First Fruits

My first harvest, from my little city garden.  It makes me so happy.

I posted about my favorite salsa recipe before, but when I went back and clicked on the link I provided, it was sort of lame.  You had to search the Cuisinart website to find the recipe--and this blog believes in keeping things simple.  Hence, here's the recipe for the best salsa this side of Mexico, slightly modified from the Cuisinart cookbook:


Fresh Tomato and Corn Salsa


Makes 2 cups (it's so good you'll want to double this recipe)


1 small onion peeled, cut into 1" pieces
1/3 c. fresh basil (or cilantro, if you like that soapy-tasting stuff)
1 medium salsa pepper, seeded, cut into 1" pieces
  (or jalapeno, or whatever kind of hot pepper you like)
3 medium vine-ripened tomatoes, cut into 1" pieces
1.5 teaspoons fresh lime juice
2/3 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels
3/4 teaspoon Kosher salt

Place onion, basil and pepper in work bowl.  Process until finely chopped, about 5 second.  Scrape work bowl.  Add tomatoes and lime juice.  Pulse until tomatoes are coarsely chopped, about 5 to 7 times.  Add corn and salt; pulse once or twice to combine.  Let sit for 1 hour before serving to allow flavors to develop.  

That is, if you can stand it.


If you use fresh ingredients from your own garden, you will feel like Martha Stewart on steroids, and everyone who tastes the salsa will bow down and worship you.  And then they will ask you to make more, because it got all gone.

Garden Variety

In spite of our weird, rainy, cold summer, my garden is producing prodigiously.

Every day I pick a dozen or two sweet, ripe grape tomatoes from a single plant. This plant is so eager to thrive that it crawled up the side of the garage, pushed its way through the slightly open garage windows and started producing tomatoes inside the garage.

I don't know what variety my larger tomato plant is, but a couple of the fruits are the size of small pumpkins. I'm trying to figure out how long to let the larger tomatoes ripen before I take them off to give the green ones a chance to start their ripening process.

The Farmer's Almanac suggest that the first frost generally occurs around October 26 here in Chicago, but it also warns that the dates it provides are averages. There's a 50 percent chance that frost will occur earlier, the almanac warns, and with the cold summer we had, I'm betting it will.

I found a useful wiki article on how to ripen the tomatoes that have fallen off the vine before they are quite ripe enough, as well as the green tomatoes inevitably left behind like Tim LaHaye protagonists. I'll also be interested in your green tomato recipes, if you've got any good ones.

My salsa pepper plant has thus far produced about 20 large (6"-9"), firm, shiny green peppers that are perfect for salsa, vegetable salads, guacamole, and other uses. I froze a bunch, and gave away a bunch, and of course, I cooked with a bunch.

And remember the jungle next door? The guy doesn't just have steroidal grape vines and out-of-control weeds; he's also got watermelon vines as thick as garden hoses creeping across the yard, complete with huge yellow flowers and one little watermelon the size of a large lemon.

Somebody, probably one of my children, spit a watermelon seed over there last summer, and now JungleDude has inadvertently become a watermelon farmer. My kids and I are now kind of hoping that he postpones getting a yard service, so we can watch the baby watermelon grow.

You know what they say: When life gives you lemons, make watermelons.

Or something like that.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today I'm 47. I love my birthday.

I love attention and presents. I love it when people smile at me and tell me Happy Birthday! I love getting cards, especially those musical ones, and cards that make me laugh.

I love getting a free entree at Moretti's, which is where my little family is taking me for dinner.

I love the season of my birthday--almost the beginning of summer, it's finally starting to warm up enough for shirt sleeves and no jacket, and the big fluffy pink peonies are just starting to open up. You can still smell the perfume of lilac and lily-of-the-valley in the air, and the flower pots on my deck are busting out with color.

I don't mind getting older. To me, getting older means having more to be grateful for--more life, more friends, more experiences, more maturity. I know I'm a wiser, kinder and gentler person than I was when I was much younger.

This morning I prompted A. Peevie and M. Peevie to remember my Big Day:

"Hey guys," I said, "Anyone know what today is?"

"Monday," A. Peevie said morosely.

"June second!" M. Peevie piped up, all proud of herself because she's been tracking the dates until the very last day of school on June 6.

"Yeees," I said, nodding expectantly. "It's Monday, June 2. What else is it?" Geez, what a person has to go through just to get a simple "Happy Birthday!"!

"My field trip!" said M. Peevie happily. A. Peevie just shrugged his shoulders, and started to turn away.

"What's special about today, Monday, June 2?" I insisted.

"OH, IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY!!" they screamed in unison. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOMMY!" M. Peevie ran up and squeezed me around the waist. "Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday!" she sing-songed, while we jumped up and down happily.

That's all I needed to get my birthday jump-started: some birthday screams, some jumping, and a hug.

What To Do With All Those Tomatoes

With our tomatoes ripening faster than we can give them away, we are discovering new ways to enjoy them at every meal, and re-discovering old favorites. Last week we had turkey club sandwiches, with three layers of wheat toast piled high with lettuce, tomato, sliced turkey breast, bacon, and a paper-thin slice of cheese.

To make it even more garden-friendly, I Martha Stewarted a batch of homemade basil mayonnaise (recipe courtesy of J. Noelle at 24 Boxes). Mr. Peevie and I tried making our own mayonnaise one other time in the past 23 years, and it was an interesting experiment in non-emulsification. The end result looked kind of like something you'd clean up off the floor after a frat party.

But J. Noelle's recipe turned out fresh and creamy and delicious. What's next in the Peevie Kitchens, homemade ketchup?

Another garden treat we've been enjoying: fresh tomato and corn salsa. Here's the recipe from the Cuisinart cookbook, but I don't like cilantro, so I make it with fresh basil and parsley instead. If you use a whole fresh ear of corn, like I do, you might want to include some of the jalapeno seeds to counter some of the delicious corny sweetness and add a little kick. 'Sup to you. I love this salsa scooped up with plain old corn chips, or piled on top of grilled fish.

Veggie Tales

This, my friends, is the bounty of my garden. I'm just like a proud grandmom, dragging out my Brag Book to show off my little sweeties.

Those tomatoes in the front that look like Roma plum tomatoes are actually grape tomatoes. I think they were sneaking off at night to huff steroids.

The big honking dudes in the back are just now approaching ripe-itude. They include Early Girl, Health Kick, and Tomato Celebrity.

Notice the herbs? Clockwise, starting at bottom left, we've got thyme, curly parsley, and basil, and hiding shy-like in the back, some nice fresh Italian oregano. They've been seasoning corn and tomato salsa, pesto, and spaghetti sauce for a few weeks now.

And how about that shiny sweet red pepper lying like a cheerleader across the front row? M. Peevie ate two of them today, chomping down on them like apples.

Remember back in May when I posted about planting perennials in my front garden spot? Well, the jury is still out on that experiment.

Unfortunately, the brightest spot in the garden is that big weed right at six o'clock. Nothing is really flowering except the echinacea; and the euphorbia (is that what it's called?) looks kind of scary, like it might have slithered over and winked at Eve in the First Garden.

My flower pots on the deck, however, are another story altogether. My friends and neighbors have been "ooohh-ing" and "aaaahhhing" over them. "OMG, where did you get them?" and "Did you make them yourself?"

I did, I swear. Apparently, this is my hidden talent: creating beauteous flower pots to adorn my deck, right next to the soggy beach towels and broken sand buckets.

Just don't ask me about perennials, because apparently, that's NOT my hidden talent.

[Update: I have tried and tried to get the spacing right on this post, but now I completely give up.]

A Made-to-Order Day

What's not to like? I spent Memorial Day sleeping in (until 10 a.m.! Thanks, kids!), watching Firefly on DVD, gardening, and having an afternoon margarita or two.

The sun was shining; it was warm but not too hot.

Aside from the relentless demands from C. Peevie to take him to buy a video game, it was pretty much a made-to-order day.

For you gardeners out there, I decided to experiment with perennials in the front garden patch rather than the usual annuals. I planted echinacea, euphoria, nepeta (AKA catmint), salvia, and snow-on-the-mountain. (C. Peevie picked out the snow-on-the-mountain. He said, "Hey mom, remember what character and what book had snow-on-the-mountain in her garden?" I didn't. He reminded me: Atticus's neighbor, Mrs. Dubose, in To Kill a Mockingbird.)

Soon I'll post a picture. Stay tuned!