Misadventures of the Monster Librarian

I am at the library and somehow I am hungry, but as is my norm, I am hungry for particular things. Tonight it's: The Kitchen is being flooded with tomatoes these days, which I AM SO HAPPY ABOUT! Earlier this week I made roasted Farm tomato soup with garlic and dill. So good. I don't have a recipe really, I change it every time I make it, but Mollie Katzen has a great garlicy tomato soup recipe in Moosewood . Also, always wanting to support other bloggers, I would also recommend Smitten Kitchen's Roasted Tomato Soup with Broiled Cheddar --it looks A-MA-ZING! Can't wait to try it! Also craving a really, really juicy peach. I bought one from a street market in NYC last Thursday and just thinking about it is making my mouth water...mmm...drooling like Homer Simpson. I can't wait to go into the Kitchen tomorrow morning and do some cooking. Library be damned tonight. This is my favorite time of year; abundance rains, as M put it today, "the fridge is really full!...

I was supposed to sit in bed all day and read, but nagging at me were the three flats of tomatillos, the pounds of tomatoes, the 4 (LAME!) squash and the bag of beets. Don't even get me started on the buckets upon buckets of Farm apples in our walk-in fridge (that is Sunday's project). So I: hunched over the sink and scrubbed tomatoes in cold water for what seemed like hours; roasted tomatoes with garlic, chipotle, chili pepper, green peppers, cumin and chili powder; cooled; blended with red onions, lemon juice, salt and red wine vinegar; canned salsa peeled and scrubbed tomatillos; pureed and drained off excess juices; mixed with garlic, chipotle, chili  cumin and chili powder, tons of red onions, lemon juice, salt and red wine vinegar; canned salsa washed, halved, oiled, salted, roasted, gutted seeds and salvaged stringy strands of spaghetti squash, bagged and froze boiled, cooled, skinned, sliced and pickled beets Then I pondered the one green tomato I left on the count...

Yesterday was day 2 of my 3 day weekend and I had almost no plans, and yet, I find that these are the kinds of days that fill up so quickly. I had a scheduled dental appointment and had arranged for my friend Yannick to come along in case they gave me laughing gas and I needed a designated driver; the procedure wound up being fast and gas-free, so we found ourselves with no agenda. "Have you ever been to Taft Farm ?" I asked. "NO?! Than we MUST go get doughnuts and cider...and birch beer!" (I must point out that when I have particular cravings, I MUST have that thing RIGHT THEN!--it was one of those mornings...I was feeling a little cavity-free giddiness). So we found ourselves at the lovely Taft Farm, oggling the squash being carried outside in huge crates; eyeing the cherry tomatoes; marveling at the many local products. We left with two birch beers, two doughnuts, a bag of beets and frozen portabella mushroom/carmelized onion ravioli for me and a little box ...

Fruits of our labors Yesterday Sierra, Jay and I all wound up at the garden at the same time. We ate Farm raspberries, fat in their seedy clusters; admired and picked Jay's peppers and tomatoes; brushed dirt off of carrots and bit into their crunchy, sweet meat. Then we moved on to potatoes. Diggings up whites, reds and fingerlings Everyone should dig up potatoes at least once in their life. And I mean dig up by hand. There is nothing so satisfying as turning your two arms into excavating equipment; digging down deep past the surface, sun warmed soil, down into the cool, bug filled earth. As your hands drag back up towards the surface, like a swimmer coming up for air, you realize that without even knowing it, you've stumbled upon potatoes. Potatoes no bigger than a marble, huge ones, in-betweens, worm-bored ones. I dug up all of these fingerling potaotes! And as you dig you begin to salivate, turning into a Forrest Gump of sorts, now listing off every w...

Ok, I am no where near enjoying my tomatoes yet, but since I spent the entire day in the garden hoeing and raking and weeding and planting over 60 tomato plants and 17 tomatillo plants I have tomatoes on the brain: BLTs with tons of tomatoes, tomatoes eaten like apples, tomatoes with salt, homemade tomato sauces and salsas and...Anyway, photos soon. "Ode to tomatoes" The street filled with tomatoes, midday, summer, light is halved like a tomato, its juice runs through the streets. In December, unabated, the tomato invades the kitchen, it enters at lunchtime, takes its ease on countertops, among glasses, butter dishes, blue saltcellars. It sheds its own light, benign majesty. Unfortunately, we must murder it: the knife sinks into living flesh, red viscera a cool sun, profound, inexhaustible, populates the salads of Chile, happily, it is wed to the clear onion, and to celebrate the union we pour oil, essential child o...

I was so inspired with Andrea and Taylor's--of A Farmer in the Dell -- gnocchi recipe that I just had to try it. TSO and I made it tonight and invited S to join us for a dinner of DELICIOUS spinach ricotta gnocchi, Farm roasted spaghetti squash with sage and my home-made tomato, mushroom, garlic marinara (which I had canned this summer; made with my own tomatoes!) Here are some pictures I took along the way! Blogger is being lame and I don't want to fool around with moving the pictures, so I give you dinner in reverse: 1. Farm Spaghetti Squash (roasted then sauteed with sage). 2. My tomatoes now sauced.  3. Our spaghetti squash looks like dinner for two with the forks. The rest: Gnocchi from start to finish, step by (mostly) step. The last picture is the actual finished gnocchi (after boiling!) Now I need to go get ready--Midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1) tonight! I am getting there hours early to get in line for good seats. N...

1. Hancock Shaker Village, Pittsfield, MA. This is a photo of their round barn. Very cool looking on the inside. 2. Edith Wharton's home, The Mount in Lenox, MA. Very beautiful gardens and grounds; the house was lacking in my humble opinion. Made for some gorgeous photos. 3. Some of the fruits of my summer labors (of love). My gorgeous tomatoes (that night made into DELICIOUS BLTs). Pictured l to r: Cherokee Purples, Italian heirloom Big Boys, Romas and the Green Zebras are in the top left corner. 4. My Halloween pumpkins adorning our front porch. 5. My pumpkin harvest: 8 carving (Howden) Halloween pumpkins (the big ones), 13 (Pam) pie pumpkins (the little ones, which are long since cooked, pureed and bagged in our freezer for future pies!)

Thought to be poisonous at one point. The fruit of the Americas (native of South America). An Italians dream since the 1500s. A North American joy since the late 1700s. Referred to by the French as, "love apples." I give you the tomato. Tomatoes are something, like asparagus and watermelon, that mean summer to me. All year long I look forward to that first bite into the fleshy fruits; the seed seeping chomp into a cherry tomato; the very smell of tomatoes in the garden--the smell of the green tomato vine spines supporting fat, reaching orbs. We just started getting crates upon crates of tomatoes in the Kitchen and it looks like the garden team grew some similar varieties as me: green zebras and Cherokee purples. They have other varieties of big beefsteaky looking tomatoes and perfect, perfect, PERFECT cherry tomatoes. Our favorite way to use the tomatoes these days is simple enough: slices of Farm tomatoes, interspersed with slices of Farm mozzarella, sprinkled...