While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

Life is like a jar of pickles

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Tomorrow is 2011. The date sounds so futuristic to me.

Tonight Joe and I have dinner reservations at a trendy new restaurant in downtown St. Pete.

I plan on wearing a dress, red lipstick and high heels.

I’ve looked forward to this date all week.

And yes, I plan on having a sip (or two) of champagne. The baby and I could use a little fizz to ring in the New Year.

But that’s tonight.

Right now it’s 4:11 in the afternoon and I’m still digesting the sandwiches I made today for myself and my friend Wendy Joan, who pedaled her bicycle over to my place today for lunch.

Tomato, mozzarella and basil on pita with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, followed by strawberry salad, followed by chocolate truffles. Deeeeeelicious.

So, yeah, I keep thinking 2011 sounds futuristic, but right now the coming year feels comfortably quaint.

Why is that?

First: because Wendy brought me the cutest jar of homemade pickles. (That’s the jar above. Adorable, right?)

Second: because she rode her bicycle here.

Third: because she used to live in Sarasota, but recently moved to St. Pete and now we live a mere two miles apart.

Fourth: because Wendy is originally from Buffalo, which means we immediately have 500 Buffalo things to talk about, like the fact that she also worked at the McKinley Mall and that there’s a pretty good chance that during my four years at Waldenbooks our paths unknowingly crossed a dozen times.

Fifth: because Wendy is also a journalist.

When I woke up this morning I thought about how I want to feel in 2011. I thought about how nice it would be to stretch out the simple pleasures a little more. Of course I have my big goals and my big plans, but it’s the little stuff in between that keeps the big goals on track.

Little pleasures keep us well oiled. They make us better equipped for plowing through big stuff, heavy stuff.

The way I see it, if I can start off 2011 with a jar of homemade pickles, I’m doing alright.

Happy New Year, beloved Lance-a-lots. It’s gonna be a good one.

Here’s to hoping our thumbs stay green

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Who here grows (or has ever grown) a vegetable garden?

It’s incredibly rewarding when it works and the biggest disappointment when it doesn’t.

We had rain showers all day yesterday and when I walked out of the house this morning, my tomato plants were almost three inches taller! Or maybe I’m exaggerating. Us garden geeks, we do that sometimes.

Last February, Mothership and I stuck tomato plants in pots by my front door. The resulting tomatoes were so succulent I couldn’t wait to harvest an entire crop.

So last summer, Joe and I dug a vegetable patch in our front yard. We bought seven tomato plants, four pepper plants and one cucumber plant. We laid spinach seeds, carrots and broccoli. We planted basil, oregano and rosemary. We were convinced our garden would yield so many vegetables that neighbors would grow fat off our land.

The attempt was a total bust. We planted at the end of June, when the UV rays in Florida are so hot and deadly you apply sunscreen before getting the mail and the thunderstorms are so brutal you dare not leave the house without an industrial strength umbrella.  Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

By July, most of our plants had turned yellow from too much water; their foliage charred from too much sun. The only plant with potential was one unruly cucumber and by mid-July even that was on its way out thanks to a gluttonous aphid.

This year is going to be different.

This year Joe dug the garden even bigger. We purchased additional stones, fencing, a soaker hose and eight bags of organic soil, which I know sounds prissy and redundant. We planted eight tomato plants, eight peppers, six zucchini, two cucumbers, and rows of snap peas, carrots and spinach in addition to the usual herbs. We did it the first week in March thinking we were total pros.

And then every champion gardener I met informed me that we were too late. Again.

Ah well. Wish us luck. I’m much more jaded about it than Joe. He thinks we’re growing enough tomatoes to make a sauce. I hope he’s right because at this point our reputation is on the line. Neighbors are beginning to wander into our yard to admire our bountiful jungle, which is visible from the road and will be a public embarrassment should it flop. Again.

Seriously people. If I can’t pass out fat zucchinis at the end of May, I’m gonna be bitter.

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PS. Fun fact: Joe doesn’t eat vegetables.

PPS. I have a hanging strawberry plant on the front porch. It gives me at least two red berries a day and shows no signs of slowing down. If the garden should take a turn for the worse, this is my consolation prize.

Homegrown tomato virgin takes a bite

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The tomato has been picked. 

After 10 minutes of staring at my first red tomato in all his round ripe perfection, I picked him, cradled him in my arms and tiptoed him to the kitchen, where I laid him down on a cutting board and halved him with a steak knife.
I picked some basil too. Cut mozzarella as well. Sandwiched it all together and then gazed again at the cutting board in rapture. Squealed even. Brought it all to my mouth and then stopped. 
I removed the mozzarella from the tomato and put the basil leaf off to the side. I couldn’t bring myself to mask my tomato’s virgin taste. I wanted him in his purest form. No creamy cheese. No pungent basil. Just my unblemished handsome tomato and me.  
He was delectable. Exquisite. Quite possibly the most succulent, luscious tomato I have ever tasted. The first bite was so gratifying I took another and another, until all that remained was basil and mozzarella, rendered useless by my tomato’s flawless tang.
I squealed again. 
“THIS IS AMAZING!” I yelled from the kitchen.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Joe yelled back from the living room.
“THIS IS THE MOST WONDERFUL TOMATO ON EARTH. IT IS A SUPER TOMATO.”
“Good. I’m glad you think so,” said Joe, who hates all vegetables and fruits.
“MY STOMACH IS REJOICING! BABY, YOU’RE MISSING OUT ON THE TOMATO OF A LIFETIME.”
“I’m OK with that,” he replied flatly. 
As I returned to the living room with juice trickling from the corners of my mouth, Joe perked up from his basketball game and said, “I’ll have to make a sauce when the rest of them are ripe.”
I stopped. Licked the juice from my lips. 
“Oh hell no,” I snapped. “These tomatoes ain’t for sauce. I’ll plant you a sauce vine if you want. I’m eating these guys raw.”

Bite me, slice me, dice me

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I‘m suffering from a supreme case of writer’s block. 

So what do I do? Well. As always, there’s Lance. 
I come here more than I should whenever I’m stuck on a story; a paying story. It helps me get over uninspired humps. 
Sometimes.
Today I spotted my first big, red tomato hanging off one of two tomato plants I planted three months ago in the front yard.
If anything should inspire me, it should be this. I’ve never grown an edible thing in my life. Well, basil. But that doesn’t count. The pug could grow basil in his food bowl if he slobbered on it every day. 
The tomato plants were my mom and Joe’s idea. There were four big pots in our front yard when we moved into this house, in which the previous owner had planted squatty palms and purple ferns. When we closed on the property, the squatty palms and purple ferns were scorched from too much sun and wilting from too little water, so I pulled them out of the pots and stuck them in the ground, where they are much happier and healthier.
In two pots I planted tomatoes and oregano. In the other two, I planted marigolds and bushy pink flowers. Within a month my bushy pink flowers had tripled in size. And my tomato vines! Ah! I had so many little green buds I felt like Fannie Flagg. The front of my house had suddenly taken on a Better Homes and Gardens look. 
When a storm whipped through the neighborhood last week, I ran out the front door to stake my bent tomato vines to sturdy twigs. After much nurturing, whispering and watering, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my tomatoes. They looked so pathetic in the wind and rain, bent over like a child with a stomachache. I never felt so much like my Oma than when I called for Joe in a panicked yelp, to bring me scissors and string so I could tie my vines.
Now that I’ve got this big red one sort of poking out at me, willing me to pick it, slice it and serve it over mozzarella and balsamic, I’m freaking out. What if it’s too soon? What if it’s too late?
If you know anything about tomatoes, please share your wisdom. I’m a novice vegetable grower, whose new hero is this guy: former Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver. 
Weaver, the 5-foot-7 short-tempered, smack-talking “Earl of Baltimore,” used to grow tomato plants down the left field line in Baltimore’s old Memorial Stadium. He and head groundskeeper Pat Santarone had a contest every summer to see who could grow the biggest, juiciest crop. Rumor has it Santarone once grew a tomato so big it wouldn’t fit in his ball cap. 
According to former first basemen Boog Powell, the mens’ tomatoes were so large, “one slice would way overlap the bread.” And according to Cal Ripken Jr., whose father worked for the Orioles in the 1960s and 1970s, Weaver used to fertilize his giant tomatoes in the Orioles bullpen using horse manure lifted from the Preakness Stakes. 
I wonder if pug manure would have the same effect. 
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PS. To everyone who donated to my Ride for Roswell: THANK YOU! THANK YOU! In two weeks I raised $675 for the Roswell Park Cancer Institute – $175 OVER my initial fundraising goal. 
PPS. About Saturday’s hair post: the top photo was the $50 haircut. In these trying economic times I suggest patronizing beauty schools. No one will ever know your ‘do cost five bucks. Unless of course you blog about it.