A Few Words About Tomatoes

Fried green tomatoes are best with the slightest blush.Varmint!

After about an hour spent picking tomatoes this evening, I realize that I have transcended mere gardener status and promoted myself to farmer.

I have so many that I could probably afford to spare this one for the birds, but the sight of it makes me want to sit out back with a shotgun. (You can take the girl off the farm, but....)

My friend Walter recommended netting, but then my friend Harriette reminded me that the snakes get stuck in the netting. I don't know.... if the snakes eat the damn birds, I'm tempted to let them stay, but after one slithered over my foot last weekend, I'm not so sure.) I also found the voles' hole, but have not yet discovered any means of humanely dispatching them. Wiki insists that the "woodland vole" -- which I can only assume is the variety found here --  is also "usually monogamous," but there is such a tremendous crop of them this year, I doubt it. All I know is that they, along with the birds, take ONE bite out of everything and then move on. Bastards.

The tomatoes seem plentiful now, but I am determined not to take them for granted. I remember how many times over the long cold winter that I looked back  at my Last Harvest pictures, and how they sustained me through a long bitter winter. (Some of this stuff I write mostly for me. Obviously.)

But I would like to share three of my favorite tomato blogs from this Summer.

Here is my friend (the aforementioned) Walter (a Professional Writer...a Michener Fellow no less) on A Glory of Tomatoes.  

I am going to sneak in two from Chef Tom. Here is how he makes panzanella salad. And here's something he did with roasted tomatoes. Many of my plants this year came from him and Michael, and all of my basil last year came from them after mine was destroyed by a careless yardman. I always get a very Alexander-Godunov-in-Witness-Amish-barnraising feeling of infinite goodwill whenever I think of those plants turning up on my front porch. Were it not for the Food Gays, there would have been no pesto... no caprese. Remember when they rang that bell in the movie, and everybody came, but the first thing you see is just the top of Alexander Godunov's hat cresting the hill? It was just. Like. That. 

And my third recommendation is  Elizabeth Bard's recent post, Tomatoland. She writes one of the first blogs I ever followed -- even before her book came out. It's never too late for a beach-read, but just get a gander at her tomatoes. She's planning a Tomato Tatin, so stay tuned for more food porn.

Walt's right. It's a glory.

Walt's Tattoo

Here is my friend Walt's new birthday tattoo and you can read about it here on his blog.

I had just been saying last week I could never be on Top Chef because I don't have the right tattoo. (The not-being-a-chef part might also hold me up, but I think my ability to work a mood still might give me an edge.)

In fact, I don't have any tattoos. I developed an aversion to them several years ago when all the middle-aged Cash Flow Barbies I knew started getting tramp-stamps in Sanskrit. (Walt is the friend who came up with that term to describe a woman I knew and that he had just met who was, I had always thought, Hot-Above-Reproach. I was admittedly a little jealous of the way men fell so unearned at her feet. It's a little out of character for me, and I really didn't like that feeling and what it said about me. But what Walt said when he met her was, "I've never seen a woman dress like that before without a trace of irony.")

It is one of the many reasons I love Walt, who was for many years my email-husband, first from Santa Fe and now from Austin -- in a very pure and literary sense -- his delightful wife would've been most welcome to read every word we ever wrote to each other. This was in the days before Facebook and Twitter... if you can imagine.

He arrived in the blogosphere long, long before I did, and it's a great thing to be able to just wake up one day and open the dashboard of blogs I follow and see his new birthday tattoo. In the old days, he might've had to mail me that picture. Like an Animal.