There's only two things money can't buy....that's true love, and home-grown tomatoes.

Texas singer-songwriter Guy Clark said that in a song about home-grown tomatoes (though that's not Guy singing in the link). Here's what I've picked in the last couple of days:


My favorites are an heirloom variety called "Cherokee Purple." They are as big as baseballs or softballs, don't have much pulp, and taste like heaven. Plus, they look really cool, with green tops and purpley-red bottoms.


We made some pesto the other day (from home-grown basil, of course), and topped it with warm cherry tomatoes. This variety is called "Sweet Millions," and the plants are really producing well.


Sadly, the neighborhood squirrels also like tomatoes. This one kind of survived, but I've thrown several away that weren't so good. I'm taking action to get those little suckers, though. I'll let you know how that goes.

I'm also growing green beans, okra, and Mississippi purple-hulled peas. (I guess I've got a thing for purple vegetables. Maybe because my high school colors were purple and white, or maybe because "purple" veggies are actually Aggie maroon.) Anyway, each of these crops is producing enough to give us a nice meal each week.


Here's the first pumpkin. It weighs 17 pounds, and I've got about a dozen more this size ripening. Interesting garden fact: you should plant pumpkins from mid-May to mid-June, instead of, say, early March before you go snowboarding. You should do that because you'll feel dumb if you pick pumpkins for Independence Day, before the watermelons get ripe. Pumpkins just belong to fall, not to summer. It's still a nice pumpkin, though.


Here's another panorama, with some handsome devil in an Aggie shirt, for scale. The purple tomatoes came from the big, bushy, dark-green plant at the back on the left. That plant likes my soil.

Organic Gardening How-To

A nice article from an Irish paper describes some organic gardening basics. It's good advice, although I'd add getting a soil test to the list. My garden is never very good (especially broccoli and its relatives), so I've decided to send some dirt to the state lab for a test. If anything interesting comes of the test, I'll keep you informed.

Hog Jowls

Jowls are the meat and fat from the cheek area. Jasper will illustrate, here:


They are very fatty, and not very meaty. They are usually salt-cured, and sometimes smoked. Jowls make a good seasoning in other dishes. I like them with strong greens like collards, mustard, or turnip. Here's my recipe for hog jowls and greens. Make sure you have plenty of time, because it takes lots of time to get the jowls ready.

1 cured hog jowl, about 12 oz.
2 bunches of leafy greens like collards
1 medium onion
dash of hot sauce (optional)

Here's how the jowls look to start with:


Yummy?

Soak the jowl in about four quarts of water for three or four hours. (The jowls have to be soaked to cut back the salt content--otherwise, they leave the dish waaaaay too salty).

Roast the jowls at about 350 for a couple of hours in a deep pan. The cooked jowls look like this:


And the fat that cooks out in the oven looks like this:

That's why I roast the jowls--it renders out all that fat. Of course, I cook other stuff with the fat, but at least I don't load it all into the greens.

Dice the onion and the jowls. Saute them together in a big pot.

While the onion and jowls cook, stem the greens and chop them coarsely. Rinse the greens in a colander, but don't let them drain too much. The retained water will be enough to steam the greens and make a little bit of juice in the pot.

When the onions are soft, put the greens in the pot and cover tightly. Add the hot sauce if you like a little heat in the greens.

Cook for 15 minutes, stirring every five minutes or so to evenly coat the greens with the fat and hot sauce.



Serve with cornbread and something southern, like fried catfish.

More garden stuff

The hardest part about gardening, for me, is thinning. I just can't bring myself to get rid of those cute little sprouts. Of course, not getting rid of the sprouts means that, in about a month, I'll have a bunch of scrawny, ugly plants jammed together. I think that's why I don't get better results.

Tonight I went out and bought some broccoli and collard greens. Each of those vegetables will get a three foot X six foot plot in the garden--eighteen square feet.

I bought nine of each plant. Just nine--this way, each plant will (I hope) have room to spread out and grow nice and big, and provide me with some tasty treats (or at least some strongly-flavored green stuff. I know that neither broccoli or collards are universally loved.)