The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Sports & Leisure => Topic started by: Carlos del Vaca on August 02, 2006, 01:53:00 am
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We've discussed the growing of tomatoes elsewhere, but I don't feel like looking for it to restart it.
So, at least this outrageously hot weather is good for something. My beefsteak plant, after languishing all summer, has shot up in the last 10 days or so. Looking good. The brandywine, on the other hand, looks close to death.
Anybody heard of planting hairy vetch in your tomato patch in the off-season? How'd it go?
http://www.doityourself.com/stry/tomatovetch
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All I know on the subject is that tomatoes are my favorite food. Seriously, homegrown tomatoes are the best thing in the world, just slice and add some salt, no need to do anything else. I can even eat store bought tomatoes like apples.
Come to think of it, every tomato I have had has been pretty much better than average this summer (except one time--but it was at subway).
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Down here in Atlanta, the heat and lack of rain have destroyed our squatters' garden tomato plants. The Roma plant still yields, but now it's only a couple fruit every couple days instead of a bunch of fruit every day. It's almost done with all the fruit it has. The beefsteak plants never had the yield of the Roma, neither in volume nor flavor, and stopped showing new fruit in late June. They're almost all picked now. The cucumbers, squash, and peppers all died a month ago, and the spinach, pole beans, and lettuce didn't last through May. The beets are still plumping in their raised bed, but languishing - the greens are all sagging to the soil, and we can't water it fast enough to keep them from dying.
Ah, well. Maybe next year!
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Certainly can't beat homegrown. My greenhouse has been quite fruitful the last few weeks, with a few varieties as well as some strawberries earlier in the summer. The tomatos have been fantastic, often just halved, drizzled with olive oil and served with warm bread, mozzarella and some prosciutto. That's if they get past the greenhouse door before being eaten!
As for store bought... The supermarket chain who bought out the Safeways in town has the worst grocery section ever. The tomatos they do just taste of nothing. And that's if they don't go mouldy within two days of purchase. I'm almost tempted to start growing tomatos hydroponically so I can have them year round, but it would be an awful lot of hassle.
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Cherry and plum tomatoes... :-[
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It costs a damn arm and a leg to buy these ingredients in rural Alaska, but here's my favorite and most indulgent appetizer, EVER. If you live someplace where you can get fresh mozzarella and ripe tomatoes at any time of the day or night, be thankful. I haven't had fresh mozzarella since I was in Denver last June (cue tiny violins).
- Slice a ripe tomato into wheels and arrange on a plate.
- Sprinkle with salt (sea salt is great)
- Drizzle with balsamic vinegar (balsamic reduction if you're feeling fancy...or carmelized onions from the Achewood cookbook if you're feeling fancier).
If the store has them, serve with fresh buffalo mozzarella atop each slice and a fresh basil leaf. If you're looking to reduce fat in your diet, it's just as good with just tomatoes, salt, and balsamic vinegar. I've also had fresh sage with this dish, and it's just as tasty as basil.
Weep with joy over each heavenly bite. You have just created one hell of a delicious appetizer.
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Oh sweet Jesus are tomatos ever bad in AK. I feel for you, linnea.
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I'm sorry y'all are satanic worshipping psyco minions 'cause tomatos are basically the devil.
Fruit or Vegetable? Who cares when you're supposed to eat something that looks embryonically un-done when you cut it up to eat it.
BLECH! to quote a famous beagle.
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BOO TO THAT S_T
Tomatoes are basically like treasure
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Saying that just basically proves you should generally have a (beef)stake driven through the heart.
Tomatoes are not a treasure, they are something people throw at others because they don't want fuck_all to do with the nasty bastards. All full of jelly lookin' stuff...
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yeah, seriously, I do not get tomatoes. They are not appetizing to me, unless they are in a Salsa or other Sauce.
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Sub_T, inev, you're officially On Notice.
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I do not like raw tomatoes either. Cooked they are wonderful. Raw they are slimy.
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oh man, for some reason I never realized that it was a differentiation between cooked and raw tomatoes.
The only thing that doesn't explain is Salsa... but that still kind of bothers me. When I can get away with it, I get the saucy part, without the tomato chunks.
this is only really taste-effective when it's my mom's salsa, though. That salsa is so motherfuck*ng good.
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my mom's salsa, though. That salsa is so motherfuck*ng good.
Creepy!
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oh, wow. Ew.
hell of Oedipal. Gross. For some reason this reminds me of when I figured out, by smell, that my ex-girlfriend used the same shampoo as my mom.
... if I remember correctly, I made her change shampoos.
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Dude, everybody uses Pantene
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I'm gonna side with the couple of minority views on this one:
Tomatoes, tasty in theory, but the texture of slices or whole tomatoes is weird and off-putting.
Ground-up beyond recognition or in very small chunks, I am definitely pro-tomato.
Ditto for oranges. Great taste but chewing on it makes me think I'm chewing on the insides of my mouth.
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You know you're supposed to peel the orange before you eat it, right?
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Go to your local grocery store now and buy a box of clementines. Hell of tasty, seedless, they peel up really nice, and they are small enough that they have little to no texture issues like oranges sometimes do.
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Go to your local grocery store now and buy a box of clementines. Hell of tasty, seedless, they peel up really nice, and they are small enough that they have little to no texture issues like oranges sometimes do.
oh jesus clementines are the fuck*ng win.
I had an ex who used Pantene. It smells nice, but I'm a niche perfume snob now who uses Aveda shampoo and thinks about fragrance too goddamn much.
And yes, it took me a while to learn to like regular tomatoes. I used to only buy Roma tomatoes and rinse away all the nasty goo, and only eat the solid tomato parts. Once you slice a ripe tomato and throw on some crispy sea salt and delicious, rich balsamic vinegar and some fresh buffalo mozzarella... trust me, you won't care anymore. The flavor is incomparable.
Nabu... you are right. Out here tomatoes are about $8.00 a pound. No joke. Sometimes we get good ones, though. They have a hothouse nursery in Anchorage that sends us "vine-ripened" tomatoes.
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I just remember tomatoes being the veritable definition of mealy. I fuck*ng hate mealy.
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no, I mean, the worst part about the shampoo thing was that it was some bizarre, really specific shampoo.
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I think you need to eat good and fresh tomatoes to not get the mealy or god-forbid slimy texture.
Slimy is what happens when tomatoes start to rot. Stay away.
Mealy is what happens when they're grown too quickly with chemicals. Stay away.
Maybe I was spoiled by living next to New Jersey where they grow great tomatoes, because I haven't found a decent tomato out here in Chicago yet, but they do exist.
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Somebody nice, add some basil and you've got an insalata caprese, a fine Italian salad - you can seriously just sprinkle on dried basil and it counts.
Also: New Jersey! The Garden State! It's not what you'd expect... from New Jersey!
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Somebody nice, add some basil and you've got an insalata caprese, a fine Italian salad - you can seriously just sprinkle on dried basil and it counts.
Also: New Jersey! The Garden State! It's not what you'd expect... from New Jersey!
Oh man... I might have to bust open my piggy bank and go buy some tomatoes at the store, if they've got any. Jeeeeez, that sounds delicious.
Also, completely unrelated: I had a really weird dream last night about jough! We were in Philadelphia and it was very cold. We were waiting for a plane, I think. I don't remember much else, unfortunately. Pretend people from the intarwub showing up in dreams -- does this happen to anyone else?
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I had a dream once about Paul killing himself in front of all of us. It was really ambiguous whether it was purposeful or an accident. And the way that he did it (perfect backflip, his head hit a perfect 90-degree angle on this cliff) reminded me of the thing where Roast Beef wanted kids to throw gutterballs at his funeral.
and of course, as it happened we suddenly were all posting about it on the board. Despite it happening literally in front of us.
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I was lucky enough to meet and spend time with Paul last year. Paul strikes me as the person least likely to commit suicide I know. I'm not criticizing your dream, I'm just sayin'.
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Sub_T - seriously, do you not like pizza, or lasagna or... anything. I hated tomatoes as a kid, but now I like 'em. It's really about getting them fresh from the garden. Tomatoes from the grocery store are bad news.
Inev - I was just watching a documentary about smell, and they were talking about about how daughters are programmed to instinctively dislike the smell of their fathers. They did not say anything about sons though. That is hell a creepy in my books. If my SO started wearing Old Spice I would probably cry. That is a fatherly smell if there ever was one.
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... about how daughters are programmed to instinctively dislike the smell of their fathers. They did not say anything about sons though.
There's a reason Oedipus Rex is considered a classic.
Also, when my daughter was tiny I found I could get her to sleep more soundly if I put one of my shirts in her crib. Even now (she's 4) I'm the one she throws up on when she comes in to our room feeling poorly.
Maybe it changes around puberty. I won't be looking forward to that change if so.
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Sub_T - seriously, do you not like pizza, or lasagna or... anything. I hated tomatoes as a kid, but now I like 'em. It's really about getting them fresh from the garden. Tomatoes from the grocery store are bad news.
Pulped tomatoes cooked up and mixed with other tasty things are fine in that hey no longer have innard goo that is fuck*ng ridiculous to consider food. Even a hot ass tomato on a sandwich or charred meaat bread item is OK. Raw ass tomatoes popping cold goo when you much 'em is like eating baby birds...WRONG and not food.
This, of course, is opinion. Rocky and Hulk Hogan ate raw eggs for the camera and I wouldn't fuck*ng consider that either.
IS NOT LIKING CERTAIN FORMS OF TOMATOS A TOTAL HUNT'S MOVE?
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Pulped tomatoes cooked up and mixed with other tasty things are fine in that hey no longer have innard goo that is fuck*ng ridiculous to consider food. Even a hot ass tomato on a sandwich or charred meaat bread item is OK. Raw ass tomatoes popping cold goo when you much 'em is like eating baby birds...WRONG and not food.
This, of course, is opinion. Rocky and Hulk Hogan ate raw eggs for the camera and I wouldn't fuck*ng consider that either.
IS NOT LIKING CERTAIN FORMS OF TOMATOS A TOTAL HUNT'S MOVE?
It's food. Don't eat stuff that you don't like. I like tomatoes, but I can't eat cherry or grape tomatoes. They're too much like eating an eyeball. Gross.
However, even if you don't like fruit and veg in general, you should force yourself to eat them at least a couple times a week because they're good for you. Then again, we're omnivores, and we can turn just about anything into usable energy.
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Even now (she's 4) I'm the one she throws up on when she comes in to our room feeling poorly.
Maybe it changes around puberty. I won't be looking forward to that change if so.
Hey, different strokes for different folks.
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Urgh. Now that I reread it, that's certainly one way to interpret what I wrote. I think I meant that she found my scent comforting - and that would be something I miss later. A can for your sick mind, though.
As for tomatoes - I like them all, and in a variety of guises - including raw. My brother and I used to sabotage dinnertime with cherry tomatoes. There's no more effective way to ensure chaos at the table than firing tomato innards "accidentally" onto your family members.
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Man, give me a nice smallish ripe tomato of pretty much any variety (except grape tomatoes, they're not even tomatoes) and a salt shaker and I'm in heaven.
Suck it, haters.
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Yes.
My favorite food of all time is a fresh grown tomato slice with salt.
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Man, give me a nice smallish ripe tomato of pretty much any variety (except grape tomatoes, they're not even tomatoes) and a salt shaker and I'm in heaven.
Suck it, haters.
Hahahahah! A wee can for you, good sirrah!
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I'm serious. Grape tomatoes aren't tomatoes. They're peppers.
I must have read it on Wikipedia.
Or heard it on the Colbert Report.
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I'm serious. Grape tomatoes aren't tomatoes. They're peppers.
I must have read it on Wikipedia.
Or heard it on the Colbert Report.
But peppers aren't peppers either. They're chilis. It's all so confusing.