Tomatoes

I have had one tomato on my one tomato vine so far this year and with the 100 degree weather, I suspect that it will be my last. But isn't it a beauty?

So pretty on the vine, so pretty on my counter. If you only knew just how we Dawkins' love our tomatoes. It was my mom's favorite food - homegrown tomatoes, that is.

This one sat on my counter for a few days till the time grew just right.

I had to cut it. Normally I would slice into sandwich type slices, but just to be different I wedged it.

Then I remembered I had cottage cheese. This was special cottage cheese, the 4% fat cottage cheese. Do you know how long it has been since I tasted 4% cheese? Probably 20 years. Oh my it was so good. The flavors of the tomato and cheese.....perfection. Memory - When I was in 4H, I gave a demonstration of 3 different salads. One of the salads was a tomato stuffed with cottage cheese and topped with a green olive. I remember using a mirror to reflect the salad so that the judges could see it. The other salad was a peach topped with cottage cheese. I don't remember the third salad.

Sunday I went to Carmichael's market in Bixby to look for homegrown tomatoes. They had boxes after boxes of tomatoes for $25 per box. They looked beautiful so I knew right away they were not local. I asked and they were vine ripened Mississippi tomatoes. The clerk said they were delicious and she had been living on them for a week. Sold me. She must be a connoisseur like me. Wrong! Oh they were not all that bad, but girls, I tell you, they were NOT vine ripened tomatoes as I am used to. I picked these tomatoes one at a time hoping they would be better than I thought. Now for the good news. The flavor is better than the ones you buy in the supermarket. Now I wonder, if these are Mississippi vine ripened tomatoes and if you buy these in Mississippi, are they getting home grown tomatoes? If so they need to come to Oklahoma and buy some of ours. There is a difference.

Next week my siblings and our spouses are going to the lake. We have been planning our menu for a couple of weeks and tomatoes fit into every meal; some meals consisting of nothing but tomatoes such as bruschetta or salsa. There are few people any more critical of tomatoes than my sisters and sister-in-law. I am not sure I can pass this box of tomatoes off as homegrown, but I am sure they will be happy with them if we cannot find any better. We were hoping that each of us would be able to bring a shoe box full of the home grown beauties, preferably ones that we had grown ourselves. With the heat this year, that will not be possible. Mom would be proud to know we were carrying on her love of tomatoes. Another memory: After I graduated high school I didn't have a job nor was I going to college. My siblings had started back to school in the fall so that left mom and me at home all day. I think that was the time that I loved most. We really bonded that fall. Tomatoes just kept producing that fall. I made us a grill cheese sandwich almost every day and added slices of tomato. Oh my gosh, it was so good. Mom would talk with me in her own way about what I was going to do with my life. I think she had some sympathy for me because she didn't have a job after high school and stayed home with grandma and grandpa until she was 30. I didn't have a clue about my future except I knew that I did NOT want to go to college and I sure didn't want to live at home until I was 30! In November I was called to work at the state capital where I worked for two weeks. Then Tinker AFB hired me and my life was changed forever. Life has a way of turning out okay. Hand me the salt, I have a tomato to eat.