“Give me two bricks and an oven rack and some wood, and I’ll cook you a better steak than any expensive gas grill, hands down. It might look good in your garden, it might be more convenient, it might impress your friends, but it’s not going to cook you a better steak.”
-Chris Schlesinger, Owner, East Coast Grill, Cambridge, MA
I take a pretty hard line when it comes to the debate of charcoal versus gas for grilling. When someone tries to extol the benefits of gas to me I usually reply with a comment along the lines of “If I wanted to cook with gas, I’d stay in my kitchen” I took a class with Chris Schlesinger once, who, when asked about cooking times for a gas grill on whatever he was making replied: “I don’t know. I don’t cook with gas.”
When I lived in an apartment and gas was all I could get away with, I used gas. But ever since we moved into our current house, I have sneered at the gas-aholics whenever the subject came up.
Until a few summers ago. That’s when after years of toiling in our non-centrally-air-conditioned kitchen I hit upon the idea of usuing a gas grill as a sort of “outdoor oven” to keep the heat down in the kitchen. With a company awarded gift certificate we aquired a cheap s*#t gas model from Sears. Since then we’ve baked bread, tarts, crumbles and roasted oven-dried tomatoes in the damn thing. Between the heretic gas grill and the BGE, we rarely turn the kitchen oven on at all during July and August.
Memorial Day weekend traditionally kicks off the summer grilling season, so I ask you, loyal readers to weigh in. The gloves are off. Which do you prefer?
I should have figured this out before. The hundreds of seedlings that were coming up from the compost I added to the garden are TOMATOES!. After my mother-in-law, M, pointed out that they couldn’t be carrots since carrots seed from the greens on their tops, I let some of them get a little bigger. Turns out every time I cored and seeded a tomato last summer and added to the composter, I was reseeding my ‘maters.
So the dumb-asses folks at Gardener’s Supply couldn’t come through with the goods and plans for the new raised bed have been changed. Back in the depths of winter we decided to build raised bed #3. Since the Big Pine was taken down last year the very back of the yard gets a lot more light. We figured we’d get another bed in back there to take the usual overabundance of seedlings that we usually don’t have room for.
I called up to Burlington, VT, the home of GS to inquire about the status of the Raised Bed Corners I had ordered back on 4/29. Originally back-ordered to 5/11, the date on the site had changed to 5/28. Sure enough, when I called they confirmed the later date and went on with something like “oh, yeah, those are made here in Vermont and we can’t get them out any faster”. To which I wanted to say “Well call over to Mason/Jay-Sun/LotDog at the metal press and tell him to put down the bong and put in some overtime, ‘cuz Phish tour hasn’t started yet”.
I wanted to say that. But instead I just said “I’ve got tomatoes to plant, that won’t work. Please cancel my order”
So I’ll be tilling a hole in the ground and just planting in the dirt we’ve got. Just like they did it in the old days.
Not really the type we were hoping for, though. Every part of the raised beds where I’ve added compost from our composter has sprouted DOZENS of tiny weeds. Obviously some seeds present in the scraps we’ve been composting. They look like they might be carrot seedlings but do carrots have seeds in them? I’ll have to research this. Ther’re also a number of cucumber seedlings springing from the composted beds but since they’re large they’re easily removed.
We’re still nursing our aching selves back to fighting form but we got a lot accomplished last weekend. All of the tomato and herb seedlings under the lights got repotted into larger containers. We planted all the stuff I bought last Friday. And The Principessa and The Principessa-Mum weeded, mulched and edged the front yard. With new edging no less! It looks spiffy!
With highs this weekend forecast in the 80’s we’re trying to not overload ourselves for next weekend.
Filed under: Garden
While I was taking my post-work nap, the stuff I ordered from Territorial Seeds showed up.
I’m really not ready to plant tomatoes.
Filed under: Garden
Stop off at the garden center to buy some fertilizer for the lawn….say to myself “I’ll just wander over and see if they have any parsley”. Proceed to realize that 1) Wow. There’s a lot more than parsley to plant in April . 2) Gee, those lettuce sprouts I planted from seed are a long way from a salad. 3) It’s cheaper to buy a flat of 8 cell packs than buy 5 individually.
Arrive home not only with aforementioned parsley and lettuce, but, chives, brussels sprouts, shallots and more.
Move flats around for a couple of days, keeping them watered while figuring out when the hell I’m going to find time to prep the veg beds.
Accept fact that it’s going to be a long weekend.
We’ll keep you posted.
It seems the voice crying in the wilderness (namely, me) for some bi-partisanship for tomatoes has been heard. Probably no thanks to yours truly, love apples will adorn the WH veg garden. They’ll have to enjoy their tomatoes since they won’t be eating any of those berries this year.
A new Italian study reveals that syrah acts as something of an aphrodisiac for women. It would have been so much classier than Everclear and grape juice.
JerzeeTomato 