It’s a snowy January day and I’ve reached the point in winter when I start obsessing about tomatoes. My grandmother grew some of the best tomatoes going, so I’m beyond spoiled when it comes to expecting tomato perfection. This time of year, most of what I encounter at the market is a mealy imitation of a tomato that’s been grown in a hothouse or imported from far away. No flavor, pale in color, a sorry excuse taking up space in the produce department.
I once read that someone said that tomatoes were captured sunshine. I agree. Nothing says summer like a perfectly ripe homegrown tomato, sliced thick and sprinkled with some salt and pepper. I can and have made a meal from sliced tomatoes and they’re a staple at almost every summer meal we have. For lunch, nothing beats a BLT with Duke’s mayonnaise and Lay’s potato chips. When we lived in Chicago, one Green City Farmer’s Market vendor introduced me to the Early Girl variety because it was a tomato that we could expect earlier in the year that far north. As the season goes on, I move from one variety to the next as I eat my way through a summer of tomatoes.
Everything comes to an end and even the best home gardener gets stuck with some green tomatoes that just refuse to ripen. This past summer, a family member abandoned a big grocery sack full of green tomatoes at my front door. I took one look at the amount of tomatoes and thought that there was no way that John and I could eat that many fried green tomatoes without having to book heart-bypass surgery in advance. Being wasteful doesn’t sit right with me, so I had to figure out how to transform a mess of green tomatoes into something healthy that we would both eat.
That night I waded through my results from searching “green tomato recipes.” Chutney? Nah. Relish? John wouldn’t eat it. Pickled green tomatoes? Ditto. Green tomato ketchup? Wha the wha?
And then, the next click gave me Green Tomato Salsa Verde. Yes, yes, yes. It looked easy, was freezable and certainly would take care of the whole sack of green tomatoes in one fell swoop. I tweaked the recipe by adding more jalapeño peppers and an additional serrano chille pepper.
The results were awesome. Delicious with tortilla chips and perfect on fish tacos. I made the mistake of giving away one of my four jars, which is exactly the jar I wish I could pluck out of my freezer on a day like this to take me back to summertime, if only for the time it took to demolish a bag of tortilla chips.
Green Tomato Salsa Verde by Amy Knebel
Brrrrrr! When I woke up this morning, the outside temperature was 13F. This is really cold for Arlington, VA, but par for the course for many a Chicago winter morning. In the 6.5 years we lived in the Windy City, I learned a few things about not only tolerating the cold, but actually enjoying it. I’ll readily admit that when we moved there from DC, I was clueless about many of the things it took to thrive during the winter. Not only did I have to learn about how to dress for the snow, but I had to learn how to walk in it. Silly, but true.
The day we moved into our place in Old Town it was snowing to beat the band, so after hours of dealing with movers and boxes, John and I set out for dinner, headed down North Ave towards Wells. We were in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts where there was only a slight path through the snow on the uncleared sidewalk and I was having a hard time keeping up with John. I had stuck my freezing hands in my pockets and was listing back and forth as I tried to maintain a forward momentum. The snow was still coming down pretty hard and the wind was blowing. Combine that noise with my hat and I really couldn’t hear anything. John turned around from almost a block ahead and shouted something to me. It sounded like, “Take off your pants!” What?! So not funny him trying to be naughty when it’s freezing out. I was not going to take off my pants! He trudged back to where I was wobbling my way through the snow and said, “Honey, take your hands out of your pockets, for balance.” OHHHH! Now that’s what we call a lightbulb moment. I took my hands out of my pockets, held my arms out to the sides and windmilled my way to dinner. Years later, I still can’t live this down.
Speaking of cold weather activities, one of my favorite things to do when the mercury dips is to bake. A warm oven makes for a warm house. This morning I started with popovers. I simplified/adapted the classic recipe from “The Joy of Cooking” and always use some really ancient popover pans that I (ahem) ‘borrowed’ from my mom.
- 1 cup bread flour (AP is fine)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Combine in a separate bowl and allow to come to room temperature:
- 2 eggs
- 1+1/4 cup milk
- 1 tablespoon melted butter
Stir the liquid slowly into the dry ingredients. Beat the ingredients until they are well blended, then pour batter into oiled popover pans, filling them only half full. Bake the popovers in a hot oven 450 F degrees for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 F degrees and bake for another 20 minutes until dark golden brown. Remove them at once from oven and pans and poke popovers with a knife tip to let steam escape. (Note: Heavy oven-proof glass ramekins may be substituted for a popover pan. Oil them well and bake them on a cookie sheet. Some recipes suggest muffin tins are OK to use.)
Yummy.
Popovers by Amy Knebel
Not long ago, a sorority sister from college posted this (from someecards.com) on her wall.
How very true. From my own family (where calling someone crazy was kind of a compliment) to many Southern writers and artists, not being normal was well, normal.
As someone who left Dixie to end up in DC, then Chicago and most recently, Northern Virginia, I’m all too aware of how Southern culture differs from the rest of the country. (And for the record, DC and Northern VA, while geographically below the Mason-Dixon Line, are NOT Southern in any way shape or form.) I’ve endured people making fun of the way I talk, of what I order in restaurants to how fussy I am about certain cultural conventions. To all that I say, “Whatever.”
However one aspect of my home culture has always bothered me. Traditionally, most of the South has accepted LGBTQ folks as those who were “eccentric” or “creative” or “quirky” in a warm, often cloyingly compassionate manner where sexual orientation was kept under wraps and inside the closet. I accepted this when I was younger as just the way things were, but as I got older and left the South, I realized that accepting people for what they kept mostly hidden, while at the same time excoriating them from the pulpit and denying them the same rights accorded to others, was wrong. And it made me sad. Just yesterday, 10 same-sex couples went to my county’s courthouse to apply for marriage licenses in a move to bring attention to the fact that same-sex marriage is legal just over the river in DC. I’m embarrassed to live in Virginia.
However, maybe we can count on a little girl to point out to the adults how we need to adjust our collective Southern thinking when it comes to laws granting equality to all. Not long after I shook my head over fellow Virginians being denied the right to marry, I came across this item. GLADD is nominating “Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo” for a media award. Why? Uncle Poodle has his family’s support for who he is and not for who they want everyone in town to think he is. I respect that and wish that kind of acceptance and love for everyone.
It was supposed to snow today, so a little light humor poking fun at myself and my fellow Northern Virginians…
I grew up in Atlanta where people freaked out at the slightest hint of snow or ice. I remember seeing Ogletree’s aisles (OK – I just dated myself) swept clean of bread, milk and TP and watching TV news reports of spinouts and crashes on 75 and 85 as people tried to navigate untreated roads. One of my favorite Deep South snow activities was my dad doing donuts in the same Ogletree’s parking lot. This being the late 70’s/early 80’s, my brother and I were sans seatbelts and pinging all over the car, laughing hysterically and begging dad to put our wood-paneled Ford LTD station wagon back into a spin. Ah, life before the safety police.
Fast forward many years and I found myself in Washington, DC snowed in with school canceled for a week while the region dug out of a foot or so of snow. It was the most snow I had ever experienced and I loved it. Again, I bore witness to decimated grocery shelves and as a then teacher, enjoyed my snow days with papers to be graded having been knocked out on snow day no. 1.
Two years after my week-long snowcation, John and I moved Chicago, a city where nothing has stopped for snow since 1979 when a mayoral election was won on a snow removal platform. In my only year teaching in Chicago, I discovered there was no such thing as a snow day. I also learned that no one, NO ONE rushed to the grocery store when it threatened to snow. I know this because the first winter morning I heard that snow was forecast, I rushed to the Dominick’s like a good little Dixie ex-pat only to be greeted by a gaggle of bored employees and a few homeless people escaping the cold.
After adopting a snow-obsessed dog and amassing a snow-worthy winter wardrobe, I was officially a snow addict and anticipated each snowfall like a kid in inside-out pj’s. Some friends and I partied our way through a blizzard one year and I never failed to marvel at the beauty of a winter landscape, like this photo of a frozen Lake Michigan as seen from North Avenue Beach. Alas, my inner-Inuit was not to last.
Lake Michigan as seen from North Avenue Beach, Chicago-February 13, 2008 by Amy Knebel
In 2011, we moved back East and I was once again surrounded by snow-hysterics. Yesterday, the National Weather Service started beating the frozen precipitation drum and the region collectively took to Twitter to fret about snow amounts, school closings and federal government telework. Me? I moseyed out to the garage and checked firewood. Plenty. I checked the wine. Plenty. Emergency bottle of bourbon? Check. We were set by my standards. Since we’ve lived in Arlington (10 months), we’ve already had two multi-day power outages due to storms (derecho and Sandy), so I have become rather blasé about roughing it.
This morning when the media commenced its screeching about how awful this evening’s commute would be, I decided to run a few errands and cruise by the Giant to see just what kind of shit-storm the parking lot had turned into. Sure enough, a packed parking lot and steady stream of circling cars alluded to the frenzy probably unfolding inside. Walking my dog around lunchtime, I ran into a few neighbors who chatted about their storm-prep. Huh?
Then the storm alert was downgraded earlier this afternoon. So stop the insanity, folks. Let’s go back to wringing our hands over the debt ceiling, ok?
Growing up in Atlanta, I was never more than a 15 minute drive from my grandmother’s house and her garden. Except during my college years, most meals I ate had a little bit of my grandmother somewhere on the plate. I remember that a hot, humid Georgia July day spent picking blackberries until my hands were covered in fine scratches meant the very next day would be spent in Grandma’s steaming kitchen making blackberry jelly. We shelled beans while watching TV and shucked endless ears of corn. Spending time at Grandma’s during the summer was sweat plus red dirt with a little Avon mixed in for fun.
At the time, I didn’t realize that I was being trained for a lifetime of food and nutrition preferences. I didn’t really know what store-bought canned green beans looked like until I went to college because I grew up eating ones either fresh from Grandma’s garden or plucked from the bounty of Ball jars that lined our basement shelves. Grandma’s garden produced more than we could eat, so canning and freezing were part of the summer ritual just as much as hoeing weeds.
Before Grandma passed away, I used to drop by after work, paper grocery sack in hand. We’d visit for a spell before we moseyed out back and filled my bag with a few days worth of veggies. When I began dating John (now my husband), he thought our “Visits for Veggies” was some exotic Southern concept. If Grandma wasn’t home, we’d let ourselves in the backyard, pick what we needed for supper and leave a note tucked in the screen door.
As an adult, I’ve eschewed the canned fruit and vegetable aisle at the grocery store, opting for the produce section instead and I’ve become a farmer’s market junkie. I tolerate frozen veggies because I know they are frozen at their peak state of nutrition, but the motions of picking, say, the perfect tomato out of a pile transports me back to a happy time.
With all the home training I received from Grandma, you’d think I’d be an avid home gardener or urban farmer, but I’m not. When we lived in DC and Chicago, container planting with herbs was the best I could manage space-wise. When we moved back East and first settled into Old Town Alexandria, I saw the amount of work our friends put in their community garden plot and made a mental note to be always available for dinner at their house once the tomatoes started to come in. My shame at not inheriting the garden grind gene only bothers me occasionally.
When we moved to Arlington, four huge trees shaded much of our lawn, so I was back to being the mistress of a 5-planter container herb garden. This summer’s heat, while almost unbearable for humans, has contributed to a bumper crop of basil. Copious amounts of basil mean fresh pesto in our house and my afternoon yesterday focused solely on pesto production.
For a few hours, I grated, snipped and chopped, channeling my Grandma as best I could. The end result was delicious, both in taste and memories recalled.
The Spoils of Summer by Amy Knebel