Eggs Flamenco

Behold! Eggs Flamenco! My favourite thing to eat for breakfast. Bar none. (Yes, that does indeed include bacon). It's basically a fresh tomato sauce, with bell peppers, onions and/or garlic, some chili sauce for heat, and the eggs poached right in the sauce. mmmmmmmmmm

It's pretty nice to have access to all this gorgeous homegrown garlic. It's time RIGHT NOW for garlic planting, so if you can, get out there and get it done. It's on my to-do list for tomorrow, I swear. Cook up your onion, get the garlic chopped and ready.

Add some sliced tomatoes. These babies are from the garden, one of mom's and half of one of my dixie golden cultivars, saved from blight and ripened in the nick of time. These don't take long to cook, since you want to keep it fresh. Add the peppers, garlic and chili (we use sambal oelek). Then make little pockets in the sauce, put the eggs in, turn to a lower heat and put a lid on it for about 3-4 minutes.

Which all comes together in a very short amount of time to give you the finished product, all rich and saucey and delicious. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

Belated birthday supper

So what became of that fabulous ripe Dixie Golden tomato I grew this year? You'll no doubt be thrilled to hear that I supped on it as a part of my birthday celebrations with my parents this year.


At my request, the menu was steak, and my mom wanted to try the tomato jus I posted about a little while back. I don't think the steaks came out quite as well this time, I may have been crowding the pan a bit, and also the tomatoes were a bit cut-up, so they released a bit more liquid into the pan during cooking than the ones I used last time, which had never even seen a knife.


We also put some green onions into the sauce, which was a nice addition.

Served with stir-fried vegetables. The broccoli was cooked with a bit of chopped tarragon, which lends an interesting effect. Probably better the more you like tarragon...


But without a doubt, my beautiful tomato was the tastiest thing on my plate. Well-grown. Happy birthday to meee.

An Embarrassment of Tomatoes

Shortly after completing my last tomato post, and smugly satisfied at using almost all my outstanding garden tomatoes, I went out to water my plants.

And came back in with another large bowl full.

Now, don't get me wrong. What with the advent of today's cool grey misty rain, it's clear that tomato season is coming to an end. I'm going to treasure all these little gems, and try not to waste any due to laziness or poor dinner planning.

Tomato Envy

Lately it's all I can do to stay on top of eating all the tomatoes that are being thrown at me. Not only are they cheap and fabulous in the stores and farmers markets, but my mom and my cousin's boyfriend are constantly on me to eat the overflow tomatoes from their gardens, and my own dear heritage plant even seems ready to deliver a ripe tomato in the next couple days. ohhhhh yeah baby!

Come with me now, on a tomato tour around the garden and kitchen:

These little yellow gems are from Dan's garden. He has the Italian touch with tomatoes, and all his plants are putting out truly sickening amounts of fruit. (bastard!) But in his favour, he has given me carte blanche to take whatever I want, especially the yellow ones, which he doesn't much like, and were mostly rotting on the plant. The red beauty in the upper left corner is one of my mother's tomatoes, waiting patiently to be used in something delicious.

These guys were just a little bit past their prime, and did not make the cut for breakfast. Back to the compost for you, boys.

Sizzling up in some butter. mmmmm, delicious butter.

Aaand - breakfast. Sautee'd tomatoes, free range eggs, butter and cheesie toast. Amen. Please excuse the messy plating, I was in a rush to eat this awesome-smelling food. But I'm well aware that that kind of shit would not cut it in the real cheffy world.

And now, into the garden:

One of my mom's tomato plants - despite being left untended for like 5 weeks and having no trellis or support, this sprawling plant is producing dozens of big fat delicious tomatoes. Jealous!!

My little heritage plant is finally making some big tomatoes, but the weather is starting to turn, and I'm worried that they'll have to be harvested green.

But one or two of them will definitely be ripe in time. Some interesting pathogen growth on the one on the right there.

Even if I don't get a single other ripe tomato, I feel that this guy here, glowing orange and just about ready to be plucked, will totally have been worth it.

Fruits of the day

So we went to the market again yesterday morning, for the fresh local stuff. Meeting all the area farmers is inspiring, and one of the most outstanding parts is being able to bypass certain purchases because I already have that item I need in my own garden. 

Picked up (as you can see) couple of peaches, pears, three tomatillos and a dark, pointy tomato. Hmmm? What's that other thing? Oh, uhhh, that's just my giant hammer. I heard there might be some zombies around, so I thought I should probably be packing some heat. 

Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter Tomato

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the Mortgage Lifter tomato. While this particular tomato is actually a slightly more modern bicolored variant, the Mortgage Lifter was allegedly developed during the Great Depression in the early 30's by a radiator repairman named M.C. "Radiator Charlie" Byles, trying to make an extra buck.

Although never formally trained, he successfully crossbred 4 of his favourite large-tomato-producing plants until he came up with this stable cultivar, marketed as being able to feed a family of six. And people drove from miles away to buy the plants at a dollar per plant.

And within (depending on which version you believe) four or six years, he had his $6000 mortgage paid in full. Thus - the Mortgage Lifter.

It's tough to judge the scale from these photos, but the above specimen has already provided for four big sandwiches, and been bitten by one ravenous Anna, and it's still more than 50% there. Family of six indeed.

oh yeah, speaking of BACON!

We made bacon & egg & tomato sammiches for lunch. They were grrrrreat. The tomato was one of the great-smelling heritage guys I picked up today. Picked up and then dropped onto the street after trying to juggle too much produce. So we had to use it pronto. 

I cooked the ill-fated tomato on lowish heat in large wedges in a few knobs of butter, trying not to poke it too much. Added the eggs, which poach/fry nicely in the tomatoey butter sauce. If you're worried the eggs are going to stick, add a couple more little knobs of butter into the pan, where you will be putting the eggs. 

Over easy, garnished with some fleur de sel and a few leaves of arugula, on lightly mayo'd bagels.

With bacon. Always, bacon. 

Tomato-watch Today!

BEHOLD! One of the new couple of tomatoes starting to form on my happy little tomato plant. Thus bringing my total number of  tomatoes to three!! I LOVE to count tomatoes. Mwah hah haaa.   

Tomato prime is looking fat and healthy. Is very exciting.

Yeah, how about THESE tomatoes?

Heritage. Organic. Local. Cherry tomatoes. O farmers market, I love you. Check these babies out, you NEVER see any of these varieties in the supermarket. The round yellow ones are almost translucent, and supersweet and soft. And do you see those dark ones? You'd think they were cherries or something. All the varieties except the little orange ones are heritage. They've still even got some field dirt on 'em.

Heritage, or heirloom plants are an interesting topic for me because of my background with plant biology. I mean, I'm all for maintaining and increasing genetic diversity, and that's what heritage cultivars are all about. Also, heirloom plants can often be more disease resistant and easy to grow in local conditions, because they have adapted over the years to the particular stresses and challenges of their environment. The novelty of getting to sample unusual varieties of fruits and vegetables is another big factor in my purchase of heritage produce.

I read an article recently which had some interesting points which are not often discussed when it comes to local food. Rather than think only about how far your food has travelled, the author suggests that we should also consider how efficiently it was grown, the amount of time and resources that went into its production, the amount of CO2 produced in the plant's full lifespan. While I find this interesting to consider, I think that even though some varieties are less efficient to grow, they are worth saving anyhow.

Personally, I would much rather subsidize someone on a family farm struggling to grow the same varieties that his great-grandfather did, than someone planting a monoculture of Monsanto Roundup Ready 2 Yield(TM) soybeans. But I can understand how the Federal Government might consider the latter a much better bet than the former. Western society has already gone so far down the road of growing only the most efficient, high-yield, transportable, truck-ripening of plants, there is no coming back. In the meantime, I don't think there is any harm in trying to support local, heritage farmers the only way we can - with our grocery-buying dollars.

One thing you cannot deny - heritage tomatoes have some damned awesome names. Hillbilly, Green Zebra (not a true heritage tomato btw., est. 1983), Abraham Lincoln, Dwarf Champion, Banana Legs. Maybe I'll become a heritage-tomato-spotter or something.

*Note: the 7 little fruits in the upper right hand corner of the top photo are actually tiny plums, not cherry tomatoes.

My first tiny tomato

I'll be the first to admit, lots of the things I've grown this year haven't produced anything in the way of crops. I bought this tomato plant out of peer pressure, but any tomato plants my mom ever tried to grow usually end up getting some kind of vascular wilt and passing on before producing any tomatoes. My hopes were anything but high. So imagine my very great surprise, when after 3 fruitless little cymes of flowers, I saw the above little tomato poking out from the calyx! Success at last!!


This is one of the first two cucumbers I've managed to grow from my 2 cucumber plants. The bees aren't doing much in the way of pollinating this year, and I finally managed to get this guy to start ripening after hand-pollinating the flowers. It's still about ring-finger size, but I've got my eye on it. If the fungus that seems to be working its way up the plant gets anywhere near it, it'll be harvested before you can say "pickle".