Salvation Amy

First, I am really really ticked at John McCain for taking Michael Moore to task in his speech, and basically mischaracterizing the content of Fahrenheit 9/11. Nowhere in F911 is there an intimation that Iraq under Sadam Hussein was all bunnies and duckies and picnics, so I found that pretty disingenuous. And not that I watched the speech, because I’m not about to waste a minute of my life listening to the Republicans wave flags and stand on the shoulders of the dead of September 11, or anything like that. Not that I find Senator McCain particularly guilty of this, but I might accidentally catch a glimpse of Bill O’Reilly or something, and I’m not risking it. But I saw a snippet on the news, and it steamed me. So I was good and mad at him.

Until I found this pbs thing from last night. It was an interview with John McCain, who I am just noticing has sort of a chipmunkesque kind of thing going on with his jaw, but, whatever. Anyway, it was a kind of roundtable discussion with Mr. July in my Senatorial Beefcake Calendar. And he’s being really diplomatic. Praising John Kerry, and not saying Bush is an idiot, but thinking it.

So one of the interviewers says “Senator, the Bush administration is really courting your supporters.” And S.B. is very humble about it. And the interviewer keeps going on and says “He’s practically kissing you in public,” and S.B. remains sort of “aw shucks.” But the guy will not drop it, and says “I mean, Cheney’s the Vice President, and he never kisses Cheney in public.”

And Senator Beefcake says, “Well, I’m sure they kiss each other privately.” and I have to try very very hard to stay mad at him.

And, of course, it was on PBS, so noone on earth saw it but me.

These people have sample packs of vegetable and flower seed (for people like me, who do not need 1,000 tomato plants) for 35 cents a piece. No lie. Good deal.

And no way am I telling you how much I dropped on 35 cent packages of seeds. Yipes.

When you are planning on making paella for eight…

And you go up to Chinatown for ingredients….

It’s always a good idea to see if you have ANY RICE IN THE HOUSE before you go…

Or before you start cooking….

Or before it is time to add the rice.

Dammit.

You may have to register or log in over at the New York Times to read this op ed piece about possible election tampering in Florida, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t.

We have a lot at stake in this upcoming election. As a wise man pointed out to me, if he’s done the things he’s done while having to worry about re-election, can you imagine what he’ll be capable of when he doesn’t?

Also, what I have a lot of is this, colon.

Cayenne. Really. A lot. I planted six plants in the spring, because you get a discount per plant if you buy six of them. Being sort of a newbie to this garden business, I watched as the peppers quickly formed, and then stayed green. Forever.

Again, as is my bent, I figured they were broken.

They aren’t. They just need very hot weather to ripen, apparently. So, I think I’ve harvested about 500 of them, and I’m not kidding even a little about that.

They are hot hot HOT. I guess I’m going to grind them up and make enough damned cayenne to season food until the end of the millenium.

Other than taking the powder and making very pretty red eye shadow, does anyone have any suggestions? Does anyone want some eye shadow?

A good thing to know before you start planning your garden. The tomatoes, basically ripen all at once.

Here are some things I’ve done with them or, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Tomato:

1. Delicious pasta sauce, kind of an arabiata, made up by me, which you can find here.

2. Tried to sun dry them in the oven. Basically you just cut romas in half or quarters, and put them on a greased cookie sheet at 250. But, uh, well… not for, you know, three days, like I did. This didn’t turn out so well.

3. Made this salad.

4. Made earrings out of cherry tomatoes. I do not recommend sleeping in them.

5. Put them on hamburgers.

6. Put them in tossed salads.

7. Ate them plain.

8. Thrown them at cars that I have decided are going too fast down my street.

9. Played baseball with my son.

10. Thought about canning them, but I am afraid to.

11. Seriously, one meal that I served to company had three different dishes with tomatoes in them.

12. Put one that sort of got eaten by bugs before picking in front of a slug to see what it would do. It just basically crawled over it and went on its way.

13. Put the icky ones in the compost.

We have a lot of tomatoes, and, I might mention, they are looking at me funny. Please, if you have any ideas, let me know, because, still, they march on toward me.

Tried to recreate a salad I had somewhere:

1. A whole bunch of Roma tomatoes, sliced. I may have mentioned that I have a lot of them.

2. A whole lot of buffalo mozzarella.

3. Olive oil.

4. Several sprigs of fresh basil and oregano.

5. Red wine or balsamic vinegar. About 1/3 as much as the oil you used.

6. Salt & fresh ground pepper.

Throw the whole thing in this nifty contraption and sort of shake it up, then refrigerate for several hours, flipping it over from time to time.

Late summer has struck or stricken, and what I didn’t know about tomatoes, but learned quite emphatically is this: THEY ALL RIPEN AT ONCE. So I’ve had Romas out the wazoo and have had to come up with clever ways to use them.

The other night, I would say, about 20 Romas, picked that day were just sitting there staring at me judgmentally, seething at the thought that they may have to rot if I didn’t get it together quickly and figure out what to do with them. Afraid of canning, as an affirmed hypochondriac, and, finally sick of their little tomatoey passive aggressive silence, I plunged the little bastards into boiling water, ending my torment forever.

Then I had to think of what to do with them. This is what I came up with.

1. I left them in the boiling water to blanch for about three minutes. Then I plunged them into ice water for two reasons. One, I read somewhere that you’re supposed to, because it stops the cooking, and Two, I was still really mad at them.

2. I put a big skillet on with olive oil in it, threw in one diced onion and way more garlic than most people like. Really. I buy it minced in a huge jar that lasts forever, and can never quite figure out how much to use. I think I did about two tablespoons minced. That is, for those of you who are counting, somewhere between 12 and 147 cloves of garlic, minced.

3. I also have an overabundance of cayenne. Hint for the home gardener… Just because you get a discount if you buy six plants, doesn’t mean you necessarily should. I currently have enough fresh cayenne pepper to carry us into the 24th century. So I took one, and cut it into about five pieces and sauteed it with the onions and garlic. Because I don’t like whining at the dinner table, I scooped out the pieces of cayenne after the sauteeing was done. You may be a meaner parent than me. Have a field day.

4. I splashed about three tablespoons of balsamic vinegar in, just to see what would happen. Nothing did.

5. Now if you blanch the tomatoes right, they should have splits in the skin, and they should peel easily. If you didn’t or some aren’t split, you can slash them with a knife. I did. But again, remember, I was really mad at them. Once you get the skins off, dice ‘em up, and throw them in the pan with the now finished sauteeing onions and garlic, with the cayenne removed.

6. I had some leftover merlot, so, splash, I threw a couple of cups of that in.

7. Let the whole mess simmer for a while, adding more wine as it cooked down.

8. Threw in a can of artichoke hearts.

9. Threw in a can of black olives. I would recommend checking to see if they are pitted before you put them in, as I didn’t, and I’m sorry.

10. Salt, pepper and red pepper flakes to taste.

Tonight I will be eating it over pasta. Initial tastings indicate that it’s a little bit arabiata-y. Smooth taste with a little kick at the end. Not sure if that’s the cayenne or the red pepper flakes, but, whatever. It’s yummy.

They say things like this:

"Hey, before we go out tonight, why don’t you sit down and do our will."

Someone thinks like I do. I love that this showed up in my referral log.