Posts Tagged ‘tomatoes’
After much deliberation (and a healthy dose of procrastination), I’ve finally selected and plotted my intentions for the 2010 garden.
It might seem awfully early to some, but seeds must be ordered, delivered and started before a springtime sowing in late May can be accomplished.
This year will be interesting for a number of reasons.
Primarily because I’m going to be trying to grow a couple crowns of asparagus for the first time, but I’m also attempting rare French strawberries from seed, as well as leeks, garlic and chard.
As you can see from my crude 10,000 foot drawing, there are lots of different veggies being installed, as well as a small bee garden that I hope will attract a healthy amount of polinators to our rooftop sanctuary. We had a bit of a problem with the lack of bees last year, though I’m not sure if it was due to colony collapse or the overall shitty weather, but it can’t hurt to encourage them with a pretty flower garden.
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Tags: asparagus, beans, beets, carrots, chard, Clover Roads Organic Farms, Gardening, garlic, herbs, Heritage Harvest Seed, leeks, lettuce, Lists, peas, peppers, Purveyors, Richter's, Salt Spring Seeds, shallots, tomatoes, Urban Harvest, Vesey's, West Coast Seeds
Posted in Gardening, Lists | 2 Comments »
For close to a month now, I’ve been patiently waiting for Indian summer to set in.
I’ve optimistically/delusionally put off closing up the garden in the hopes that some unseasonably warm weather would drop by and bring the masses of tomatoes on my vines to fruition.
But, with the Everyman and I leaving for a week’s vacation at the cottage, it appeared I would have no such luck, so rather than hoping for the best while we were away and potentially losing all of the tomatoes to frost, I sucked it up and stripped the plants bare over the weekend.
The damage?
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Tags: Cooking, Gardening, jalapenos, Preservation, Recipes, salsa, tomatoes
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As nothing more than an honorary Italian, I decided some time over the course of the summer that this year I wasn’t going to “do the tomatoes”.
We still had plenty of canned whole romas and sauce from last year, and the bruschetta recipe I’d canned turned out to be one big, mushy failure, so it didn’t seem necessary to go through all of that dirty, steamy work again this fall. But, as with all of my best laid plans, more exuberant intentions got firmly in the way.
And so, that was how on the 1st of October I found myself reaching out to every resource I could for advice on where to procure a few bushels of roma tomatoes. The time of year coupled with our supremely awful growing season left me with some pretty slim pickins’. Even my old standby, Fiesta Farms was completely sold out of their cache of bushels, with every grocery store I contacted between here and Mississauga all but laughing at me. One gentleman from Highland Farms was particularly morose, simply stating the the tomatoes were all done, in a manner similar to one used to inform someone of a death in the family.
But, nobody can ever say I do things by half measures.
Wracking my brain for alternatives, I remembered the many organic grocers we’d tested out prior to settling on Bob a few years back. After a few more calls, I found that Front Door Organics had two bushels of organic local tomatoes left, and in that moment I decided I was taking all of them. Last year I processed close to 150 pounds of tomatoes. This year, I was going to have to make due with 40. Of course, the one catch to the situation was that in order to buy the bushels, I had to order one of their weekly “fresh boxes”, because you can add to an order, but a fresh box is mandatory. Total cost for 2 bushels of tomatoes plus a fresh box? Just slightly above $100. However, I was only personally using 32 of the 40 pounds of tomatoes, and the fresh box replaced my weekly jaunt to the farmer’s market, so the actual cost for 32 pounds was $55. Still steeper than last year’s $15/bushel, but these were organic tomatoes, and it was the end of the season, so I’m sure the price was reflective of supply and demand.
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Tags: Books, catsup, conserva, Cooking By Hand, Fiesta Farms, Foodgawker, Front Door Organics, Golda's Kitchen, Highland Farms, Paul Bertolli, Preservation, Purveyors, Quattro Staggione, Recipes, tomatoes
Posted in Books, Preservation, Purveyors, Recipes | 2 Comments »
The slightest chill has been in the air when I leave the house in the morning lately, which is an indicator of one thing in particular;
Summer is coming to a close.
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Tags: beets, celery, figs, Gardening, peppers, tomatoes
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Here, my friends, is one of the real reasons I go to the lengths that I do to take care of my unruly rooftop garden.
What would from the outside appear to be a rather pedestrian sandwich, is actually the pinnacle of summer indulgences for me; the toasted tomato sandwich.
The bread? Baked fresh Sunday morning. The tomatoes? A handful of sun-warmed San Marzanos from the roof. And the bacon? That would be a meaty plank sawed from the slab I cured and smoked recently.
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Tags: bacon, Baking, bread, Cooking, Gardening, tomatoes
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Picked these from my garden last night.
Amazingly, even though this has been a pitiful year for tomatoes, mine have come through with a minimum of complication, aside from the fucking aphids.
There are a few other varieties that haven’t quite ripened yet, but these 10 provide a pretty good snapshot of what I’ve been nurturing for the last few months.
All varieties were chosen for their superiority over bland, supermarket cardboard tomatoes.
In case you were wondering, from left to right, we have;
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Tags: Gardening, tomatoes
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At this time last year, I was up to my eyeballs in lusciously imperfect tomatoes.
But, like almost everyone else this year, my garden’s been slow to blossom. About 2 or 3 weeks ago I was finally able to start harvesting close to a handful of mixed cherry tomatoes per day. Even though we’re now a couple of days into September, I still haven’t tasted the first full size fruit yet.
As with the red ones above, I’m not sure what varietals these (and the one below) are. I don’t recall planting any white varieties, but these tomatoes seem awfully pale to me. Perhaps they might be garden peaches…
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Tags: artichokes, beets, celery, figs, Gardening, jalapenos, lemons, poblanos, potatoes, shallots, sunchokes, tomatoes
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Like most people, summer is my favourite time of year.
But the moment I look forward to most is the inevitable tomato boon that starts to overtake the garden during the first few weeks of August. This year my own garden has not yet produced more than a half dozen ripe cherry tomatoes, but the farmer’s market has been a great source for supplementing my growing tomato desire. Of course, once you have those perfect globular specimens, there’s always the question of what to make with them?
I used to think I had a clear winner when it came to the best use of a ripe summer tomato, but then I met the Everyman who introduced me to the joys of a toasted tomato sandwich. My original answer would have been a batch of my mother’s succulent and tangy bruschetta, but now there are Caprese salads to nosh (improved by the recent discovery via Malcolm Jolley of a local producer of bufala mozzarella), tomato consommés to savour (thanks to Lucien for that revelation), mini tomatoes to pop into your mouth whole and enjoy like candy, and my quick and easy, simplified version of a primavera/carbonera pasta.
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Tags: Cooking, Good Food Revelation, Lucien, Malcolm Jolley, pasta, peas, Recipes, Restaurants, tomatoes
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The Everyman and I had company over for dinner on the weekend, which necessitated an early morning jaunt to the farmer’s market to procure the appropriate supplies.
Whilst there, I came across some dainty squash blossoms at my regular heirloom tomato stand and though I knew they’d be too “out there” for our guests, I couldn’t resist picking up a clamshell for myself, anyway.
I’ve eaten the blossoms in restaurants before, but never bothered to prepare them at home. After staring at them in the fridge for a few days, I settled on what I considered would be a complimentary, yet homey stuffing. A lot of people will tell you that squash blossoms should be stuffed with cheese, or dipped in batter and deep fried, but I say no. Instead, I modified a stuffing recipe that I often use for peppers, to produce these tiny morsels of delectability.
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Tags: beef, bell peppers, blossoms, Cooking, parmagiano reggiano, Recipes, squash, tomatoes
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Just a quick pictorial to share what I’ve been working on with you…
It’s hard to make raw meat look sexy (doubly so when it happens to be sausage) but these juicy links of homemade smoky poblano and pork sausage are just crying out for a grill and some Mexican-inspired menus. Tequila anyone?
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Tags: Baking, bread, csabai, lemons, New Projects, poblanos, pork, Preservation, salami, sausage, strawberries, tomatoes, Trinity Bellwoods
Posted in Baking, New Projects, Preservation | 1 Comment »
I put the first half of the garden in this weekend.
And, as is wont to happen with the best laid plans, I came back the next day to find a portion of my seedlings dug up by some wily rooftop rapscallion.
I also learned that if I want to plant my seedlings in toilet paper rolls again next year, I need to come up with a better method for labelling.
All told I planted close to 60 tomato plants this year, and close to half are unidentifiable because the rolls have turned black and almost completely disintegrated. So, it looks like this year I might have a tomato mystery garden. Which is a bit of a bummer because I specifically planted a bunch of new varieties this year, and I probably won’t be able to differentiate them. I’m sure they’ll still be tasty though. I’m just hoping that my pink zapotecs were among the ones that survived, because they look like such beautiful specimens.
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Tags: Gardening, pests, tomatoes
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Every day that passes brings the gardening season that much closer (fingers crossed that we’re done with snow). To while away the time I’ve become hooked on something I read about over at You Grow Girl several months ago… Gardening Mama! It’s a game from the people who making Cooking Mama, which I also obsessively love, but more than that, it keeps my hands busy while I’m waiting for the universe to hurry up and warm up outside already…
Though I may have let the past few months pass in relative silence on the garden front, you can be assured that I’ve not been dormant. From taking my seed catalogs with me on Christmas vacation so I could pick out my new projects (yes, I am a garden dork and I was mocked mercilessly about it the entire vacation), to harassing the people at West Coast Seeds when an order didn’t arrive, to finally breaking out the potting soil and mucking about in my basement laundry room, the last 3 months contained their fair share of preparatory activities.
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What Baby Artichokes Look Like
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Advanced Growth
Project Sustainability 2009 is well underway, with approximately 60 seedlings chilling out on the grow tower. Considering that last year was my first attempt at growing anything more involved than a cactus, I was pretty impressed with the end results. There were definitely lessons learned, and notes made about plants I wouldn’t bother to grow again (read: corn and those weeds I thought were beans). But this year, along with bringing back favorites and successes from 2008, I also picked a bunch of new plants to try. As our diet becomes increasingly varied, the memories of how explosively flavorful my completely organic, fresh picked produce was last year inspired me to try my hand at even more. I can never replace Bob (our organic delivery guy) or our CSA farmshare from Zephyr Organics, but being able to combine two of my all-consuming passions is just too good to pass up. Plus, creating your own tiny microcosm means being able to experiment with more unique and just plain bizarre produce that larger growers might not bother with.
So far on the rooftop roster this year we have:
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Tags: artichokes, beets, carrots, celeriac, Cooking Mama, figs, Gardening, Gardening Mama, Homeland Garden Centre, hot peppers, Lee Valley, lemons, lettuce, limes, New Projects, potatoes, Project Sustainability, raspberries, shallots, strawberries, sunchokes, tomatoes, Urban Harvest, West Coast Seeds, You Grow Girl, Zephyr Organics
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The Everyman (being a stinkhead) denied my attempt to get us to Cowbell for dinner last night, the charlatan! Through a fortuitous accident at work regarding an inability to attend a client dinner, I ended up with a gift certificate to the restaurant of my choice as consolation. There was no question that Cowbell was the de facto answer, since I’m almost positive that The Black Hoof does not do gift certificates, and sometimes I just don’t want to queue up for my dinner. Alas, plans were thwarted and that story will have to wait for another post and another day…
Having watched an episode of the third season of Glutton For Punishment the other day, (in which Bob attempts to topple a Guinness world record in flapjack cooking) I had a mad craving for some silver dollars for dinner (a second choice to the aforementioned Cowbell, that is). After flipping the batter fantastic on my griddler, I was duly sated by a stack of chocolate chip pancakes, stretched out and ready to dip into a good book. Sitting on the couch, sipping my champers and nibbling an after-dinner square of Mo’ Bacon, I thought to myself, this is what contentment feels like. In reality it was probably a dose of tryptophan… 
The book I’ve been devouring lately is called Heirloom: Notes From An Accidental Tomato Farmer by Tim Stark. It chronicles the haphazard life of a man who doesn’t quite know what to make of himself, until one day he suddenly decides to pack it all in and become a crazed tomato farmer. Being somewhat new to gardening myself, this story hits pretty close to home. The more I garden, the more obvious it becomes to me that I would love to do this for a living (if I didn’t have to worry about making money at it) too. And it’s a true story! I haven’t gotten more than 100 pages into the book yet, but it’s one I just can’t put down, and have been known to read in bed until I fall asleep across the pages. It’s also shaping up to be a nice tale of small-time farmer triumphing against the adversity of corporate farm USA; always a heartening message. I suggest you check it out.
Until next time…
Tags: Bob Blumer, Books, Cowbell, Glutton For Punishment, Grant Van Gameren, Heirloom, Mark Cutrara, The Black Hoof, Tim Stark, tomatoes, Vosges Haut Chocolat
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