Italian Girls Are Saucy

What I learned in my garden so far this summer:  I'm a Saucy Italian Girl.  Let me explain...

I didn't start the garden for economic reasons.  I don't continue to garden for economic reasons.  I'm fortunate enough to not have to count on what I grow to feed myself.  In fact, if there has been one theme of this blog, it's that for me the joy of garden is sharing it.

I also don't tend to keep track of the store value of what I grow like many other gardeners.  However, today's early morning tomato haul seemed particularly HEAVY, so out of curiosity I put those puppies on a scale and lookie here:  almost 4 pounds of tomatoes (some wouldn't fit on the plate!).  And yes, that's not counting the plate. The scale was set back to zero, so that's all unadulterated red, juicy TO-MA-TERS.

I planted only heirloom varieties this year:  three in total.  Don't ask me what kind, I can't see the tags anymore - it's a JUNGLE out there!   But, let's just say I went shopping at Whole Foods (which I rarely do, but let's just say...).   Their heirlooms are somewhere in the range of 3.99 a pound, so I'm guessing I've got about $15 or so dollars worth of produce on that scale.   At $2.99 a seedling and (who knows really, but let's guess) about 30 more pounds of tomatoes yet to ripen, I'm thinking I made good on my initial investment.  If only my retirement portfolio had that kind of return!

Funny thing is... after three very elegant caprese salads in the past two weeks, all wonderful excuses to dine and wine with friends and colleagues, I've come to the conclusion that what I really want are some good old fashioned San Marzanos to make pasta sauce with.  I'm already buckling under the pressure to showcase the heirlooms in meals!   I just want to can or freeze some tomato sauce!

Turns out, in the end, I'm really just a simple, saucy Italian gal at heart.

A Garden's Story

They say that transformative art is "the personal made universal". 

I have just finished reading Joyce Carol Oate’s A WIDOW’S STORY, the tale of her first year of (sudden) widowhood after many decades of marriage.  Despite never having had (thankfully) a dead husband, I was struck by how much her grief resonated with me.  In truth, grief and despair, no matter the source or trigger, is grief and despair.  Battling illness can mimic the same. 

The descriptions of her journey through widowhood including having only energy enough to change television channels, juggling a public work persona which carries on but depletes one of all energy, the deep pain of loneliness that keeps one asking ‘why bother’ when whether one has had a good or bad day it's all the same once arriving back at an empty house, the sleeplessness and then the challenge (as she describes it) to slowly blow oneself up like a large balloon each morning, and mostly intensely, the sense of such delicate threads of family and friends that are holding one down, tethered to earth, rather than simply cutting them and flying free in all the forms that might mean, all hit close to home for me.   Her personal had become universal. 

Ray Smith, her husband, had been a gardener.  The back yard was his domain.  As that first Spring arrives and the garden awakens, she understands that her choice is to let it grow over with weeds or plant her own garden in its place. 

She notes, “A gardener is one for whom the prospect of the future is not threatening, but happy”.

She dons his gloves and his clothes and begins to do the Spring errands she watched her husband do each year, but instead of vegetables which she has no appetite for, she plants things that will bring her some joy – perennials versus annuals.  In doing so, “his” garden is now “their” garden. 

She writes about working in the garden to create something in his memory and says, “… and I am working with my hands, and with my back, and my legs --- for working in the soil is working.  And so, as I am working, I am thinking – but the kind of thinking I am doing isn’t anything like the kind of thinking I would do elsewhere, still less in bed, in the nest.  This is a kind of thinking in tandem with working --- some part or parts of my brain is roused, alive".

Her husband’s garden is what finally begins to connect her back to her life.  It places body and mind together.  I suspect any gardener will say this is true no matter the reason they themselves happen to be digging in that dirt. 

And so, like her tale of grief, she reveals the garden to be its own form of simple, transformative art.  My personal becoming universal...

I Ate Tomatoes Over The Sink...

 

Tonight I ate tomatoes over the sink.  Well, just about over the sink.  I did it because I could.  There was no one here to stop me.

I ate them over the sink because they were ripe and juicy and so unexpectedly good after a Fall, Winter, Spring, and almost half a Summer worth of useless, tasteless, crappy, mealy, hot house-flown in, store bought tomatoes.   I ate them over the sink because once I started I could not stop. 

It began in this way….  You see, I’ve been hoarding the ripe tomatoes this week – the very first of the season for me.   I’ve left them to go really ripe on the vine, not taken a moment sooner.  I have a business lunch at the loft on Friday and wanted to impress and confound with some caprese.   What could be more charming?   But, tonight as I was searching for leftovers to brighten up some brown rice pasta with pesto I had brewing, I saw the Mozzarella di Bufala Campana would not be “technically” good by then.  It couldn’t go to waste. 

So, I sliced ONE small tomato, an heirloom variety that has grown so bushy and my gardening notes are so woefully scant that I can no longer see the tag and have no other reference at this point to put a name to it.  On the same plant, the tomatoes themselves range from San Marzano-like to more delicate bell shaped drops of deep orange-red that gently fold and curve into themselves as if to be wearing their best Victorian skirt to the “ball of the year”.

I sliced it, sprinkled a tiny bit of salt and piled on a small slab of the mozz.  Oh My.  It wasn’t quite a Jersey Tomato from my youth, (with a capital J and a capital T), but the flesh was just the right amount of acidic and then a surprise, as the sweet, sweet juices came rushing in to make it right.  It tasted – I kid you not - RED.  You could feel each ray of sunshine that had brought it from green to red to plump and juicy dancing on your tongue.  It tasted like SUMMER.  It tasted like PLEASURE.

And so I had another.  And another.  And, yes, another.  And shamefully, another.

“Slice, salt, mozz, groan with pleasure”. 

I ate them over the sink to catch the juices and because I ate them so fast, one right after another, I couldn’t move from that place;  the pesto pasta abandoned.  Honestly, it would have been gluttonous, but for the size of the tomatoes! 

I ate them over the sink because I could.  There was no one to stop me.  And, still, with each bite of such taste-flavor-juiciness, I wished someone, you, were here to moan and groan and hmmm and yummmm with delight in what I’ve grown and how good the earth and wind and sun and water were to me and these lovely little tomatoes.

I wished someone, you, were here to share in the sweet goodness that were once my bowl of tomatoes.  And I wouldn't even be bothered if you ate them over the sink, too.