What do you get when you puree a couple dozen huge, juicy, red seeded tomatoes with several cloves of garlic, a big handful of cilantro, a giant super-sweet onion, the juice of 3 limes, some jalepenos (as much as you can take and still be functional) and Kosher salt (accept every blessing you can get!)?
The answer:
Fresh, home-made garden salsa – the kind that makes your tongue tingle and dimples pop! Soooooo good. I swear, I woke up thinking about it this morning! YES! It is that good!
I think the potted grape tomato plant is having trouble conceptualizing what it was bred to do. So, while eating some actual grapes, the idea donned to place a small bunch into the tomato plant so it could visiualize the goal, where we want to be.
See, little grape tomatoes? See these cute little grapes? This is all I want. I am not asking for more. You just need to stay little and turn red and sweet. There is really no sense in puffing up and trying to be a full-grown Roma, for that isn’t how God made you – that is not the goal of your life.
Packed all around its’ base are very happy and large purple-red celosia, apparently cheering this gargantuan-growth nonsense on. Hopefully, however, I have now relieved this particular plant of its’ incessant need to show off and elevate itself, to exhaust itself trying to be more and do more than anyone really wants. It is true it had some help: the heavily-fruited grape tomato plant in the pot on my patio is loving the Miracle-Gro soil, as I have found, nearly all plants do.
Viva la Grape Tomato…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Remind Stormie relentlessly to care for tomatoes while I am away…
Here is what we learned today, just Guini and I having a little time to ourselves: gardening trumps Play-Doh time. We harvested 3 different types of peppers, 4 varieties of tomatoes, some cukes, some zucchini and handfuls of green beans. Oh – and some wayward okra that seeded itself this year. We are choosing to ignore the field of garlic chives that is threatening to take over the entire backyard.
Here is what else we learned:
Watering is fun no matter how wet you get.
That the corn has been left to “mature” a bit too long. It is still tasty, but tough, so we’ll let the stalks turn brown now for front porch decor in a few weeks.
The chiles are slowing way down in production, but they are beauts!
Perhaps we should have staked the jalapenos?
We did NOT get the watermelon in soon enough and the baby fruit are dropping in the cool night air, so sadly, we shall not reap a harvest here.
Nonna doesn’t check the cukes as often as she should and she has let the green beans run wild.
Though we may have plucked the zucchini a bit too zealously, we can still enjoy every part.
And it is possible to garden in sparkly, pink shoes.
A day with Guini (aka The Flower Girl) is a sweet, soft day…Jeanie (aka Nonna)
NOTE TO SELF: Check the bounty more often – this is what all the work and watering was for!
pictured: Guini with the second batch of garden goodies; Guini inspecting a zuch; Guini with her zucchini flower; and Guini discussing gardening and telling me she still likes flowers better than veggies. Imagine that? (Click on photos to enlarge)
“The convivial table is where it all begins,” I once read with immediate agreement and wish I could remember where and to whom it should be attributed. Naturally I liked the word “convivial” because it denotes lively feasting and banqueting with loved ones, being in good company with lots of good food for all.
I was perusing an old issue of Architectural Digest recently, a lovely magazine I try to pick up from the annual library clean-up sale, when I saw an ad for Electrolux appliances which said,
“In my kitchen: I preheat a memory. I fold in old friends with new. I bake a good laugh.”
I enjoyed the clever marrying of cooking and baking terms to the meaning of life. There’s an ad person with a poet’s heart, methinks.
And isn’t the kitchen truly the lifeline of home and family? Is this not where we experience unforgettable laughter and memory, the aromas of love and home-cooking? Isn’t it in the kitchen we hear the music of the percolating coffee, the sizzle of the bacon, the the beep of the timer signifying the wait is over, the promise has arrived? Is this not where we see the garden’s burst of color and taste of life itself?
The convivial table is life-giving. The convivial table is a place of gratefulness and feasting. “The convivial table is where it all begins,” and the place we keep hoping to get back to and should visit often.
I my kitchen I…what?
Eat, drink and be merry with some people you love…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Tomorrow the table will be laden with fish tacos and fruit pizza for Tristan’s birthday (hey it is his menu!), and with love for him and loud talk and laughter amongst all.
pictured: a table spread for Christmas cheer moments before the lively and much-loved guests arrived
I kept noticing these nice, large and juicy-looking tomatoes that seemed to have started ripening, but then never quite kept going. But never-you-mind, I was getting plenty from the other plants, anyway. Finally, though I had to find out “what gives??”
Guess what? I forgot I had plopped a lemon-tomato into the ground! I got this armload of juicy, tangy, pure-yellow tomatoes. They pack a powerful punch of a taste, I tell you! They are yellow through and through with no “green gooey seedy” centers, which Bryan accuses the red tomato of holding. Oh-they are gooooood!
Sadly, today, I discovered the work of probably at least 2 hornworms chewing up my tomato plants. I have never had a hornworm since living here (6 years) and this is not good. Their natural enemy is the wasp and we seem to have plenty of them zooming around, but they did not do their job. So, when I was cutting back some stringy petunias (which you really must force yourself to do about this time each year for a spectacular late summer display) and a wasp charged me, I got out the spray and killed about 50 of them. Dave threw away their little village. Really-the one reason I let them live in the first place: hornworms! I am going in deep to find those fat tomato killers, who pretty much look like Heimlich from “A Bug’s Life,” (very rotund when having recently gorged on my tomato leaves) but are nothing more than satanic destroyers from hell. They shall die I tell you!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
I ran into Baby Averi at Target and she told me to go ahead and roast up a batch of her green chiles (Averi’s Anaheim greens). I picked a pile, along with some Macho Nacho Jalepenos and a couple of cucumbers. The chiles are slow roasting in the oven next to a pork butt and, baby, it is gonna be delish! Green Chile is quintessential Colorado!
I have this strange domestic, cooking thing happening. Somebody stop me…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Kill the hornworms. Kill the hornworms. Kill the hornworms…Seek and destroy!
pictured: lemon tomatoes from my garden, a nasty hornworm; Gav and Averi investigating her garden area, the chiles she grew…
I am receiving this as a sign: this one floppy sunflower is fixed my direction. The others continue heliotroping vigorously or fixing themselves toward my neighbor’s deck (the east), but this one, scraggly and wind-tossed, looks me straight in the eye, and makes itself shine upon me.
The world has gone mad, but the sun shines on. The sunflower, too.
Just as the sun was bursting over the profile of the house across the backyard at a little past 7, I glanced through the backdoor and a happy Dahlia said to me, “Good Morning, Jeanie.” I smiled happily. “Good morning, Dahlia. You’re looking well.”
When I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, hollyhocks grew like weeds in the alleys and my friends and I used toothpicks and hollyhocks to create dolls now and again. One toothpick was inserted into an unblossomed bud and then connected to an upside down bloom. The second toothpick was poked through “the body” horizontally for “arms”. Sometimes we held the toothpick between our finger and thumb under the “gown” and made our little dolls dance and twirl.
Guini and I made one a couple of days ago in between splashing pool times. She is my “flower girl,” loving all the flowers and their names.
I love the flower girl…J
NOTE TO SELF: Disperse the numerous hollyhock seedlings round the yard for more fun next year.
Dave and I met and married in North Dakota, where we both attended Bible College. ’81 was our summer of love. Our first date was 5.26.81 and we married on 7.23.81.
The summers in North Dakota are spectacular. It is a shame you can’t bottle that. The sun takes almost forever to finally fall from the sky at night and is brilliant throughout the day. North Dakota is a little, plain, shall we say, in some ways? And flat. Conservative. And there are lots of white houses.
But one thing you see there that is better than anywhere else? Fields of sunflowers, faithfully and brilliantly holding their gorgeous yellow-orange heads high and seemingly following the sun. True. In the morning, their little faces facing east, then, operating in heliotropism, they would “follow the sun” until they were facing west by evening. Sometime during the night, in anticipation of the next sunrise, they’d be facing east again. A wonder to behold!
I threw a few sunflower seeds in the yard this year and have watched over the past few weeks as the unblossomed buds have heliotroped about, back and forth, east to west, daily. But when the first 7-foot-high bloomer occured: nothing. Nada. It has faced the east and moved not one iota. “What is wrong, tall flower?” I’d ask. “Look this way, come on, look over here.” No response. It has fixed it’s gaze on my neightbor’s back porch and she rarely comes out. True, her overly-zealous, fence-jumping sprinklers do provide the needed waterings, which is why I decided to plant them in the awkward behind-the-pool space anyway. Still, I am being ignored in favor of a woman who does not care.
Dave asked me if I planted the seeds backwards. Har-dee-har-har.
In desperation, I Wikipedied this problem and am dismayed to learn that sunflowers in the blooming stage (maturity, it seems) are no longer heliotropic, but frozen in one direction, usually east, meaning all of my sunflowers will benefit some one else, as I will only get to gaze on their hinder parts. This is indeed disturbing and so unlike, I am quite certain, their North Dakato fields of cousins.
I sent Stephanie home yesterday with an armload of zucchini and she was searching www.allrecipes.com for a fresh and creative way to serve it and happened across the article on how to properly celebrate this holiday. I am only printing portions of it here, but you may verify the whole thing by linking the title in the first paragraph.
By the way, my 3 favorite ways with zucchini are
Tossed in an extra-virgin olive oil, sprinkled with garlic powder, salt and pepper, maybe some Mrs Dash or crushed red pepper flakes and grilled just long enough for some beautiful black grill marks, as it caramelizes and gets sweet.
Same as above, except popped under the broiler until you see the carmelization begin.
Severed into 1/4″ succulent slices, dipped in Tempura batter (grab a box from the Asian food aisle for the simplest, crispest breading ever using very cold water) and fried in canola oil until light and crisp (not brown). Dip in Ranch dressing. This breading and frying technique works for mushrooms, cut up leftover chicken or pork, green tomatoes, corn on the cob. Mmmmm.
Dave, of course, still prefers his zuchini shredded beyond recognition and turned into sort of a “stuffing-type” casserole. Yes, he likes church-dinner food.
Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Night
By: Allrecipes Staff
Celebrate this fun holiday on August 8!
Established by Pennsylvanian Tom Roy, this day encourages sharing. “Due to the overzealous planting of zucchini, citizens are asked to drop off baskets of the squash on neighbors’ doorsteps.”
About the holiday
A few suggestions from Tom Roy’s “Top 20 List for successful sneaking of Zucchini or otherwise ridding yourself of unwanted surplus summer squash:”
(Note:Allrecipes does not endorse any of these activities.)
(ANOTHER NOTE: Nor does Jeanie)
Carefully place a dozen or more zucchini in a large, sturdy black plastic trash bag, then add a couple layers of unwanted clothing. Drive to nearest Goodwill or Salvation Army, hand over bag to nearest volunteer. Politely refuse any offered receipt. Leave quickly.
Look for out-of-the-way places which have signs posted, “Clean Fill Wanted.”
Under light of full moon, either stark naked or wearing full army camouflage, carrying a machete or any garden implement, run amuck in your zucchini patch, cutting and slashing. Be sure to thank Mother Nature for her bounty before and after this cathartic experience.
Gather all available plastic containers and freezer bags. Puree all zucchini, even if it takes all night. Package, freeze, and create an artistic, holiday label: “For Zucchini Nut Bread Recipe.” These gifts are now ready to be freely given, along with copies of recipe, to everyone on your Christmas list.
Do you have any ideas to add?…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: I am keeping mine: Zucchini summer pasta…zucchini brownies…stuffed zucchini…zucchini marmelade…zucchini parmesan…zucchini relish…stir-fried zucchini…Mexican zucchini soup…Crab-stuffed zucchini…chocolate chip zucchini muffins…need I say more?
