Trust but Verify

Tonight, I cooked a lightened-up version of Chicken Cacciatore. It was an Ellie Krieger recipe, and it looked yummy.

TS: Hey, sweetie, dinner's not going to be ready at 7:00 after all.
DH: Well, see, you tend to cook things that are complicated.
TS: I'm very trusting! When they say 5 minutes of prep time and 35 minutes of cooking time, I believe them.
DH: Reagan said "trust but verify."
TS: And I don't really like to read recipes beforehand. If it looks like two or three short paragraphs and it sounds tasty, I figure, "Great!" Oh, dadgum!
DH: What?
TS: I forgot to turn the heat down on the part where you simmer. This is what I hate about cooking¬–one misstep and the whole meal betrays you.
DH: It's okay¬–look. We'll just do this.
TS: 20 minutes of simmering time. This is the part where I get bored and wander off.
DH: Niles, we're gonna make your mama a short-order cook.
TS: That's what I need to do–flip burgers for a while. I was going to do salad, but I'm giving up.
DH: Too traumatized?
TS: Mm-hmm . . .

It WAS yummy, though.

Charlie Brown Tomatoes

Our tomato plants came in today! I'm so excited.

I always feel a little like Charlie Brown kicking the football at this time of year. DH and I get our hopes up for a great crop of tasty tomatoes, and then, just like last year, Lucy moves the football, i.e., something goes wrong and we are disappointed again.

The past couple of years were the worst. We tried growing tomatoes in those upside-down planters. As soon as we planted our beautiful tomato plants in those planters, they began looking sick. I don't know if we accidentally raised the plants out of the direct sun, or we had a fungus among us, or what. Now, a tomato expert in our area says that his brother grows them in upside-down buckets, and they do very well, so I don't know what our problem was with that.

DH even built a mesh-enclosed structure to keep the birds out. I still donate a tomato to the birds every now and then, but they don't get all of them.

In previous years, we have grown some tomatoes that we figure cost approximately $75 per tomato--no small feat. I'm not sure if they were actually worth $75 apiece, but they were yummy.

This year, we're going back to the Earth Boxes . . . . . we have many, many Earth Boxes. I have a fungicide recommended by the tomato expert, and The Roomie accidentally mentioned to me that she's a Master Gardener, so I have plans for her, too.

She'll have her hands full; our problems growing tomatoes are legend. Wish us good luck . . . and please don't touch that football.