Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/40669
laugh It's That Time of Year Again By Laura J. Gallagher I'm going to take what may be considered a controversial stand here and say: I love summer. Blew your minds, didn't I? I bet you're all clutching your pearls, muttering "my stars," and maybe reaching for something to fan yourself with. But sometimes these things, unpopular and "outside the norm" as they are, need to be said. Once we've all settled down a bit, I'd like to wax rhapsodic about what this time of year means to me. Tomatoes. I'd say I'm a tomato snob, but that would imply that I only eat organically grown, deep red, perfectly sculpted ones, when in fact the opposite is true. I love tomatoes so much that I willing eat those pink, pulpy tennis balls presented by most grocery chains and res- taurants as the real deal. Although I guess I am a snob, or at least have some "issues," in that doing so makes me angrier than I prob- ably should be. The smell and taste of a good tomato, wow, instantly zips me back to my childhood. My dad was a fantastic gardener, and tomatoes (and carrots) were kind of his specialty. He also grew peas, green beans, onions, rutabaga, radishes, pumpkins…all in a patch not much bigger than my current office. Man, he was into it. Each spring every windowsill in our house would be home to those stinky peat moss cups holding fragile little stems. He installed grow lights in one part of the basement and had a shelf full of how-to books. You've never seen anyone so excited to see a Burpee Seed catalog come in the mail. He once actually planted a petunia in the onion patch, just so he could sing that "I'm a lonely little petunia in an onion patch" song more than anyone really needed to hear it. (Kids, ask, um, any World War II vet.) " " ...whenever I hear someone say they don't like vegetables, I tend to look at them as if they just said they were card-carrying members of The Flat Earth Society. He was into it, is what I'm saying. The neighbor kids and I (I should really start giving them part of my fee for this column, given how often I mention them) would pick veggies right out of the garden, wash them off with the hose and snarf them down. Those wonderful summer afternoons, sit- ting on the porch and eating carrots still wet and crazy fresh, not a chemical in sight…sigh. To this day my favorite food is peas, and whenever I hear someone say they don't like vegetables, I tend to look at them as if they just said they were card-carrying members of The Flat Earth Society. But tomatoes, simple tomatoes, were the biggest deal for some reason. My dad would study his catalogs and books, picking out what- ever sounded good, new or interesting, and then made sure he planted a good mix of colors and sizes. When the first one was ripe, he'd cut it into four pieces—one each for him, my mom, my grandma and me—and insisted we all "partake." We'd actually be expected to critique it—and "It's good, Dad, can I go hang more posters of unicorns in my room now?" was not acceptable input. Many years later, I've braved enough produce sections in grocery stores to know that nothing beats homegrown. Speaking of those grocery stores, why do the produce sections so often look like the aftermath of a Red Cross food-drop to some weather-ravaged village? Stuff is spilling out of bins, there's never any rhyme or reason to how it's organized (it's either alphabeti- cal or by color, I haven't decided), and half the time your cart gets stuck as you try to plow through the corn detritus on the floor left from people looking for the perfect ears. I digress. I could just go ahead and plant some tomatoes of my own, but I so did not inherit the gardening/growing things gene. Living on what could conservatively be described as a "mature wooded lot," we get a lot of crud falling from the trees, carried around by squirrels, etc., making it weeds, weeds, weeds at Chez Gallagher. Between that and my genetic inability to know—or care about—the difference between hydrangeas, hyacinths and hyoids (the last one's the bone in your neck, right?), I'm happy if some- thing blooms that could pass as a flower. But I know my tomatoes. ••• Laura J. Gallagher is a long-time communications professional. When not teasing her husband, Triple M's Pat Gallagher, she is eating tomatoes. Find her on Facebook at the Laura J. Gallagher fan page! 80 BRAVA Magazine August 2011