The Tomato Whisperer

Yesterday, my beau called me while I was at work.  He had been mowing the back yard.
"You would not believe the tomatoes you have back here in your raised garden.  It's insane."

                                                                      ??

We put the raised garden together a couple of years ago.  I enthusiastically planted organic seeds and tended to it lovingly for roughly a month.  That's probably an exaggeration.  I did manage to see some sprouts.  I even got a green bean.  I plucked it from the earth, held it high and shouted "AS GOD IS MY WITNESS I WILL NEVER GO HUNGRY AGAIN!"  Then I ate it.  Standing right there in the garden.  Dirt and all.  The most expensive green bean of all time.  After that, something shiny distracted me, I abandoned all hope of making my own salsa and everything went to pot, or to seed.  Apparently, literally.

As I drove home, I laughed.  How about that?  I am the Tomato Whisperer.  The key is to walk by the raised bed with your hands over your eyes like blinders.  If they think you aren't looking, they'll grow.
I'll be able to make my own salsa after all.  Maybe spaghetti sauce too.  Homemade catsup?  Fried green tomatoes?  Good Lord, what I am going to do with all these stinkin' tomatoes?  Give some to the neighbors.  Start going to the Farmer's Market with my Miracle Tomatoes.  Should I charge more?  I'll write a book on Tao Gardening.  Then a cookbook.  I'll commercialize my spaghetti sauce: Tomato Whisperer Pasta Sauce.  It has a ring to it, doesn't it?

When I get home the first thing I do is go out back to inspect my long forgotten vegetable garden.  There are no tomatoes back there.  Nothing that even remotely resembles tomato plants.
I come back inside.  "Phil, honey, there are no tomatoes out there."
"Those aren't tomato plants?"
"No, the plant in the container on the deck that I'm currently ignoring?  That's a tomato plant."
"Oh.  Then what is that stuff in the raised bed?"
"It's a bumper crop of cilantro.  At least I think it's cilantro."

The lesson is this:

1) Only hard work will get you where you want to be.  Don't believe your own hype.
2) Until we take a more active role in our food (like oh, say, figuring out the difference between cilantro and tomato plants), Monsanto doesn't have much to worry about.
3) You also need cilantro for salsa.  It makes a nice garnish on spaghetti too.

Ikea Kills Hippies (and Rational Behavior)

I like to think of myself as a responsible human being.  Caring, giving and all that jazz...  I recycle, rescue animals, shop at thrift stores, the whole bit.
But let me walk past the sliding doors at Ikea, and Katie bar the door.  I MUST CONSUME.

For Heather's birthday, we decided a road trip was in order.  To Atlanta.  To Ikea.

We spent FIVE hours in that store.  FIVE hours.  I can't believe it's possible to spend that kind of time in a store where you aren't trying on clothes.  Man, if Ikea had shoes, we'd still be there.

We both said "oh, I don't need a cart" when we walked in the door.  By the time we walked out FIVE HOURS later, I had two of those giant yellow bags and a shopping cart piled high.  I don't know what Heather had, I couldn't see her.

We started the trip saying "next time, we should ask so&so to go with us" and ended up saying "next time, we need to drive separately--can you see out of the rearview mirror?"  

On the way home, I pulled out my receipt and started cataloging everything I had purchased:

a comforter
a duvet
3 bars of chocolate
5 packs of apple cookies (delicious)
12 roman shades (some of which I will tie-dye!  Whee!)
6 mirrors (don't worry; I have a plan)
a floor lamp (quite possibly the only thing I actually needed, except the chocolate)
a folding side table
paint (to paint the folding side table)
a stuffed dog for my favorite 2 year old
a silicone bunt cake pan... (hmm.... )
an egg slicer (okaaaayyy....)

and about halfway down the list, here's where we go off the rails a bit:

a meat thermometer

We both laugh so hard I thought we were going to have to pull over.  It was roaring, snorting, tear-rolling, snot-blasting, really, I' m serious, maybe we should pull over the car, screaming fits of laughter.

Because I'm a vegetarian.