Garden Roll-Ups

I've officially gotten tired of Cosmo swiping the cherry tomatoes off the kitchen counter and making cat toys of them. So I've begun eating them in the yard, never even bringing them into the house.
While they're good on their own, I yearned to do more with them. So one day while watering out back, I devised what I call the garden roll-up (okay, so I was hungry, too). I hosed off some cherry tomatoes and some sorrel and Swiss chard leaves. I layered the leaves, added a bit of oregano from the herb bed and rolled it all around a cherry tomato. It made a great little snack while I was watering the garden.

You can do this with most anything that's available in the garden, as long as it fits in a rolled leaf. This rules out watermelon. And anything that requires cooking, like eggplant. But still, it's a nice way to enjoy fresh garden flavors with absolutely NO work.

Fun with mathematics & small, round food

100% of my cherry tomato harvest disappeared from the kitchen counter last night.

While we slept, the cherry tomatoes metamorphosed into cat toys. When I got up this morning, I found a lone tomato sitting in a shaft of sunlight on the kitchen floor.

Cosmo heard me in the kitchen, so he raced in and took up the game again, smacking the tomato this way and that.

Then he ignored it for awhile. After all, he IS the superior one.

The tomato tried to make a break for it but was captured in the end.

GAME OVER!

I don't like refrigerating tomatoes, as it destroys much of their flavor and delicate texture. So I guess I'm going to have to start keeping them in the microwave, along with the bread (see "The Bread Thief," April 25, 2008), so Cosmo doesn't make off with any more of the produce from our meager desert garden.

As for that tomato harvest, truthfully, there were only two tomatoes, since that's all that were ripe. But when you use percentages, you can make anything sound more dramatic, profound or whatever you need it to. (50% of the harvest is still missing!)

Another example: a squirrel made off with 25% of our tangerine crop last winter. We'd just planted a new tree, which had four tangerines on it, 25% of which dropped off through our clumsiness during planting. We later harvested 50%.

Gee, isn't math fun?!

You say paella . . . I say jambalaya . . . let’s call the whole thing yummy!

In New Orleans last week, I took a course in Creole and Cajun cooking, and I appreciate the point our instructor, Saundra, made about what happens when populations migrate to new areas with their old recipes in tow. Essentially, they must use what they have at hand in their new environment and adapt their recipes as best they can.

For example, European settlers to the Louisiana lowcountry brought their recipe for paella, and it metamorphosed into jambalaya, as they had to substitute tomatoes for the saffron and oysters for the mussels. In the process, a wonderful new cuisine was born.

Corinne puts the finishing touches on the jambalaya. With a dish this varied and flavorful, you’ll never miss the saffron and mussels!

As she handed everyone a packet of recipes, she encouraged us to make gumbo at home. “But,” she said, “if you live where there’s no andouille, use what you have—kielbasa or chorizo or whatever is native to where you come from.”

This is the way it has always been done. We cling to our customs and recipes, but as we settle in new places, we have to make adjustments. With humankind's propensity to roam the earth, who’s to say how authentic any recipe--or any custom--is?