I love a nice tomato.

[Ricard with an H]

I just have to share this with you people if only to bring a smile to your faces.

I bought some tomatoes from Aldi out of desperation and to test their flavour, as expected they were inert with a thick skin so I left them in a bowl to ripen. I did notice they were growing blotches but I decided to stick with it for the sake of flavour.

Mo binned-Em.

Mo is my lovely lady who initially encouraged me into kitchen gardening and cares for me in such a way she doesn't understand that a bit of penicillin, some mud and a few worms used to be my staple diet when were on rations so a blotchy tomato is no-biggy.

[oldherbaceous]

Thanks for the laugh Richard, just what was called for.

I really don't know where we would be without our good ladies to keep us in check.

[Ricard with an H]

I just bought two punnets of small tomatoes, one was baby plum, the other cherry tomato. Neither were ripe, the cherry type tasted hopeful but the plum type were disgraceful and quite the nastiest tomato I have ever tasted. Nothing like a tomato.

I don't give up easy, do I ? Ham sandwiches tonight, I have some fabulous bread, truffle flavoured ham, a cuc, a little gem lettuce and an almost mouldy tomato that Mo didn't bin and i've been nurturing for the last week.



Ever the optimist though didn't we agree that gardeners have to be optimistic.

[Ricard with an H]

Finally I found a tomato that wasn't inert or disgusting. When I describe a tomato as disgusting it means the tomato tastes like I imagine the bottom of my kitchen green-bucket would taste like if I chose too taste it.

Today I bought 'Picollo' from Aldi, Picollo is a sweet snacking tomato and not my favoured taste in tomato though right now I fell as if I have something I can eat.

Five punnets of also-ran tomato will go into a delicious pasta sauce I invented many years ago that relies on the flavour of salty-black olives and summer plum tomato.

Its called by my family as, 'beany-thing' because I always have it with red beans and sour cream, because of the total ingredient list most of you would place this mouth-watering dish as Mex-Tex with Italian influence.

I've been cooking this for fifty years so I have a reputation to hold onto, will these winter tomato rejects spoil the whole thing. I wonder.

[Ricard with an H]

Maybe a solution ?

Tonight I had a real problem, I fancied a plateful of nice sandwiches. No tomato and no butter.

Ever the optimist I pulled out a container of Stork margarine. The last time I used stork was just after the war (I think) when it was produced to deal with the butter rationing. I think Mo uses it for baking and I'm sure you'll get me up to speed on that.

Next problem was tomato so I opened a tin of plum tomatoes then drained them, when you slice the peeled plums they still have a lot of liquid inside so the slices need to be pressed into a sieve.

The result was a lovely sandwich with Wiltshire-cured ham, cucumber, some winter lettuce from the plot, the stork wasn't noticed, possibly because of the Chardonnay and to be honest I really enjoyed the flavour of the tinned-peeled-plum tomato during a time of drought even though it messy and time-consuming getting them ready for sandwich duties.

[Primrose]

Much as I love tomatoes Ricard , I think I might have passed on that one, even with the Chardonnay ! ,

[Ricard with an H]

it wasn't easy.

to put that into perspective you would have to have tasted those inert samples I have suffered over the last few weeks.

the tinned plums were superb though horrible in the face of a reasonable tomatoe.

I'm a survivor.