Fall/Winter 1999

As I sit here and write this, I am eating a delicacy - a tomato sandwich. A little bit of mayo and white bread, some salt and pepper, sliced tomatoes…sigh. And the lovely thing is that you can eat these virtually at every meal, because of the proliferation of tomatoes during the summer. With the right conditions, these aren't tomato plants, they are darned tomato factories.

Case in point: The first (ambitious) summer I had a garden, I bought a few, um, let's say eight, tomato plants. Look at the tomatoes grow. How nice. How encouraging! Hey I can actually do this gardening stuff. Oh yum, look at these ripe tomatoes. I can have sliced tomatoes with mozzarella and basil, tomato sandwiches, make tomato sauce…Wow look at all of these tomatoes. What should I do with them? There's too many for me and no one wants them. Jar them? Boiling water, hot stoves, filled jars left in the basement to fossilize…

Okay, you get my drift. Be careful in your tomato plant allotment. Don't get carried away by the fantasy of cooking with tomatoes every night or pulling a jar from the basement in the middle of a frigid snowstorm to make a tasty sun-ripened sauce. It might happen, but it might not.

Just be sure to at least enjoy the taste now, under the warm sun, with all of its sweet ripe freshness. Eat one on its own, outside, enjoying the end of summer. Slice one and put dressing on it for a great snack or lunch. Cut one up into chunks and put it in a salad. Make a sandwich like I described. And all the while, admire its smooth red skin, its tangy sweet taste, and the way the tomato plants smell in the garden - the savory green vines and the heat surrounding the thick leaves and stalk emanating the heady aroma of summer.

Some things you can capture and take with you, in a muted way, for the long cold winter. And others are just worth the long wait. I think I'll enjoy my sandwich now, and be content to wait for the taste of summer when it comes around again.