The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

This is the End...of the Tomato Season

I mentioned this song, “The End” in my last post.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land

Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the King's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold

The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we'll do the rest

The blue bus is callin' us
The blue bus is callin' us
Driver, where you taken' us

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...

Then he paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside

~ Jim Morrison

This is not the end of the song but I decided to stop there because it gets a skosh violent.

People end their tomato season in many different ways. I like to end my tomato season by singing “The End” by Jim Morrison and the Doors, harvesting all my viable tomatoes and making a big vat of sauce.

I try to freeze the sauce but I usually end up using it all up before I can.

Now, Jim Morrison originally wrote “The End” about breaking up with his girlfriend, but as he performed the song over and over again he started to add to it and this is what he eventually said about it’s meaning:

“I really don't know. I think it's sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that it could be almost anything you want it to be."

I like to think it’s a song about the end of my tomato season.

 

Men In Make-Up, Mountain Lions And Marijuana

A few days ago I received two phone calls from my neighbors then ran into a third neighbor who mentioned the same thing: A mile up the road from my house were two Game Warden vehicles and out of the vehicles came 8 or more men dressed in camo from head to toe.

These men were even wearing camouflage face paint and were carrying very large assault rifles. 

They unloaded from the trucks and disappeared into the bushes and down a steep trail where I have never seen a human go before. 

I’d seen a coyote and two rattlesnakes go down that trail, but never a human. 

All three neighbors asked the same thing: What do you think these camouflaged, gun-toting guys are doing running down a trail where people usually don’t go? 

Well, I thought to myself, you have come to the right person because I have my figure on the pulse of this mountain. I am “in the know.” 

To each and everyone my reply was the same. I told them that I heard there had been a pot farm bust the week before at a different location on the mountain and that this was probably a continuation of the same operation.

All three of my neighbors reply was the same. “Are you sure they’re not going to shoot the lions? They were in Game Warden trucks?” 

“Nay-nay” said I.

They wouldn’t go to all the trouble to shoot a couple of lions that hadn’t hurt anyone.

My neighbors breathed sighs of relief and went about their day. Except one. I’m not going to mention her name because she is a friend and I wouldn’t want to make her look bad.

She called a few minutes later and said that she’d been told that the game warden and his posse were there to shoot the lions. 

What! 

My mind was spinning. I was angry. How could they? 

The lions hadn’t hurt anyone.

I needed to do something and I needed to do it fast. I had to stop eight burly guys with semi-automatic weapons from shooting my beloved lions.

So I looked down at the fluffy white poodle I was dog sitting and sprang into action. I threw little Chloe along with Moondoggie in my car and drove up the mountain.

Chloe on my lap

The Game warden trucks were parked along the road at the hairpin turn, a turn I call The Bay Tunnel. I was shaking with anger when I parked my Volvo station wagon behind one of the extended cab, Eddie Bauer green 4wd trucks and jumped out of my car in to the dirt shoulder.

I started around the trucks to the narrow path. The path I had never seen any human go down. But I was going down it wearing my Cole Hahn strappy sandals and my yoga pants.

“Excuse me, Excuse me, Hey, is there is anyone one there? Don’t shoot me.”

“Is anyone around, hello?” I yelled to the camo game warden and his crew. 

I had relocated two rattlesnakes to this very path and the last time was hiking in yoga pants near rattlesnakes well, all I can say is—Sixty-Six Vials Of Antivenin.

I started to get stickers in the bottom of my yoga pants and I looked down to see a fine layer of dust over my Boca Raton Pedicure and my Cole Hahns. 

I had visions in my head or stripping down to my undies and swinging through the trees holding a spear, a la Avatar.

I could hear the Door’s song, “The End,” playing in my head as I saw myself slowly ascending from the bottom of a pond in front of the Game Warden and his team of killers dressed in my own, more fashionable camo make-up, with a knife between my teeth.

Then… 

A wild berry vine looped over my foot and scratched my ankle so I turned back.

Cream of Roasted Tomato Soup—With Too Much Flavor

My son waiting for his mac and cheese

Here’s THE LIST of food my 12-year-old will eat:

• Mac and cheese (the kind from a box)

• Hamburger with ketchup ONLY (he won’t eat turkey burger)

• Cheese pizza (must be homemade)

• Pork potstickers (ONLY from one particular Japanese restaurant)

 

That is his entire food repetoire. His list hasn’t changed for about nine years. He uses all sorts of excuses to describe why all the other food in the world just doesn’t work for him. Like:

 

“It’s too salty.”

“It’s too sweet.”

“It’s tastes weird.”

“It’s too hard.”

“It’s mushy.”

“That’s gross.”

“It makes my nose itch.”

“It makes my lips tingle.”

“It makes me fart.”

“It makes me burp.”

“It hurts my tongue.”

 

Whatever.

 

I gave up a long time ago.

Well, that’s not true, it just doesn’t bother me the way it used to.

 

So I made this killer tomato soup the other day, what with the end of tomato season and all and with tomatoes coming out my hoohaa.

 

I served my son a bowl and this was his critique:

“Mom, this soup is really good, and I would eat it, but it just has too much flavor.”

 

Just shoot me.

 

Cream of Roasted Tomato Soup—With Too Much Flavor

3 T olive oil

1-2  small/medium white onions

1-carrots peeled chopped

2-3 cloves garlic - minced

Handful basil - julienned

3 cups homemade tomato sauce

1 cup roasted small tomatoes (I used pear tomatoes)

course salt

2 cups chicken stock

½ – ¾ cup half and half

Sauté onions and carrots until tender

Add minced garlic and sauté for 1 minute (don’t let it brown or burn)

Add the tomato sauce, the roasted tomatoes, the basil and the chicken stock.

Cook over medium/low heat stirring frequently until carrots are

very tender.

When everything is cooked through, use an immersion blender to make the soup smooth.

Then add the half and half, warm it back up add the salt to taste Serve it with a sprig of basil floating on top. 

Here is the part where I take a picture of the soup and make it look delicious. But I forgot to take the picture and we ate the soup so here's a different photo:

 

BTW Gerard Butler is filming a movie in Santa Cruz and I'm looking for him so if you know someone who knows him, tell him I make great tomato soup.

My kids (well at least one of them) like to eat my soup with these cheesy biscuits that I make but you could serve it with any kind of cheesy bread.

Happy Ending For Lunch and Dinner

My friend Ruth asked what finally happened to the roosters, so here’s their story:

Here is the reasons why I couldn’t keep the chickens.

When we first took the roosters in, people asked, “Why can’t you keep them?”

I even had someone tell me to keep them because ‘they’re fun.’ I couldn’t smell alcohol on her breath but then I remembered you can’t smell hallucinogens.

Roosters? Fun? Sure, why not, if you like big birds waking you up at dawn, slashing at you with their spurs, and trying to peck your eyes out, they are a barrel of laughs.

Even if I wanted to keep the merrymaking roosters—I can’t—see?

  My dog stood like that for fifteen minutes straight just waiting for their cage to disappear.

So, as much as I wanted to keep those amusing roosters, a nice man named Richard adopted them. He picked them up two days ago and took them home to be with his family of hens to make pretty babies.

I want to believe that Richard didn’t eat them. The reason I think he didn’t eat them is that when I asked him if I could take a picture for a story I was writing, instead of telling me that he was in the witness protection program, and holding a folded newspaper in front of his face, he agreed and posed happily.

  Note my dog still hoping for lunch and dinner

Before the roosters left, I gave them names. I named the one on the right, Lunch, and the one on the left, Dinner.

Bye-bye, Lunch and Dinner.

Roadside Roosters

I dropped my son off at Los Gatos Rowing Club. 

I turned right toward the upper side of the Lexington Reservoir. Most parents live in town and make a left toward the freeway, but we live in the hills so I take the road less traveled. 

I love to drive this way. The road is windy, so I pretend I’m Grace Kelly maneuvering my convertible Sunbeam Alpine through the French countryside. 

I see a lot of wild animals along this route, deer, bunnies, bobcats so today was no different I rounded the first hairpin and there they were—two roosters. WTF? Yep, someone decided that they didn’t want their roosters anymore, so they donated them to the local predator roadside diner. 

I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor little guys. They stood huddled together in the rain as if they were waiting for whoever left them there to come back—or like they were waiting to hail a taxi. One of them might have been saying to the other, “Hey wait a minute Bob, this is all going to make sense in a minute or two.” 

I kept driving my pretend Sunbeam, and then called my husband to tell him about the sad sight I had just witnessed.

My husband put my youngest son in his car and went back to get the roosters. What? As I was nearing my house, I received a call: “Mom, we got the chickens.”

“What are we going to do with two roosters? We tried this once before and it ended badly.” 

My husband chimed in, “Call Simon (our neighbor), I’m sure he will take them.”

“Are you sure?” 

“Sure I’m sure”

I called him, but he wanted nothing to do with the feathered castoffs. 

My husband drove home and plopped the roosters in our garage, went into the house and back to work.

There they were, two roosters in my garage, my dog and I staring at them in their little cage. Her eyes were dilated; she wanted to eat them so bad that she was shaking. She was shaking so much I thought I should give her a shot of whiskey or Demerol. I looked at the roosters again and decided I should be the one to get a shot of whiskey and/or Demerol. 

My son was already attached to the roosters and he was working on a letter to the newspaper in the hopes that they will publish it and save the roosters. 

Here’s his letter:

FREE to a Good Home—Beautiful Abandoned Birds!

 

Yesterday afternoon, my mom found two gorgeous roosters walking on the side of the road, abandoned.

She was busy, but I wasn’t. I was happy they weren’t dead. But I was worried about leaving them there on the road.

So, my dad and I went and caught them. But we can’t keep them because my mom has a dog sitting business.

Dogs and roosters don’t mix.

We would hate to see them get eaten, hit by cars, or starve.

So we’d like to find a good place for them to live. If you know of one, please let me know by contacting my mom through The Patch. 

Thank you very much for adopting them.

 

 

 

Tim the Tomato Salad Recipe: Faster to make than to eat

A friend once said “If it takes longer to make it than it does to eat, it, than I don’t bother to make it.” 

I was talking to my tomato friend Tim, (that’s him with the big nose in the photo) about tomatoes and recipes.

Tim the tomato.

He suggested this very simple salad—one I’ve been making daily, and will probably continue to eat every day until I run out of fresh garden tomatoes:

Ingredients:

Fresh peeled tomatoes, between 2-4 depending on the size (Use whatever you have. They’re all good fresh.)

A quarter cup of goat cheese

1 tablespoon strawberry balsamic vinegar

Coarse salt to taste, (I use about ½ teaspoon)

Directions:

Peel tomatoes and cut into bite-size pieces.

Crumble goat cheese.

Combine all ingredients in bowl.

Eat.

Shortly after I wrote down this recipe, I stabbed Tim, cut him up, skinned him, and ate him with the rest of the above ingredients. That is his nose on the top of the salad.

Tim's nose in the salad.

He was very tasty.