How to Re-Pot a Plant that is Root Bound

Great tips from Jeralyn, available on her blog, here. 

How to Start a Family Garden When You Live in the City

This is a great article, with some nice new ideas on how to tackle the challenge of gardening in the city:

"Gardening as a family cannot only help you reduce your carbon footprint, pass along the ideals of sustainable living to your children, and save money at the grocery store, it can also help you forge even stronger bonds with your family through your shared goals. When you live in an urban setting, however, starting a family garden requires a bit more creativity than it would in a rural area."

Read more

Tomatoes Are Good For You

Did you know that tomatoes will make your teeth sparkling white, your breath minty fresh, your hair shine with new luster and cut your risk for stroke.  Well one out of four is not all that bad.  According to a study based out of Finland, published in the medical journal of Neurology, tomatoes (and especially cooked tomatoes) can reduce your risk for stroke.  The secret ingredient is lycopene.  You can obtain lycopene in other fruits such as grapefruit and papaya, but come on, what would you rather have, spaghetti or grapefruit?

The study followed 1,031 men between the ages of 42 and 61.  The study followed these men for 12 years and was intended to determine if other dietary items affected stroke risk.  I am inherently skeptical of longitudinal studies.   I mean really, are you going to remember what you ate last week and in what quantity?  I have trouble remembering what I ate for dinner yesterday unless it was spaghetti.  Hey, maybe they are on to something. If you want to read more about the study, the link is below.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444897304578044680394134430.html?mod=ITP_personaljournal_0

I always look for news items that affirm my narrow view of the world.  And if scientists say that tomatoes are good for you, then it must be true (especially if I can read it on the internet).  I was devastated when the nutritional police came out years ago to say that coffee was bad for you.  Then they changed their minds and it was good for you, then it was bad for you. Now, I only read stuff that tells me that whatever I am eating or drinking is good for me.  I sleep much better at night this way.  Sweet Tomato says I take the reputed health benefits of red wine way too seriously.  As if I needed any excuse to drink red wine.  As my dear Great Grand Father used to say, “Water is over rated, it just rusts your pipes”.  He lived to be 96, ate lots of tomatoes and drank large quantities of red wine.

An interesting idea

The Guerrilla Grafters are a group of botanical dissidents who are covertly grafting branches of fruit trees onto ornamental trees in SF.

"There’s a group of gardeners in San Francisco that are spreading organic graffiti across the city. How? By grafting branches from fruit trees onto ornamental trees that have been planted along sidewalks and in parks.

They are using a very simple tongue in groove splice that’s held together with annotated electrical tape. Good luck to them."

Info from BoingBoing: http://boingboing.net/2012/09/25/guerrilla-grafters-covertly-ad.html

Summer Culinary Delights

During the hot days of August and September, the tomato harvest becomes a daunting task as Sweet Tomato and I try to use tomatoes into nearly every meal we enjoy.  Here are two easy and really good recipes.  And of course, they use tomatoes.

Tomato Frittata

I make frittatas all of the time.  I generally cook them as a way to use up left overs.  If you get creative, there isn’t much in the left over category that can’t be used in a frittata.  Here is a recipe that relies on the San Marzano Redorta.  The San Marzano Redorta is a wonderful plum heirloom tomato from Italy.  It is large and meaty with little or no internal liquid.  It is great for pizzas and frittatas because as it heats up in the oven, the tomato does not cook out much liquid. This means you can use these tomatoes fresh off the vine without roasting or drying them first.

Mix 6 to 10 eggs in a bowl.  The amount of eggs depends upon how much frittata you want.  If you have some cream, add a tablespoon or two.  If not, don’t worry it is not required.  Add salt and pepper to the eggs and wisk the eggs until combined.  You will need an oven safe skillet.  I use a 12 inch skillet that has a normal metal body. Many recipes tell you to use a non-stick skillet, but I have never felt comfortable putting non-stick skillets in the oven.  I have more cleanup afterward, but other than that, a regular metal skillet works just fine.

Heat olive oil in the skillet.  Add some course chopped garlic and some thin sliced onions.  I use a lot of garlic, probably more than you or most normal people would, so use an amount of garlic you are comfortable with.  The key thing here is not to let it burn.  If you let your garlic burn, throw it out and start over.  Burnt garlic is nasty.  Add the onions.  I use sweet or red onions (whatever I have at the time – I am not picky) and sometimes use green onions if that is all I have.  After the onions have begun to caramelize, add the eggs to the skillet.  This next part gets a little tricky and takes practice.  Stir the eggs over medium heat as if you were making scrambled eggs.  I have this really nifty non-stick spatula that lets me move the eggs around in the skillet so they cook evenly.  If you let the eggs just set there, they will burn on the bottom and be runny on top.  Once you get to a consistency that is just short of true scramble eggs, remove the skillet from the heat.  The eggs should be runny, but just starting to get some solid egg chunks.

Now cover the frittata with sliced San Marzano Redorta tomatoes.  The tomato slices should be about a quarter of an inch thick.  Tomato slices with skin should be put on the frittata skin side down.  I forgot to tell you to heat your oven to 350 degrees, so go do that now.  When the oven is at 350 degrees, put the frittata in for 8 to 10 minutes.  The eggs should be cooked through, but the tomatoes are just beginning to cook.  You can remove the frittata at this point, let it cool and eat it out of the skillet or move it to a platter. 

However, if you want to “kick it up a notch”, set the oven rack just under the broiler and turn your oven to broil.  Sprinkle parmesan over the frittata.  If I am really enterprising, I will roast some panko bread crumbs in a little bit of butter and then sprinkle them on the frittata along with the parmesan.  Place the frittata under the broiler. 

DO NOT WALK AWAY!! 

Broiling the frittata can take 30 seconds to a minute or so.  Leave the oven open and watch the frittata. The parmesan (and bread crumbs) should be browned, but not blackened.  You may have to move/turn the skillet while it is under the broiler to brown the top evenly.  Here is what the end product looks like.

A few other tips.  Salt and pepper the finished frittata to taste.  If you have any left over marinara, ladling some over the frittata is a great addition.  And for those of you who think you have asbestos fingers, use oven mitts when handling the skillet.  It is tough to eat frittata with burnt fingers.

Tomatoes with Grapes, Figs, Asiago Cheese, Sausage and Lettuce

This one is really easy.  Spread some lettuce onto a platter. We use garden lettuce or the store bought packages.  Both seem to work equally as well.  Layer with sliced fresh garden tomatoes.  If you don’t have quality heirloom, fresh, garden tomatoes, this will not be nearly as good. Spread some grapes and figs around the platter.  Add some thinly sliced cooked sausage.  We use sweet Italian sausage generally of the left over variety.  Use a cheese peeler to create some thin slices of Asiago.  Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.  We generally have a few slices of crusty bread as well, and of course some wine.

The tomatoes and figs were picked from our garden that day.  I defy anyone to be able to order a salad like this at any restaurant!

Seafood Pasta with Heirloom Tomatoes Fra Diavolo Sauce

I have been reviewing my extensive collection of cookbooks for recipes that can be used with my burgeoning tomato harvest.  I am almost as obsessed with cookbooks as I am with tomatoes, much to Sweet Tomato’s (my wife of many years) consternation about cookbooks piled all over the house and garage.   I share Rosie Tomato’s desire to finally use some of those recipes rather than day dream about what they might have tasted like (if only I had prepared them).  This recipe comes from “The Heirloom Tomato Cookbook”.  This cookbook was originally published in 2006 to promote the Kendall-Jackson Wine Center in Napa Valley.  Despite being a promotion vehicle for Kendall-Jackson, it is a great cookbook with lots of information about heirloom tomatoes – from history, to selection, techniques and of course tomato recipes.  It is one of my favorites.

This recipe (Seafood Pasta with Heirloom Tomatoes Fra Diavolo Sauce) comes from page 84.  “Fra Diavolo” translates in Italian as “Brother Devil” (brother as in monk).  It gets its name from the red pepper flakes included in the ingredients.  There is a story behind my love of hot (really hot) peppers and condiments that I may get to someday.  Suffice it to say that Sweet Tomato does not have the same degree of tolerance for hot peppers as I do.  When I read one teaspoon of red pepper flakes in a recipe, my eyes fool me and I see two or three (well maybe four or five) teaspoons. As a consequence, whenever I use fresh chilies or red pepper flakes in a recipe, I must check with Sweet Tomato first. She is the boss after all and it is a rule she created so she wouldn’t be forced to fix her own dinner because mine was too hot to eat (for her, not for me).

 The dish consists of the following:

4 tablespoons of olive oil, 6 garlic cloves (crushed), 1.5 pounds of heirloom tomatoes (they recommend plum, but any good tasting red heirloom tomato will do), salt, 4 or 5 teaspoons of red pepper flakes (ok, it only calls for 1 teaspoon if you are a wimp), linguine pasta, 8 ounces small shrimp (I used medium shrimp and a lot more than 8 ounces), 8 ounces of bay scallops and 2 tablespoons of flat-leaf parsley. 

If you can’t figure out how the ingredients go together, then you aren’t much of a cook or you don’t have any imagination.  If you really do want the directions, buy the book, or comment on the blog and I will include the cooking directions.  Below are pictures of the dish.  There were actually two versions, one with one teaspoon of red pepper flakes and one with more than that.  It turned out really good and was great with Zinfandel.

This was the hot one.  If you look closely you can just see the fork beginning to melt.



This Is Why I Grow Tomatoes

My wife, Sweet Tomato, made a tomato salad with dinner last night.  The tomatoes, Cory’s Grandpa (orange & yellow), Michael Pollan (green) and Abraham Lincoln (red) were picked from my garden about an hour before dinner.  Sweet Tomato laid down a bed of lettuce and arugula, sliced the tomatoes and arranged them on the plate.  She added green scallions and a drizzle of olive oil.  The result was a simple but incomparable dish that rivals or exceeds anything you can obtain at an expensive restaurant. But wait, it gets better; open a bottle of red wine, cut some crusty bread, and dine in the company of the loveliest girl in the world. 

It doesn’t get much better than this.