Tag Archives: tomato

A gift of produce

In light of my last post on interdependency, I thought it might be nice to show a fun little slice of it. In this case, it ties back to Ellen and Grant.

As I said in the linked post, I met them on Twitter. So this is maybe 90% of how we interact. Ellen, a bit ago, tweeted something about eating tomatoes for every meal. She also said something about Grant abandoning her with a prolific garden.

You see, Grant and Ellen share a large garden and some chickens somewhere in the north of Chicago. I guess Grant is traveling right now, and so not pulling his weight in terms of eating the food they’ve grown. And apparently there’s only so much Ellen and the chickens can eat.… Continue reading →

A little bit on gardening and self-sufficiency

Bill and I just renewed the lease on our apartment, so we’ll be staying in this house about another year. It’s already the longest I, personally, have stayed put in my adult life. By the time we leave, which we intend to do next year, it will feel as if we’ve lived in this home forever. In fact, it’ll have been a little less than three years.

The first year we lived here, we moved in the middle of the summer. Heck, we mentioned it briefly here on this little blog. Of course, August is entirely too late in the year to plant anything, so for our first summer here, we grew nothing.

Last year, I posted about our first little garden early in the year, and then basically nothing for the rest of the year.… Continue reading →

Tomato Soda

So, originally, I had this plan to use this space to talk about my garden and a new blog I’m reading. However, I had a seasonal & amazing drink yesterday, and I had to bump the scheduled post in favor of a slightly later but more “real time” post. Because, seriously? I just had to share this with you.

It started as a cocktail recipe from Imbibe Magazine last year. I was a little perplexed that their tomato cocktails were in the September/October issue, but whatever. I waited. I plotted. I dreamed. I schemed. I was going to have a tomato cocktail the following tomato season. Maybe many.

So, of course, tomato season hits and I can’t find the right magazine anywhere. Mostly, it turns out, because I am looking in the past three or four year’s worth of May/June and July/August issues.… Continue reading →

The Most Expensive Tomato by Weight

This is the second summer Bill and I have tried to grow a little garden on our balcony. Our first little garden was sparse and probably only resulted in 10 or 12 tomatoes. Our basil bolted quickly, and the chives overgrew everything. It was a mess, but it was a pretty, fun, green mess.

This year, things have been a bit better. I still operate with a strict policy of benign neglect toward my plants, as I told a friend yesterday. They get watered every other day, most of the time, which is amazing. They get coffee grounds as psuedo-mulch about once a week. And, to be honest, my plants all seem very happy and green and not messy. Sorta. We’ll ignore that two of my tomato plants seem to have decided to use the third for support.… Continue reading →

Turkey Enchiladas

One of the things that prompted the start of this blog, back in 2010, was the fact that Bill and I bought a CSA share. Basically, we realized we’d occasionally get more food than we knew how to handle, as well as the occasional food item we couldn’t even identify.

What we didn’t know, that first year, was that our farmer had spent some time in our home state of New Mexico and so also had a taste for some of the foods we grew up on. So, we were delighted to see (and smell!) some Anaheim peppers in one of our boxes way back then.

The truth is that we’re always thrilled to see Anaheims in the box. Even now, into our third year with Tomato Mountain, the things that are so like New Mexico green chiles make us smile.… Continue reading →