My Pommes d'Amour

My flatmate and I bought two tomato plants on Labour Day last year from the Ponsonby Plant Centre.  Since then we have both endeavoured to rear them to brilliance, watering them most days, feeding them special plant growth food, trimming the suckers that grow between the branches and tying them carefully to the wooden creeper fence we found handy in our garden.

Patience is not one of my virtues and to be honest, my flatmate has been responsible for feeding the plants since I gave up on them in December. B But they have finally started to produce fruit and my oh my, am I proud of them!

We can hardly keep up with supply in our house at the moment.

There’s something quite fantastic about eating the fruits of your own labour. Interestingly though, having never grown my own fruit or vegetables there was something quite daunting about eating them as well.

Tell me if you recognise this twinge of anxiety I started to feel... I’m so used to eating the perfectly shaped and huge tomatoes bought from the supermarket that picking them off my own plant felt almost too easy. My tomatoes taste better than any tomato I’ve ever bought from the supermarket. While smaller, they have the perfect amount of tanginess and fleshiness and luckily I have since learnt to trust in my own tomatoes. Do any other vegetable cultivators ever experience this worry though, I wonder?

They do require a bit of maintenance. One of the plants is a bit more temperamental than the other. I often find it wilts a little if I don’t feed it one day and then as soon as I do, the tomatoes get so full the skin on them splits. The other plant's fruit is a bit more consistent.

There are over 10,000 types of tomato worldwide, I'm growing Sweet 100s. I think the trick to growing them is simply to keep them well watered and in a sunny area of the garden. People warned me about pests and diseases attacking my plants but I've had no problems. Not even with birds, which I have plenty of around my house. 

Did you know that tomatoes are great antioxidants and have been shown to rid the body of skin diseases and fungus disorders? Some say that people who eat a large amount of tomatoes have a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, prostate, lung and stomach cancer! 

Ironically, tomatoes come from the same family as tobacco and nightshade.

Tonight I am going to make a salsa to go with a guacamole. I’ll chuck a chilli in with it and/or maybe a bit of cayenne pepper, lime juice, garlic, red onion, coriander and a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. I may use a little of my favourite Tio Pablo Mexican Seasoning which I use in my Mexican Bean dish. I haven’t thought too much about how I’m going to make it but I’ll do a bit of research and post the recipe (if it works out) up on here tomorrow.

You may have noticed, this week’s blog does not recount a Sunday lunch with Hamish. He stood me up this week, so I’ll be telling my own kitchen stories. An empty belly makes the best cook I've been told... He could of course make it up to me with a dinner. (Hamish, if you happen to be reading this that was a hint, I’m free Wednesday night.)