Ketchup, please

When Rose first told me about her project involving 100 tomato plants, my initial reaction was "yuck! tomatoes!" I hate tomatoes. I hate them so much, I don't even like tomato sauce. It's not the flavor of tomato that bothers me, it's the texture. The skin and the seeds and the slimy-ness. Yuck! It's gross just thinking about it. I know it doesn't make much sense, but I like other foods with similar textures, like plums and nectarines are slimy and have similar skin. And I don't mind raspberry seeds or pomegranate seeds. But something about those tomatoes, I just can't bear it.

Being from Pittsburgh, home of Heinz, I do love ketchup. It doesn't have the seeds or the skin. I put ketchup on everything. All of the traditional things, hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries. I don't like mustard, so I've got to have the red stuff. When I was younger, and sometimes still, I'd put ketchup on steak. Most people think I'm ruining the steak, but maybe the steak is ruining my ketchup! I also would put ketchup on tacos. I didn't like how spicy taco sauce was, but ketchup was perfect. As I grew up, my tastes changed and I do use the traditional taco sauce now. However, recently, I had run out of it, and put ketchup on a taco, and I'll admit, it was pretty nasty. But if I were stuck on a deserted island, ketchup would definitely be the condiment I'd take with me.

And it has to be Heinz. To anyone in Pittsburgh, Hunts is blasphemy. I've lived in New York, and people there don't believe me when I tell them there's a difference between Hunts and Heinz, but seriously, there is. Also, when I lived in London, many of the pubs served strange brands of ketchup, and I couldn't even eat it. It was always disappointing to eat "chips" with just salt, but I really had no choice. The rare days you'd find a place with Heinz was a day to celebrate. The rumors are true, a lot of the food is bad in England, and it starts and ends with the ketchup.

My niece is almost 2 years old, and already she can tell you the importance of ketchup. Okay, maybe she just thinks it's fun to dip all of her food in sauce, but still, she puts ketchup on everything. She recently dipped pineapple in ketchup and ate it, and seemed to like it. At this point, she pretty much won't eat anything without "dippy". She'll chant "dippy" until you give her something, anything, to dip into. Sometimes she won't even eat her food, but she'll just use it as a scoop to eat the dip.

But getting back to tomatoes. Besides ketchup, the only other exception I'll enjoy is tomato soup, but only if it's strained completely smooth. I especially like it with basil. (The best way to make a can of tomato soup is to add a can of milk instead of water, and then add some basil...instant improvement on canned soup).

That's it. Ketchup and Soup. I don't like tomato sauce of any kind, marinara, meat sauce, red sauce, none of it. It's all gross. Yes, this also means I don't like pizza. And I'm a quarter Italian! I'll eat it when it's unavoidable, but I'll work around the sauce as much as I can. Some pizza is better than others, but overall, I'd prefer white. Or, the new trend is buffalo chicken pizza or bbq pizza, and that is fantastic.

So Rose gave me a tomato plant. And, I'm a bit disdainful about the plant, because I hate tomatoes. But, like any good mother, I'll do everything I can to bring out the best qualities of my tomatoes....and their best qualities are found in ketchup. So, that's my goal, to turn my little tomato plant into enough tomatoes to make ketchup. I've never made ketchup before, and I don't know anyone who ever has (why would you when Heinz is around?), but I'm gonna try. If nothing else, I know I can turn it into dippy for my niece. I just hope she doesn't refine her palate before then.

strange place for a tomato

This guy is growing in a tiny crack beneath an ATM machine. I can’t imagine that this one will survive... I’ll keep you posted.

plant the plant deep

I can still hear my Mother saying “Tomato plants will develop roots all along their stem where the stem is under the soil line. To give your tomato plant the best start, plant the plant deep.”

In the photo above, an Amish Paste tomato plant had grown too tall and leggy. Because of this, it’s stem was weak and couldn’t support the weight of the plant. The plant received damage in the form of an almost severed stem. While other types of plants wouldn’t be able to survive this kind of damage, the tomato can.

I pinched off the lowest branch and planted this tomato deep in the ground, bringing the soil line almost up to the next set of branches. All is well now and I am dreaming of the sauces I will make in September.

meet rutabaga ruth

Rutabaga Ruth is the name I have given to the tomato plant that I will care for and write about over the course of this summer. She is a Ponderosa Pink variety and is reportedly low in acid.

The name Rutabaga Ruth comes from a yellowed newspaper clipping I found in the front of my Mom’s favorite cookbook.

one hundred positives

My Mother was a wonderful gardener. She could grow anything. Me on the other hand... well, let’s just say I’m better at other things.

My Mom loved tomato plants and the endless varieties that were available. In the winter she spent hours examining what seemed like hundreds of seed catalogs, comparing variety options and prices. She had a hard time weeding her order down to a dozen or so different varieties of tomatoes. She made many wish lists before she placed her order with the seed company that would give her the best value and variety for her money.

When the seeds finally arrived, she was like a child on Christmas morning. There was something so absolutely beautiful about the look of complete joy in her eyes as she pulled the seed packs out of their wrapping.

She carried this same joy with her as she sowed the seeds into the separate rows of a starter tray. I swear that she had 10 green thumbs as every seed would burst forth with life in the specified time of germination listed on the seed pack. She always marveled at how such a tiny seed could produce life.

When the sprouts were large enough to be transplanted, each received it’s own white foam cup and popsicle stick marked with it’s variety and days until maturity information. There was one problem. Usually 20 or more seeds came in a pack and my Mom always ordered at least 12 different varieties of tomatoes, and every seed seemed to germinate, and every sprout received it’s own cup... so, you do the math. And that’s the total for just the tomato plants. She also planted many varieties of peppers, celery and eggplant (to name a few). Oh yeah, and then there were flowers...

This brings me to today and why this blog exists. My Mother suffered from major depression. Her illness clouded her sense of reasoning and reality. After the tomato plants were planted in their little white cups she transferred the responsibility of the care of these plants to her eight children. Now that would have been fine if each child was to be responsible for two or three plants, but 30 plants was a bit too much even for a child that enjoyed gardening. Her illness also twisted her thinking in that she couldn’t give the extra tomato plants away to other people because she feared these people wouldn’t return or recycle the empty cups or that they wouldn’t take proper care of the plants. So the majority of the plants never were transplanted into the ground where they could grow to maturity. Instead most of them perished in their little white cups.

I have always known that if my Mom didn’t suffer from major depression, she would have received great joy in the giving of her extra tomato plants to those who could use them. It is in her memory that I have planted 100 tomato plants in little white cups and it is in her honor that I give these 100 tomato plants to 100 people.