Tag Archives: tomatoes

We Need Food of All Kinds

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Soldier’s wedding will take place in a few days.  Mr. Glad and I are just trying to get ourselves and the house and my father-in-law ready for the Joyous Event–and trying at the same time to get over our summer colds. I was pleased to pick the first lemon cucumber and add it with our arugula and the multi-colored cherry tomatoes to some lettuce last night, to fortify us for the work, and for the happy busyness ahead.

This morning I was well enough and eager to get back to church, where we remembered the life of St. Lawrence of Rome. God has filled my cup with delights like this–how many parishes are able to celebrate on a Tuesday morning?

St. Lawrence was a deacon serving with Pope Sixtus in the third century; his life and martyrdom are peppered with several encouraging stories. He seems to have had a good sense of humor, and among the various groups who call him patron are comedians.

G. K. Chesterton said it is the test of a good religion, whether you can joke about it. I’m sure he didn’t mean anything like mocking God or His salvation. But being able to laugh at oneself is a sign of humility, and I think it might be a collective form of this humor he is talking about. The whole subject of humor is something mysterious to me, and I would do well to study Chesterton’s other writings about it. For now I will change the subject after my favorite pertinent quote, also from him: “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”

I came home from the feast and noticed the hyssop flowers having grown taller and taller. Bees were drinking nectar from the blooms, but bees are hard to photograph–one has to take time and a couple dozen pictures in hopes of getting one without a blur of bee, and I have lots of housework yet to do.

My life is like my garden. It’s full of beautiful and colorful things and events, ever changing, and I notice so few of them. Fewer still can I pick and show anyone else. My sociable or communicative side I find is always writing script in my mind, for how to tell other people about my discoveries and joys. But when the foliage and flowers grow so fast, events tumbling and intertwining with each other like a jungle, the feeling of not keeping up has been a gift in itself. From a feeling of helplessness, God has given me grace to just stop that script-writing for a few minutes at a time and direct my noticing and my thanks only to Him. Let me be like the bee, blurry if need be, but doing my job of imbibing the sweetness.

God is constantly willing.

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Weeds grew thick and tall in my recent and repeated absences, threatening to hide and destroy the beauty of the garden I’d planted. This morning I spent an hour tidying things up and giving space to the cucumbers and peppers so that they could grow unhindered. I’d hired a girl to irrigate enough to keep everything alive, but I didn’t ask her to pull weeds.

(Unripe grape tomatoes above, nasturtium in arugula below. All pictures taken just this evening.)

While hauling several baskets full to the trash I remembered my own advice to another young friend who was just falling in love with gardening. She asked me whether I thought she should do a little bit of garden work every day, or spend a couple of hours one or two days a week. I told her that the best way is to tend it a little bit every day. There is always a weed to pull, a tomato branch to be tied up, or a dead flower to be clipped off. The plants need water, and food, perhaps even a little shade from time to time.

One year our Baby was raising a pumpkin she hoped would be a huge one she could enter in the local Giant Pumpkin Contest. We were told it was advisable to put the growing pumpkin on a pallet when it was still small so that it could stay dry and be easily moved no matter how large it grew. When I got around to helping my daughter with that part of the project the fruit wasn’t very large yet, but the stem, having lain on the moist ground, had already sent out roots into the soil. This situation was hidden by a canopy of leaves, and when we hoisted the pumpkin on to the pallet, the vine stayed anchored by those roots, and the pumpkin broke off at the stem.

That was a hard lesson. I thought sadly of how a farmer, even a novice homeschooling pumpkin-grower, can’t afford to procrastinate. Any job involving a living thing has to be paced according to that creature’s rate of growth. And agriculture usually involves many living things all in relationship to one another: the plant, the soil, pests with their own life cycle, and probably others I’m not thinking of, not being a very good farmer still.

This morning’s brief mediation on how I really ought to tend more constantly to my garden continued when I later sat down at the computer to read the transcript of an interview with the Orthodox theologian and writer Vigen Guroian in which the topic of conversation turned, as is usually the case with him, to gardening, and he said “…were not God constantly willing His creation, loving His creation into existence, it would disappear.”

From my perspective as a lazy, distracted, and time-constrained gardener, I appreciate the steadfastness of our Lord in continuing His creative work moment-by-moment.  Colossians 1:17 says that he “holds all creation together.” I am one of His creatures, whom so far He has seen fit to give life and breath to every morning, making it possible for me to tend my own mini-garden, which also couldn’t live without His blessing and daily upholding.

Something G.K. Chesterton said on the subject often flits through my mind, when musing on this subject. He said, that in contrast to children, who through excess of vitality want things repeated, “…grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough… It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again,’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again,’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

So far, the garden hasn’t seemed monotonous to me. Every day is different there. Of course, The Creator is making the daisies, and I get to discover them, along with the roses and budding fruits and spreading spinach. I do love my garden, and will try to be more constantly willing to keep it going, imitating my Lord.

Slow-roasting going on here.

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In the last week I’ve had a few new adventures in the kitchen. What with the need to use the products of my garden yet-unharvested, I can’t stick around here very long, so I’ll be brief, and just now give you the link for the wonderful slow-roasted cherry tomatoes everyone seems to be talking about. You might have some little tomatoes around you could try this on. They are just as delectable as “everyone” says. If I had discovered them earlier in the summer….well, I didn’t. But next year!


I still have all three types and colors of cherry tomatoes, which is why my end result includes some very babyish ones. The smaller ones I took out of the oven after 3 1/2 hours, but the large red ones I left in all 4 hours.

The original recipe creator, I think it was, said that she likes a good amount of fennel in her seasoning, so I used 1/2 teaspoon of fennel seeds and 1 1/2 teaspoons of an “Italian seasoning” mix for my seasoning. The finished tomatoes were just perfect, so I’ll do the same thing again tomorrow with what I picked today.

I can see why households with children wouldn’t have any of these left over, but as there were only two of us, I put some in the freezer for later. If I hadn’t exercised such discipline, though, I’m sure they would have quickly disappeared.

Cherry Tomato Soup

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Mr. Glad and I have been eating bowls and bowls of cherry tomato salad, but are inundated with many more of the tiny love apples than we can consume fresh.

So I was quite pleased to read that another blogger had made soup from hers. Well, of course! I make soup from everything, so I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that myself.

 

 

I got right to work and sautéed one onion and several large cloves of garlic in about 1/4 cup of olive oil.

Then I added to the 6-quart pot this many tomatoes…hmm…would that be about 4 quarts? I cut the long, larger tomatoes in two. Chopped up a few sprigs of basil, added about a teaspoon of salt and a few grindings of black pepper.

Cooked it all very slowly with the lid on, and after 20 minutes my soup looked like this.
I thought it would be nice if it were mostly creamy, with a few chunks, so I transferred about two cupfuls to a bowl, and then puréed the rest in the blender and added it to the bowl as well.


My batch made nearly 3 quarts, I think. My original plan was that it would be a soup base, but I tasted it, and it is perfect the way it is! Very sweet and lots of tomato flavor. Still, I’m not promising I won’t add a little “good cream,” as M.F.K. Fisher would probably recommend. I’m putting it in the freezer for more wintry days.

As soon as I finished this easy project, I saw that yet another blogger was showing how to make slow-roasted cherry tomatoes. Now I know just what to do with tomorrow’s pickings.