Thursday's favorites...

Anyone who walks into my kitchen these days has to chuckle at the sight of the countertops - or lack of them! The counters are completely covered in tomatoes. Red, orange and yellow, large, small and mini, bicolor and striped, splotchy, ugly and amazingly beautiful tomatoes!

There is one tomato that everyone who walks in feels compelled to pick up, take in it's subtle aroma and rave about it's beautiful skin. They are in awe at it's beauty. My son, my photographer, my friends from the needlepont shop, even the UPS guy cannot say enough about this tomato. As if looks aren't enough, it's a medium size fruit with a huge amount of flavor and character.

Without a doubt, today's favorite for flavor, texture and it's incredible beauty is Chocolate Stripes!

The best of intentions...

When I first began writing this blog I had visions of a daily communication with all of you. I envisioned garden updates and progress reports - a running dialogue. Well, you know what they say about the best of intentions...

Maybe it would be more realistic to post a new entry once a week. The truth is that so much time goes into GROWING the tomatoes that there really aren't enough hours in a day to go to work (thank G_d I love what I do), water, weed, feed, harvest AND sit down and write about it.

Maybe once a month could work...

While I'd love to add to the blog on a very regular basis I really can't guarantee how often that will be. Once a week - maybe. Once a month - yes, I can do that. But in my heart, every day is still what I want to do. So, here's my plan: I'm going to set a huge goal for myself. Yep, I'll say I'm going to write something every day. Now, here's the contingency plan: If I don't have the time or energy to write very much, at the very least I will write each day about my favorites.

I have to admit that I love this plan! It's going to allow me to be really self indulgent and it gives me an out, should I not succeed. I'll sample the tomatoes every morning, just like I always do, and then I'll write a little bit about whatever it is that day that I like the most! Many days I have a new favorite so this should be fun...

Keep reading and keep tasting...

It is officially tomato season!!

Let’s ignore (for the moment) the fact that I began composing posts for this blog several times over the past few months. I had every intention of writing about the glory of returning home from 10 days in New York to find my tomato plants were taller than me! Ecstatic about the incredibly successful beginning to this year’s growing season I proclaimed, yes out loud, that this was going to be a fantastic year for tomatoes. I should have kept my big mouth shut…Imagine my distress when just a few weeks later I made my daily pilgrimage to the backyard, inspected each plant as I always do and discovered several of my plants wilting, drooping like the sad eyes of my Basset Hound. Panic set in…I’ve learned that much of my feeling of self worth and accomplishment is manifested in my tomatoes. I had a feeling of doom…this was nothing less than a disaster in the making.