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Ripe yet? It’s tough to know.

I have 150lbs on the back porch right now

Just like every year for the past several years, some of the families in the neighbourhood got together and ordered tomatoes.

Let me be a little more specific: Some of the Italian families who know the value of a basement full of tomato sauce took pity on me and allowed me to ride on their produce-ordering coattails. Apparently about 30 cases of Roma tomatoes showed up on Friday. Five were mine.

One of the neighbours has a food mill. She and her sister turn their tomatoes into passata (crushed tomatoes) with the mill, and they always allow us to borrow it, as who wants to store a food mill for 364 days of the year when you can rent one for a day with a decent bottle of red wine?

Here’s the issue: She gets to deal with her tomatoes first. We work around her schedule and every year it isn’t a problem.

Doesn’t mean I don’t worry, though. The tomatoes last year were perfectly ripe right off the truck. This year, not so sure. Not only were they about a week later than last year being delivered, they also needed at least a week to ripen up. It’s Tuesday. We have had them for 5 days. They’re looking pretty good.

Here’s the question: Do I trust the neighbour who thinks they need a few more days? Or do I trust my gut and do them early? I’m heading out of town this weekend so I either do them on Thursday (2 days’ hence) or wait until Monday.

Will they be too far gone on Monday? Will they be ripe enough on Thursday?

This is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night, you know.

I think I will wait until Monday. I just had one and although it was incredibly tasty, it still had a fair amount of crunch. I think there is still time.

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Green Thumb. Of a Sort.

See? The cucumbers did actually grow. We have had several from my plants so far…

Every time I look at a vegetable garden, my first impression is that I just can’t see why anyone would bother. Strange, I know, given the fact that I have a garden myself.

Stranger still, given that I know what can come out of a garden. Somehow, I just can’t shake the notion that there isn’t much there.

  • Even if I can conjure up a cutting board like this in a matter of a couple of minutes out in the garden. And then a couple of days later I can do it again.
  • Even if my mother–in-law (who, admittedly, has quite the garden) can come in with endless armloads of produce

It’s almost as if I have some sort of an inherent inability to accept that you can actually get a lot of produce out of a small garden. I’m actually at the point now where I just ignore my first impressions and I start picking. There always seems to be more than enough out there, even if I have to sample all kinds of things along the way.

And, my God, it tastes great.

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The Gift of Zucchini

Come back here! You need more courgette!

Having a neighbour who has a zucchini plant is so commonplace that even referring to it as a cliché seems strange, as everyone knows someone who has a zucchini plant. Or, I suppose, everyone knows someone who planted zucchini and ended up with too many to count and had to give them away. 

They’re incredibly productive. Personally, I have never actually grown a zucchini plant, but I do have cucumbers out there and I did grow a pumpkin one year, accidentally – that’s poorly-rotted compost for you.

I’m sure there is some sort of a joke about a neighbour with a zucchini plant. I did Google a few, but most were strange puns and had to do with ‘squash’. 

Regardless, the near-perfect specimen above was given to us by a friend. she also gave us a yellow one. 

I bet it’ll be amazing. Seriously. I’m going to shred it and mix it with ground turkey and some herbs and spices and make turkey burgers. The recipe is from Jerusalem and it is a true family favourite. 

There is more to this blog post, though. More than a snicker about yet another zucchini.

I remember back to when I used to assist a food photographer. On shoot days we would have a kitchen full of food. When the food stylists shopped they made sure we had enough of every ingredient for any and all eventualities. Often we would be shooting a product – packaging or menu items – and we would have more than enough of that, too.  

At the end of every shoot day we would put together a bunch of bags of groceries – for the clients as well as for the assistant (me). The photographer would take his share of the spoils, too.

I remember John, the photographer, commenting on how the perceived value of the gift of food was far beyond its actual value. I am always amazed at the response from people when a gift of food is offered.

Even if it is a much-maligned zucchini.

Grilled zucchini, zucchini bread… Those turkey burgers… And it’ll taste even better because of the gift, no question.

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Pickles

I’m on the left

This is one of those great photos (not a great photo, but bear with me, here) where the subject is straightforward but the setting is a little odd.

My mom took this photo. I’m on the left. Middle of three kids.

My mother didn’t do anything in half-measures, although the other Catholic families in the neighbourhood certainly had more children than she did. She was one of 5, and she had three kids. The Cruickshanks had 9 kids, I think, and the Mahonys had 9 as well. My mom used to comment that Laura Cruickshank was three times the mother she was, mathematically speaking.

But no half measures. Look at the shelf behind us lovely children.

What the heck? Enough pickles to feed a baseball stadium on a busy Sunday afternoon.

One year, my mom decided to make dill pickles, so she made about a dozen 2-gallon jars. We had a lot of pickles.

Thankfully, they were rather good, but I would be lying if I relished (ha! that’s a pun, that is) the prospect of eating even my own share of dozens of Kosher Dills.

In the ensuing years I have learned to love pickles again. But we only buy them one small jar at a time.

As for not doing things in half-measures, that mindset has, unfortunately, rubbed off on me. I have 150lbs of roma tomatoes ordered for sauce at the end of the month.

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You actually eat that?

It’s actually pretty tasty if you enjoy this sort of thing.

So the fellow who introduced me to oysters also had me try mussels at some point later in our culinary excursions.

I don’t enjoy them as much as I do oysters. Well, I shouldn’t say that, a pot of moules frites is a delight, but not for the reasons you might think.

This is a traditional pot of mussels, complete with an incredible collection of green things – in this case, green onions, leeks, celery… Probably some shallots and some onions.

And then the whole thing is cooked in butter, garlic and white wine.

Throw in some mussels, steam to perfection and hey-presto, lunch.

But for me the best part isn’t the mussels. They’re great and everything, but the best part is scooping heaps of the greens on a piece of grilled sourdough. Which I did with abandon. I don’t think anyone noticed how enamored I was with the part of my lunch that wasn’t the main attraction. Well, if they did they didn’t make any mention of it, which is just as well.

Without a doubt the tastiest and best part of the meal. I wonder what would happen if I ordered a pot of mussels, and asked them to hold the mussels.

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Did it again

Crowded the pan. Again.

Here is how this worked – I pulled out a pan to fry up some spuds that I had cooked the night before. I figured I could give them a bit of heat in some butter, crisp them up. You know, like dinner hashbrowns or something like that.

Dinnertime was looming and I had leftovers to heat up.

Right, the pan was hot, and full of butter or oil or both… And when I dropped in the potatoes, they totally filled the pan. Crowded it, I daresay.

As a consequence the potatoes heated up but I didn’t get nearly the browning on them that I wanted. It was an epic failure of not very much at all, because no one sent the dish back, and there were no complaints among the distinguished diners that evening.

As my mother would say, “you won’t be poisoned”

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Cucumbers. Well, they aren’t cucumbers, yet…

Brand-new cucumber plants. To be planted and then lovingly nurtured... And then who knows what will come next?
All 6 seeds germinated. I’m not sure what I’ll do with 6 cucumber plants, aside from have a lot of cucumbers…

My mother-in-law gave us some cucumber seeds. I planted 6 of them, and lo and behold, all 6 have germinated. I was asked to make (and I did) a sort of wooden obelisk (photo to come later, when it isn’t pouring with rain outside) upon which the cucumber plants can grow. The idea is that the cucumbers themselves will be kept out of the dirt and won’t be as likely to be ravaged by slugs and the like.

So, I’ll have lots of cucumbers. Apparently these plants are rather prolific.

And then what? It’s kinda like the proverbial zucchini plant. How do you know your neighbour has a zucchini plant? Well, they’ll arrive on a daily basis with gourds a-plenty. I fear cucumber is the same way, but you can’t grill them on the barbecue, you can’t make muffins or loaf out of them…

Pickles? Gherkins? Lots of salads? Not really sure what I’ll do if I have an embarrassment of cucumber riches, but I’ll deal with that if and when it happens. Currently, they’re about an inch high, so I best not get ahead of myself.

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