Author: Heather Hacking hhacking@chicoer.com @HeatherHacking on Twitter
What the heck? It’s already Labor Day? College students are back in town? It’s dark by 8:30 at night? What happened?
Moving to a new house took a big bite out of my summer.
I missed making memories of 2014 summer camping trips. I did not hike Feather Falls or kayak down the Sacramento River. Absent have been heaping bowls of fresh salsa and big barbecues in the backyard.
I want a summer re-do.
I can’t turn back time, but I can make one last dash to load up on tomatoes.
Last weekend was the salsa contest at Hodge’s Nursery, which I also missed. If you’re reading this Ken, can you slip me the winning recipe. I really need a salsa pick-me-up.
While I’m waiting, I’d love if readers would send in their favorite ways to spice up tomatoes.
Here’s mine:
Take a cookie sheet and cut tomatoes and onions in half. Remove the seeds from one jalapeno pepper. Cover the cookie sheet with as much food as will fit, then put in the broiler until the top of the produce is just barely blackened. When cool, add pepper, lime juice, garlic and cilantro, then whiz the concoction in a blender. (Thank you Donna G. for this recipe).
I like to freeze the smoky salsa in ice cube trays. Then when I need salsa for omelettes, I can take one or two cubes out to thaw.
Do-not-grow zone
I reserve the right to change my mind, but for now I’m pretty much done with growing tomatoes. Once upon a time 16 plants flourished in the backyard.
In my sepia-tone memories, I was wearing a Little House in the Prairie apron and gathering tomatoes in a wicker basket as the ribbons in my hair wafted in a gentle breeze.
More recent memories include hornworms. Hornworms must attract gophers. Between hornworms and gophers, the intruders won the battle.
The past several years I’ve planted tomatoes in pots and that was about as bountiful as planting a fruitless mulberry.
Meanwhile, my coworker Bill Husa had so many vegetables growing in his garden in Paradise that his friends and family sneak into his backyard when he isn’t home.
When he told me about his feeble fence to protect the garden from deer, I silently scoffed at his folly.
You can’t grow vegetables in Paradise without an eight-foot electric fence and a motion activated sprinkler system.
I told him was planting vegetables to feed the deer.
“I don’t care,” Bill said, with the honest nonchalance we all love about him.
Yet, every time we talk abut his garden, he brags.
Tomatoes. Squash. Zucchini. Lemon cucumber. Kale. Beets.
Perhaps the deer were scared away from his yard because he had so many friends and family constantly raiding his overabundance.
I’m glad for him (I say through gritted teeth). My jealously melted immensely when he brought me a big bag of yellow squash, the kind with the bumps all over.
Still time for tomatoes
Here’s the deal: We live in the Sacramento Valley. We are blessed with farmers markets and friends who have too many vegetables. We have absolutely nothing to complain about, even if our own tomatoes turn out to be duds.
This week I drove down the Midway to take some photos of almond harvest. On the corner of Hegan is the sign for Laura’s tomato extravaganza – the nice lady who sells tomatoes at a stand in front of her house.
Once Ken sends me the winning salsa recipe, I’m heading to buy a five-gallon bucket of Laura’s tomatoes.
