I think just about everyone loves tomatoes. Every time I mention to someone that I grow tomatoes in my garden they immediately turn a little green with envy. Tomatoes are really a labor of love. Some years the bounty is great and in others you're lucky to pick just a few. Last year there was the blight and this summer it's blossom end rot due to the extreme variations in heat. Luckily my tomatoes haven't been affected by that but since I am growing them organically, I do often find a critter who has made a home inside one of my prized possessions. I guess that just shows I'm not the only one who loves them.
This year I'm growing heirlooms for the first time. I collected seeds from my favorite specimens last year to grow this crop. All plants were babied from seed. They all seem to be doing well, but heirlooms have their own peculiarities including odd shapes, split skins, and areas with russeting or blemishes. Nut I would rather tend to them than grow the supermarket hybrids, which tend to look more like plastic. Though I do like a beefsteak tomato now and then. I don't even bother growing plum tomatoes because I can't get them any better than the canned San Marzano variety from Italy, where the weather and terroir is optimal for growing them. But so far my soil has given me a pretty nice colorful collection.
Oddities and Obsessions
Oddities and Obsessions
The Spice Rub That Cannot be Named
I have known my friend Vicki since we were twelve. Without being excessively specific, that’s a long, long time. I met her when I got involved with our community theater, where she was already in a play (I was, at that point, just providing a baby doll to serve as a prop) and I knew instantly that she was not only taller, but quite a lot cooler than I was. For the next seven years we were in plays, orchestras, quartets and classes together, and spent a fair amount of recreational time together, too. Her legs alone are taller than all of me, she is a math whiz, she is the only person I know who was simultaneously in band, choir and orchestra, she has a rapier-sharp wit, and (perhaps most important) she is a loyal and kind friend, and a really good mom.
We live in the same place again now, after my years of wandering, and she recently returned from a trip South with a bag of goodies for me including fig jam, barbecue sauce and the unfortunately named “Butt Rub.” (Hereinafter “Stuff.”) Since I am a delicate and ladylike person, it took me a little while to get over the shock of seeing the, um, “Stuff” on my counter. (I am one of those extraordinarily old fashioned mothers who will not allow my kids to say the word “butt,” at least not in my hearing). There is also the inevitable, and probably intentional evocation of Desitin to deal with. I am far, far too pure to live in this world of sin and crudity….
The Chicken Pot Pie
I am on a constant hunt for The Chicken Pot Pie. A hunt that has become
dangerously like an obsession. I talk about it constantly. My close
friends are pretty much bored with my singular food quirk. I,
decidedly, am not. I was talking to a friend of mine at work, groaning
over the lack of flavorful snacks in our immediate vicinity and she
mentioned The Chicken Pot Pie. I was floored, to say the least. How did
she know? Perhaps I was going on about it. Again
She directed me to a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles called WoodSpoon. I made a beeline after work to 9th and Spring, around the corner from the Fashion Mart. WoodSpoon smells like spices and the comfort of home. I ordered one of the last Chicken Pot Pies. (Apparently, they're famous for them.) It arrived topped with a light flakey crust and chock full of savory, shredded chicken and fresh corn with just enough spice to take it from the blandness that it's chicken pot pie brothers and sisters often have.
The Little Newstand on the Corner
I'm walking with an acquaintance back from a restaurant when we pass a sidewalk news stand, one of those great sprawling things with fluorescent lights overlooking eight or ten bookshelves jammed together.
I stop, naturally, because I can't remember if I picked up this month's Esquire or not and for the same reason that you'd stop if you saw a baby panda wandering the streets of LA; it's endangered, savour the moment. And I'm perusing the shelves (mindful of the MAX BROWSING 15 MINUTE signs written in marker and package-taped to the shelves) when-
"ohmygod holyshit."
"What?"
I point. On the rack, nestled between a shelf devoted to variations on Guns & Ammo and another comprised entirely of cycling magazines, is a section devoted to Literary Magazines. Lapham's Quarterly. Tinhouse. The New England Review. I stop, for the same reason that you'd stop if you saw a baby panda wandering by riding sidesaddle on a unicorn.
My Big Fat Greek Spread
I've discovered there's no place in the middle when it comes to olives. People love olives or they adamantly, for sure, no doubt about it, can not stand them. I've never heard anyone say, "Olives? Oh, I can take them or leave them."
I'm one who loves them. As long as they are not from a can. Don't call me an olive snob, though.
I grew up on black olives from a can. My dad and I could eat a can together at one sitting. We never had to share. My mom and my brother were from the "can not stand them" camp. Now, though, I prefer them from a jar or from a bin in the deli case at the grocery store. Any color olives, with pits or without, stuffed with almonds or garlic or feta or jalapenos – I'm there.
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