and producing at a rate one must not underestimate or believe can be managed through simple redistribution alone.

No, one must make compromises and exceptions in proportion to the tremendous bounty.

Basically, it was time for the big guns. And time to pay for the ease with which I came to know the fear and sleepless nights that come with having two (TWO ONLY) tomato plants producing like twenty.

I had to can.

And it was, oh, like 95 degrees out. AND we have no A/C. AND Bubba was trying to work in the office which shares a (hot) wall with our kitchen. AND it was hot. Well, that was my main issue. The hotness.

It was Hotness vs. Tomato Waste and in that particular situation, I can stand the heat, be in the kitchen and still stave off insanity. If only for one sweaty afternoon.

And it was sweaty alright.

Stupid canning always happens right when it's the hottest. Not when it's chilly and I'm wearing my librarian sweater (which I promise to feature in a future post on Ugly Things I Own) over all my clothes and socks with my slippers and my nose is still red and icy.

NO.

Canning only happens when I'm wearing the least I can get away with without incurring a neighborly call to the bobbies and yet it's still somehow so hot that I'm rocking impressive boob sweat and my hair is tied up in an unflattering ponytail/bun thing under my orange doorag.

I know you're thinking, the weather isn't the only thing that's hot. Yes, I am very hot indeed in these warm weather getups.

This past Sunday, my hot getup and I went out to the garden and picked 12.5 lbs of tomatoes.

In the blazing mid-day heat of late summer.


Then, back in the kitchen, I fired up the giant canning pot to boil and proceeded to sweat until the tank top boob sweat became tank top torso sweat and then just Sweaty Tank Top.

Don't worry though, the canning process was very sanitary.

After boiling/peeling/halving 12.5 lbs of tomatoes, boiling/sanitizing 12 pint jars/lids/rings, packing 10 pints jars with the tomatoes (shocker, I ran out of tomatoes) and then two rounds of 50 minute sessions in the canning pot, I am sure I had dropped at least two pounds of water weight.




Not bad.

Best thing ever was that they all sealed properly and I didn't have to then scurry to eat two jars of piping hot not-quite-canned tomatoes because the lids didn't seal and what if they go bad and I have to deal with the sadness of Tomato Waste.


So, I had 10 lovely jars of my tomatoes to stow in my cabinet for a wintry day when I'm wearing my librarian sweater over all my clothes and thinking, "Hey, you know what would be gooooooood after the football game (because in winter I am almost always watching football and thinking about what is for dinner)? Lasagna with homemade sauce or Creamy tomato and basil soup or meatballs with homemade sauce or stuffed peppers with homemade sauce or a big spoon with homemade sauce.

It will justify all the sweating I have just done. The making of wintertime sauce from summertime tomatoes. MY tomatoes.

I will be a satisfied, if slightly chilly, football fan on the verge of a great sauce. I will also have satisfied my inner Frontierswoman by going full circle on the plant seeds/grow crops/harvest crops/can crops/use canned crops in winter when we're all hunkered down for winter due to the terrible storms outside even though I live in Northern CA where it hardly gets below 40 degrees.

We'll save my fascination with being a frontierswoman for another day. But I bet they all wear big librarian sweaters and get boob sweat in summertime while they can tomatoes from their big frontier gardens.

That is the dream.

My money's on the tomatoes.

OK, I have a race tomorrow and I should be losing my shit for your entertainment right now over that, but I just can't go one more minute without HOLY SHIT IT'S #1 (and 2) TOMATO DAY.

We're #1! (and 2. Which is less exciting but still delicious.)

So, fine, *today* is not the day, *Today* was last Tuesday and the #1 Tomato wasn't some big bruiser that I watched from its pea-sized green infancy and correctly predicted would ripen first and then cuddled and gently squoze and mother henned over until it peed my hand and therefore was plucked, but it was still the #1 Tomato and hot damn was it good.

And its #2 was also good.

I'm actually not sure which one was #1 and which was #2. The numbering system is failing me. Shocking.

Since Tuesday, well, it's actually started looking a lot like summer out in the garden and some of those frustratingly green tomatoes have started to turn yellowish, orange-ish and in some cases, downright FINALLY red.

I call this shade of red, "FINALLY".

Now, you might think that with all the First Tomato Plans we've had in the past, that we'd have had similar plans for this year's first tomato. That maybe we were sitting nearby, sharpening the chef's knife against the steel, possibly drooling, and stacking up slices of toasted sourdough in anticipation of perhaps a beautiful #1 Tomato Sandwich, but you'd be wrong.

We had no plans. We had no bread. I don't even know how to properly use the steel to sharpen knives and, hey, I've got that proprietary tomato knife that's just taking up precious drawer space otherwise. So, when the #1 Tomato broke free of the the plant and sat its fat little butt down in my hand (followed by its buddy who did the same), it just became an odd part of our dinner that was already in progress.

Yeah. Normally potstickers and green beans aren't served with tomato wedges, but then normally I'm not so overwhelmed by green beans that the tomatoes take me by surprise.

As it turned out, fresh tomato isn't the worst accompaniment to sauteed fresh green beans in a soy tahini sauce and pork potstickers.

Frankly, I might just start making this dish with tomatoes on top from now on because, let's be honest, fresh tomatoes from the garden make everything better.

I'll have to try them on ice cream.

Or with a quesadilla.

I'm afraid I've been treating these tomatoes terribly. I mean, who honors the first tomatoes of the season by throwing them on a plate next to a quickie quesadilla and a bunch of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes that just happened to make their way all the way back to the house after a stroll through the garden?

Me. I'll save you the mental exercises. It's me. I do this. I spend all winter pining and planning and bemoaning the absence of fresh tomatoes only to pluck the first ones from the plants and then just throw them into any old thing I'm eating without any sort of celebration or parade or sacrificing of first borns.

I should be ashamed of myself.

Or I guess we can just look at it like I was so excited to have tomatoes again that I shoved aside all the pomp and circumstance and just let it happen.

Yes, let's look at it like that.

Though I do have plans for these guys.

Firstly, I must tame the plants because OH.

And by OH, I mean OH SHIT.

And also tonight, in preparation for the race that I feel woefully unprepared for tomorrow, I'll make the first tomato salad of the season with a tomato from today's impromptu Too Big For The Tea Mug harvest and some of the buttload of cucumbers that are shoving things out of the crisper and hope that the magic powers of the tomato extend to fortifying unprepared runners for a road race.

 

 

 

There's a Better Boy at the bottom. Which explains why this mug was immediately at capacity. Also, look at the cute bee on the rim. CUTE.

Yes. That will be a better way to honor the tomatoes. And get rid of some cucumbers. And distract me from the fact that I'm running a 10K tomorrow after spending my last Long Training Run drinking beer from a boot.

Good job, me. Go tomatoes.

Grow Your Own Round-up #14

Why hello, Grow Your Own'rs!

Look right at me hosting the round up this week. And without any direct supervision! SKETCHY!

I assume Andrea, the proud creator and mama of Grow Your Own, was familiar with my particular style before letting me in on this showdown, so let's proceed as planned and hope that I don't return her baby singing any new swears or anything.

A recipe for: Overabundance

Kristin of Going Country did not make garlic soup as promised, but I forgave her because she made a delicious stream of consciousness that included 2 recipes and 8, count 'em 8, ingredients from her upstate NY garden that she Grew all on her Own: garlic, shallots, tomatoes, collard greens, basil, cucumbers, dill.

Random detail: Kristin has 34 tomato plants and is my hero.

A recipe for: Tomatoes, peppers, herbs

Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies is taking full advantage of the early heat this year in Ontario, Canada by plucking tomatoes and hot peppers from the garden two full weeks early and putting them into an Easy Peasy Summer Pasta. When you're over there ripping this great recipe, also look at the porny food shot of tomatoes and peppers which, wow, nicely done. She's growing this all in pots, y'all. That's really something.

A recipe for: Lemons

Anna at Life's Too Short for Mediocre Chocolate made up some Lemon Ricotta muffins that have a reported incredible crumb and AND two different mixing methods. Um, fancy. I do believe I still have access to my friend's overburdened lemon tree so will, perhaps, have to make these up myself - just to try out both mixing methods, you know.

A recipe for: White peaches

As though a magnificent trip to Yosemite weren't enough, Todd and Diane of White on Rice Couple posted a recipe for all their oh lawdie what WILL we do incredible white peaches that involves grilling AND homemade creme fraiche. And I'm sorry but I can't make blogger do those fancy marks over the e and i, so please forgive me. Feel free to look at this recipe and be jealous of their white peach tree because, wow. If this photo isn't enough to make you want to plant one of your own, I'm pretty sure you're not human. Oh that California, she is a nice place.

A recipe for: Squash

Arika, of Raw for a Month in Biloxi, Missisippi, must be answering someone's Grow Your Own prayers here with her very delicious sounding recipe for Squash Rollatini with Ricotta, Mozzarella, and Chevre. Now, I know I've been whining about what do I do with all this chard but the original summer vegetable of doom is squash and so I'm grateful that she's put together a recipe for squash that is new (for instance, it's not mock anything) and includes chevre, which, YUM. You are wise in the ways of the squash, Ms. Arika.

A recipe for: Green tomatoes

If you're loosing sleep waiting for your tomatoes to ripen (I can't be the only one that does this) then you'll be glad that Irene at Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice defied her Italian-American and New York roots and forged ahead with a southern-type recipe for fried green tomatoes. From the YUMMY sounds I could hear in the background of her post (so they were in my head? Does that matter?) it seems like she's nailed it with, as she calls it, Fried Green Tomato And Swiss Cheese Bake. I do believe she might have also said something about how she now prefers green tomatoes to fully ripe red tomatoes, but I must be mistaken. That's just crazy talk.

A recipe for: Cilantro and lemongrass

I am pretty sure that this recipe from Ning, of Heart and Hearth, made the longest trip to Grow Your Own this week - all the way from the Philippines! Manila, to be exact. WOW. And even after all that travel, everything in this dish looks so fresh. How DO you do it, Ning? All joking aside, she's come up with a great recipe for Pinoy Tom Yum Prawns (Pinoy meaning Filipino) that's a little lighter on the spice than its Thai alter ego and uses lemongrass and cilantro from her own balcony garden. For anyone out there trying to stay ahead of their bolting cilantro - this could be a great recipe to try. If only Bubba weren't wildly allergic to shellfish, I'd try this myself.

A recipe for: Peaches, pineapple sage

Bee and Jai of Jugalbandi have searched the world over for a pie/tart crust that doesn't leave a greasy feel in the mouth and, at the same time, crafted a sweet recipe for an abundance of peaches and pineapple sage from their yard and their friend's orchard in the Pacific northwest. Now, I personally have never met a pie crust I didn't like, but for the more discerning tastes out there, their recipe for Vegan Peach tartlets with pineapple sage might do it for you. You big picky pie eaters, you. Not that I'm judging. I'm just saying is all.

A recipe for: Tomatoes and parsley

The Andrea, of Andrea's Recipes, likes to admit that she's not superwoman (whatever) and, as such, has been trying to simplify her family's menu without calling in for reinforcements from the local pizza joint. Um, yeah, me too, ahem. This time she picked a huge bowl of grape tomatoes from her Virginia/D.C. garden and tossed them up with some orzo and fresh parsley (and other things, check the recipe, I'm not exact here) for a very lovely Mediterranean Orzo Salad. Yes, please! (But I'm still not giving up pizza night.)

A recipe for: Lot of ripe tomatoes

Kim of Live Love Laugh Eat! offers up a great pasta recipe and her preferred vehicle for taking in as much pesto (use your favorite recipe here) as possible in each bite. Her Virginia garden is overflowing with tomatoes right now and this is a quick way to get through a handful. Nice and simple, this could be a good recipe for those of you like Andrea who, while trying to maintain the whole "I'm not superwoman/man" facade, still want to make fabulous meals from local homegrown foods. You know who you are, Pizza Man Shunners. Plus, this is a great excuse to wander out to the garden after work and hunt around the tomato plants in your heels. Because, obviously, we all like to look sexy while we pick fruit. What? You don't?

A recipe for: Tomatoes and basil

I have half a brain and almost didn't include my own contribution to Grow Your Own #14. Wow, that'd been just like me, wouldn't it? *Sigh* Anyway, I stepped away from the oven for five minutes to make something other than my favorite sauce recipe and instead made gazpacho - another summer Northern California tomato favorite. As usual, I shunned the perfectly decent (and published, which is more than I can say for moi) recipe details and changed it to suit my own whims. This soup has gotten better by the day, so don't worry if you have left overs. I've also heard rumors that it freezes beautifully. You decide.

And that will do it for this Grow Your Own Round-Up. Check out Andrea's blog for future post dates and hosts. Plus, it'd be good if you kept making things from your gardens (and neighbor's gardens - go on, I won't tell them you're stealing lemons from their tree) and posting recipes because some of us need help figuring out what to do with all this chard. Or whatever.