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to Cook’s Corner at California Gardens!
Tomatoes
Every
spring my dad planted a huge vegetable garden. It was full of rows
of the typical tomatoes, fiery hot chiles, potatoes and the more
adventurous rutabaga, eggplant and okra. The chiles were all his...
after the time my little sister touched the seeds and then rubbed her eyes
none of us were willing to go anywhere near those toxic plants posing as
food.
My mom, who was used to having the house all to herself while we were off at
school, would start to feel claustrophobic a few weeks into the summer so
we were sent to play outside. "If you're not bleeding and need
to see the doctor, I don't need to hear about it," she would tell us
as what must have been one of the last holdouts before helicopter
parenting took over.
And
so out we would go into the wilderness of our backyard. Armed with
bows made from sticks and bits of yarn we would hunt for our food, filling
our playhouse with imaginary bears, just like in The Little House on
the Prairie. When our adventuring made our stomachs start to
growl as loud as the bears we were hunting we turned to gathering, picking
fresh apricots, apples, and plums from the trees and drinking cool water
straight from the garden house "stream". There were always
more than enough apples for us and for our dad; since the fruit on the top
branches was out of our reach he got to pick and eat those for
himself.
The
tomatoes were another story entirely. As the oldest, I was just
about the same height as the tallest tomato plant so no fruit was out of
our reach. Further, our small hands and wrists meant that we were
much better equipped to retrieve the fruit from the tomato cage. We
would squeeze our hands between the bars to pick a tomato, passing it from
one hand to the other until we were able to pass it over the top of the
wire cage. We would pop the cherry tomatoes like candy and eat the
plum tomatoes like apples.
My
dad never gave up hoping we would leave a tomato or two behind. He'd
get home from work excited to eat the tomatoes he had seen on the vine
when he watered the garden that morning. But every time he walked
through the door saying he was on his way to pick the cherry tomatoes,
we'd say "Oh ,we ate those already! They were yummy!!"
Recipe Links:
Roasted Tomato and Pepper Dipping Sauce
Super Simple Cherry Tomato Pasta Sauce
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