Life in Cowtown

I’ve been too lazy to haunt the farmers markets for the last two weekends, which is rather inexcusable since fall is coming oh so soon, but I have not been too lazy to eat. Since my lazyness perfectly dovetailed with another Serious Eats Weekend Cook And Tell: Too Hot edition, I gleefully participated.

Many people suggested all sorts of delicious sounding recipes that don’t require a stove, like salads and gazpacho, but when true laziness strikes one cannot be bothered with chopping, washing, plating and all that other mundane stuff called cooking. Instead I went with my ultimate fall-back technique – shopping. I’m a champion shopper, and did not disappoint myself, by traveling to the wonders of Blush and indulging myself.

Blush Lane is a wonderful addition to the Calgary food scene, taking care to source local and organic foods that are reasonably priced as well as delicious. I’ve shopped at their farmer’s market stand before and was overjoyed when their store opened. To date I’ve seen small baskets of Hotchkiss tomatoes that were pure heaven and a source of local pride, organic apples that tasted like honey, summer and freshness all in one bite, and rainbow carrots that were so delicious we ate half before we had a chance to cook them.

But serious efforts require serious sustenance, so this foray included:

The best, sweetest, most tomatoey tomatoes I’ve ever had:

A wedge of perfectly ripe Brie:

Incredible dried beef Salami:

And people, I totally popped over to A Ladybug Café next door, for a loaf of rye bread:

And the single greatest lemon tart in the whole world:

When I got home, all I had to do was slice up a tomato, and artfully arrange a beautiful still life that makes for one of my favorite things to eat – a composed plate. Washed down with some red wine it was a wonderful repast – dried, spicy salami with an intense beefy flavor, perfectly smooth brie, incredible tomatoes and a dark, earthy rye.  Nothing could be easier or more satisfying.

It’s hard to believe that a small tray of seedlings grew into this three foot tall forest.

Brand new 'maters

All the tomatoes love the maxi-kaps so much, that they just sprawled into lush bushy plants with thick stems and huge leaves.

They’ve survived our brutally frigid summer start and evening lows of 8 (which we still have).

All the leaves on the different varieties are different. From the broad velvety leaves of the Brandywines:

Brandywine... I think

To the lacy fern-like fronds of Ildi:

Totally different leaves

There are no tomatoes yet, but my knowledgeable friends are telling me it’s only a matter of days now.

I assume those'll be cherry tomatoes

I’ll do a tomato dance in my spare time.

In other news – I harvested my first zucchini yesterday, and I’ll be having some photos tomorrow.

It was getting to be situation critical with the tomatoes.  If you’ll recall, when I originally planted them, the cages promptly fell out what with our hurricanes and all, and the tomatoes were left to sag on their own.

And sag they did. And that didn’t look right. And due to the fact that they’re planted in a styrofoam container there was no way to rig up something to it. And since they were on concrete there was no way to stick something beside them. And my engineering skillz ended right there, but the plants still needed support.

Surfing the internets I came across a brilliant sounding idea from Hanna at This Garden Is Illegal and it involved nothing more than a few nails and a piece of twine. I thought there’s no way even I can screw this up, but to be on the safe side I stayed away from power tools and got J to drill some screws in for me, right into the deck strip over the tomato containers.

Then it was simply a matter of tying up some twine at the base of each tomato plant, and winding it gently around the stem. I did it twice on the longer tomatoes that really needed it. And voila! All of them were gently suspended in a moderately upright position. Now it’s just a matter of monitoring whether this set up will damage the stems at all, since – did I mention our winds? So I’ll let y’all know on how that works for them, but so far so splendid.

Oh and the cat went absolutely nuts over the whole string thing – he was thrilled throwing himself at the window and breathing furiously, and he never ever gave up! Good boy.