Fleur-de-TomatoTrivia

It’s getting to be that time of year—tomato time.

And what better way to celebrate the season than reading William Alexander’s Ten Tomatoes that Changed the World.

Sungolds still green

To tempt you to run to your nearest library, download it on your Kindle, or search Amazon for a copy, I’ve put together a Tomato Trivia Test from my reading of the book. Spoiler Alert:  The answers are only available by reading the book—no fair Googling anything.

True or False:

–The Margherita Pizza (tomato, mozzarella and basil—red, white and green like the Italian flag) originated in Naples, Italy, and was named after King Umberto’s wife.

–To preserve San Marzano tomatoes, the people of Naples dry them on their terra-cotta rooftops.

–The tomato is native to Peru.

–A founding member of the Fascist Party published a manifesto in 1930 calling for the “abolition of pasta”. He claimed too much pasta made Italian men too heavy and unprepared for war.

–Sungold, a golden cherry tomato hybrid and Laurie’s favorite, was bred in Japan.

Fill in the blank:

–Pasta names and their English equivalent:  spaghetti means “little strings,” farfalle means “butterflies” and ___________ means “little worms”.

–The number of tomatoes in every bottle of Heinz ketchup, ___ dozen.

–The first day Naples, Italy, pizzerias were allowed to open for takeout after the 2020 ______ lockdown, 60,000 pizzas were ordered.

–A recipe featuring ________ first appeared in 1694 in an Italian cookbook written by Antonio Latini.

–Laurie remembers her grandmother, ______, calling the refrigerator an “ice box.”  That’s probably because in 1958 only 1 in 8 Italian households had a modern refrigerator.

(Answer to this one is “Nene,” since William Alexander never met Nene, nor Laurie, for that matter.)

Mesclun Follow-Up:  Turns out my sister Lee Ann has three window boxes of mesclun going, and like all that she does, she is organized and efficient. Her son Liam used to work at River Bank Farm in CT, and he said they would get two cuttings from their mesclun. So, Lee Ann starts another row of seeds after the first cut and plants more when she pulls out the old. “The price of salad greens motivates me.”

They’ve lived in their “forever home” on Cape Cod for only a year and she’s already had the kitchen completely remodeled, sanded and primed the deck, is helping plan her youngest daughter’s wedding on the Cape in August, and never lets her mesclun go to flower. 

Cherry Picking Time:  At my friends Pam and Norm’s place, it is cherry-picking time.  They dangle CDs to frighten the birds away from the ripening fruit.

Fleur-de-Mesclun

Some of the best things in my garden are complete accidents.

I love my Grow Boxes, a gift from Richard many years ago.  These plastic planters on wheels are watered from a lower reservoir wicked into the potting medium.  I’ve successfully grown a variety of herb collections, bunches of basil and chard, and pecks of shishito peppers. 

They worked well in my mother’s atrium, outside on her deck, and here in Pleasant Gap beneath the roof overhang, which gets morning sun but little rain.

On April Fool’s Day, I sowed in each box a row of rainbow chard and a row of Mighty Spicy Mesclun Mix from Fruition Seeds. By May 7, I was snipping greens for our salads.  Every couple of days until Memorial Day I’d harvest more leaves for our salads. Then I got distracted. By mid-June, forget the leaves, I was growing tall wisps of starry yellow flowers. Mustard flowers, I think. Absolutely stunning as they rise above the windowsill and shimmy in the breeze.

I’m leaving one box for show and replanted the second with another sowing of mesclun to keep the greens (and yellow flowers) growing and going. Laurie Lynch

More Echoes (in Pink): Rain lilies, Dianthus and my Luke&Lia paperheart flowers.

More Dots: First the paper dots, then the forget-me-not flower dots, now elderberry blossom dots on the carpet, thanks to Sandy who loves the shade of the elderberry bush. I’ve also started making batches of elderblossom cordial, my summertime drink.

Fleur-de-Blunder

I’ve grown Jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus) for years.  I love the native sunflowers and their edible tubers, often called sunchokes.

I’ve sliced and diced, pickled and roasted and mashed the tubers for various dishes in Charleston, Kutztown, State College, and even Ghent, Belgium.  But I really blew it when I moved them to my tiny yard in Pleasant Gap.

Everywhere else I’ve grown them, they’ve been surrounded by lawn, mowed weekly, and therefore kept in bounds. In one of my new beds in Pleasant Gap, I clustered them in a large pot filled with soil, and placed them in the rear corner where the stalks could rise up above the fence with small-but-mighty, sunburst flowers. The container, I thought, would contain the tubers, making my fall, post-frost tuber harvest easy.  Wrong.

Major migration. The tubers jumped ship, or perhaps snuck out of the drainage holes. Maybe the flowers dropped their seeds on fertile ground. I’m not really sure. But this spring, the back corner of my perennial bed was blanketed in escapees who apparently loved the rich, mulched soil. They even crept under the fence and poked their heads up along the rails where my mower can’t reach them.

Drastic times call for drastic measures.  I had to buy a jug of Glyphosate, aka Roundup, a systemic herbicide. This isn’t a course of action I take lightly.  And, I’ve had to spray it on the sprouts three times already this spring—always on wind-less mornings—so the herbicide wouldn’t drift to my other plants. Fingers-crossed that this will take care of it. In the fall, I plan to plant a non-invasive, native tree or shrub in that corner. Any suggestions?

Meanwhile, my pot of wayward Jerusalem artichokes is sitting on a patch of Astroturf near the corner of the house, sidewalk, and driveway, where I can keep my eye on it.  I hope to enjoy the tall blooms and harvest some tubers without them taking over the carport.  Laurie Lynch

Sister City: State College recently became a Sister City to Nizhyn, a university town in Ukraine.  Last night I attended a Concert for Ukraine with world-class musicians from our area playing music composed by Ukrainians. It was a donation-only concert (more than $7,000 raised) to aid humanitarian efforts in Nizhyn. All of the music was new to me.  My favorites: mezzo-soprano Ruslana Kaminska singing “Ballad of the Mallows” by Volodymyr Ivasyuk and Bohdan Gura, and the members of Stonebridge Winds playing Vladimir Dyck’s “Esquisses champêtres” (County Sketches). Perhaps you can find the music on YouTube? For more information on the local sister city project, check out sisterssister.org. Music is such a blessing for the soul.