Tomato Caviar and Other Oddities

Today a car swung into the parking lot of Roberts Crop Insurance, narrowly missing my dog and me. The woman driving it leaned to the passenger side window and shouted, "Is that Cleo??" I looked down just to be sure. Yes, it was Cleo, attached to her leash. We'd just been for a run in the flat grassy lot that separates Dr. Smith's office from the back yards of houses on Moss Drive. The woman sounded relieved. "I saw her running through the yards and I thought she'd gotten loose, so I hopped in my car to try to catch her."

Catching a whippet is a neat trick, and I found Ms. Hendren's  train of thought equally elusive. "I sometimes sit with the Mennonite woman who sells tomatoes," she explained. A man comes there with Cleo." I thanked her and felt the heat-dulled wheels turning in my head to make sense of it all. She had met Cleo and Ira on one of their tomato-walks to the Mennonite produce stand.

It is almost impossible to find a good tomato in San Francisco. Overpriced heirlooms at the Ferry Building Farmer's Market look the part, but still don't have the juicy, acid-ey flavor of a hot Big Boy straight out of a Kentucky garden.  So when we are in Kentucky we have tomatoes with coffee at breakfast, layer tomato with mozzarella for sandwiches at noon, and slurp up fresh-tomato pasta at night. We furtively stand at the kitchen sink and let the seedy juice trickle down our chins. We top tomato wedges with cold cottage cheese and cucumber for a cool-off snack on the side porch in mid-afternoon, and sometimes tomatoes disappear from the kitchen counter between midnight and 8 am.

A couple of days ago we found the ultimate fresh-tomato treat in John Ross' home made tomato ketchup. This glittering caviar, perfected by John's Uncle Bill, came from a family recipe.  It takes an entire day to cook, beginning with twenty fresh tomatoes, pickling spice, and a bushel of sugar. By sunset the tomatoes have become a sweet treasure to be savored on crackers with cheese, heaped on a burger and bun, or licked straight from the spoon.  When Uncle Bill died in the spring, his recipe attained mythic status.

Today tomatoes have almost rescued a whippet, have put Uncle Bill on the culinary walk of fame, and have outed my husband, making him famous for being the one and only person in town sufficiently heroic to brave the heat on his tomato quest.

The kharmic cycle was complete when, late this afternoon, I was again stopped in my tracks.  Katie Beck was hurrying in the door of Greg's Market, but took a minute to say hi. I already knew what her first words would be.

"I saw Ira this morning," she said. "He was at the Mennonites' buying tomatoes."

Goodnight, John Boy

I just checked on Silas.  He's sleeping in what we call the Cinderella Room, a space adjacent to the upstairs sleeping porch, so small it barely holds a twin bed.  Silas checked all the options, then picked his own bed.

It's nearly midnight after a drive from Lexington, but we made time to read the Davy Crockett book that has my brother's name printed in it, and then double-checked the locations of the other upstairs tenants:  Ira and I will be across the hall (follow the magic rugs) and Phil will be in the corner room with its view of Clinton's courthouse cupola.

It was in 1993, seventeen years ago, that my brother and I started working on this house, reclaiming it from the wrecking ball with a promise to each other that we would make it into a summer gathering place for the whole clan.  It's almost impossible to get everyone here at the same time.  Kent, Minda, and Sylvie are home in Winchester now but will drive down in a few days to join Silas; Matt will drive down on the eve of the 17th;  Chris and Ben Jewell couldn't make it this summer-- Chris just started a new job at U of VA and Ben is doing a summer internship in Panama.

But Emma and Mason traveled across three states with their Dad, taking turns talking with him while he did all the driving.  And Silas is staying alone with us for the first time ever, exploring the front stairs, back stairs, and incredible attic of the Emma House.  In a few minutes I'll check on him again.  And then maybe just one more time.

House of Falling Plaster

On the way to Kentucky I picked up fifteen pairs of corncob holders, in transparent jewel-tones of blue, green, yellow, and red. This little acquisition was one small part of a larger vision: family time, gourmet meals, a Traditional Home cover story of perfect order.

Friday was the big night, with real china on the table, corn on the cob simmering, and tomatoes and cucumbers sliced and chilling..

Bechamel sauce was made,  the Pyron's shitaakes were sizzling, and squash and zucchini cubes were checker-boarded across the counter. The lasagna pan was lightly buttered; the ice water pitcher was out.  And it was six p.m. and Mason and Phil and the rest of the lasagna ingredients were nowhere to be found.

As a diversion, the rain came, first one in the entire parched July, and with it went a stampede to the front porch. Children of all ages ran toward the thunderheads, ozone scent, and much-needed shower bath.  A wet dish towel --once  white-- was trampled on the kitchen floor. The recycling container tipped over and its contents fanned out exhibition-style.  The oven beeped alarmingly that it was time to cook.

Almost instantly the sit-down dinner was transposed to snacks on the front porch. Silas and Sylvie were allowed to eat whatever they wanted. Somebody found the corkscrew. Zucchini was shoved aside to make room for slicing cheese and heaping crackers in a bowl.

Afterwards, Matt sat at the empty dining table and read Monster Museum to Silas. It was a lovely night reclaimed.  Silas listened attentively. Matt read with great expression.  As the story ended, Matt's full glass of red wine tipped and rolled. Red stuff spread across the table cloth and dripped slowly on to the carpet.

The next day Kent removed the shower door from the main bathroom to replace it with a new one from Lowes which measured as a fit, but didn't quite. An extracted shower door, drill, and pry bar stood patiently waiting for me to try the dinner a second night. As I held Sylvie and waited for the pasta to bake, she wet me through her diaper with such enthusiasm that it trickled down my leg and into my shoe. I fanned myself dry, changed to my flip flops, and the dinner  came off as planned.

That night there were  ten of us in the house. All bedrooms, including the Room of Falling Plaster, were full. I took a look around, considering all angles that the Traditional Home staff might want to photograph. The recycle bin was full, but upright.  The upstairs tub was dripping but operational.  The side porch swing, which had fallen Saturday when three of us tried to sit on it,  was resting comfortably in the grass. Laundry was drying on the porch rack, and on the porch rail, and on the porch floor. The dishwasher needed to be emptied.  Everything was just about perfect.

Photo clockwise: Phil, Mason, Minda, Sylvie, Kent, Matt, Em, Liz. Silas is under the table and the photo was taken by Ira.

Linked Within

This summer we drove from San Francisco to Kentucky, the first time in five years that we didn't hop a flight.  It took four days, figuring in the stone monoliths of southern Utah that summoned us and a 'check engine'  light that detoured us in Kansas. Our latitude stayed roughly the same, but changes in attitude accompanied all the landscapes that blurred past us as we drove.

The California hills that took us toward Nevada were Edward Weston's reclining brown nudes, hips and shoulders making an earth song to the sky. Utah's Salt Lake, from our perspective, was a white desert, under a sky so hot it caused road mirages to distract us for miles.  Cars levitated in the shimmering air, not coming down to earth until we were close enough to see their license plates.

In Missouri, the hills assumed a new familiarity.  Outside St. Louis green rows of corn took over, and linked us with every field of childhood.  Whoever coined the phrase, "a sight for sore eyes," understood the healing that occurs when you finally see something, or someone, that has been absent too long.  It's a bath of epsom salts, a gentle flushing out of foreign matter.