Bounty

Woke up bright and early this morning, and went tomato-hunting.

The heady, bursty scent of field-ripened tomatoes sends me to lycopene overload; five seconds later I’m making Pavlov’s dogs look like dried-up, bored Long Island debutantes.

Those overgassed spheres of cellulose masquerading as tomatoes in the store? Pffffffffft. They might serve to bulk out a tomato sauce, or dress a burger that gets most of its flavor from the ketchup anyway, but don’t call those things tomatoes.

The REAL tomatoes show up around the Fourth of July, and that’s when, like today, I haunt the local farmers’ markets.

Best way to eat a tomato? Tomato-and-mayo sandwich on great bread. I stopped off at Grand Central Bakery and picked up a couple of loaves of peasant levain, a lovely, tangy loaf sturdy enough to soak up the juice of a nearly overripe tomato, then I headed for our local farmers’ market.

Portland favors the go-big-or-go-home school of farmers’ markets; my favorite downtown Portland version goes on literally for blocks, and the glorious Beaverton Farmers’ Market bursts at the seams with just about any foodstuff imaginable. Parking at either is a major pain, though, and I needed to make this quick.

Our little market occupies one small corner of the Safeway parking lot, with just two small aisles but a pretty diverse selection. I picked up some delightful olives and extra virgin olive oils, chatted with a dog- and cat-food maker (and bought Grizz two gnawable elk antlers), and picked up home-made chicken and pork tamales for dinner tonight.

There’s a vodka vendor, lots of quick lunch choices, a guy selling his own premade cocktails, beautiful flowers, honey, and beeswax candles.

The berry farmers were out in force; I picked up gooseberries, the last of the Hood strawberries, giant raspberries and marionberries. I found tiny green Gage plums, a few peaches that likely won’t match Utah peaches (I’m not fond of Utah in general–don’t tell the plethora of family members who live there and love it–but I will never, ever, turn down a Utah peach).

The meat guy had a special on fresh-ground hamburger, which was intriguing. Store-bought ground beef has been iffy lately; greasier than usual with a faint off-smell, so I’m investigating just grinding my own. I cut a chuck roast into chunks yesterday, but from what I’ve been reading that won’t be enough.

The experts say you should combine different cuts the way a vintner combines grapes. You vary the meats based on the end product (hamburgers and meat loaf, for example, taste better with a little added pork), and keep the grind coarse to prevent Pink Slime Syndrome. Maybe this guy could give me some pointers.

“What goes into your ground beef?” I inquired.

“Uhm…cows and steers, ma’am,” he said, giving me a dubious look.

Ah.

What didn’t I find today? Tomatoes. The closest I got to a red sphere of deliciosity were new red potatoes.

“EVERYTHING is late this year,” sighed one farmer as she packed up my gooseberries, “We’re hoping we’ll have some tomatoes in a couple of weeks, but no promises.”

Damn. I packed up my non-tomato treasures went home, facing yet another week of cheese and bologna sandwiches.

Grizz daintily extracted the elk antler from my basket and settled in for a happy chew, while I reported the bad news to Nathan: “No tomatoes.”

Sigh. I slung the bacon back into the freezer, and started making plans for berry shortcake.

First world problems, right?

We’ve spent the last few weeks decluttering; it’s amazing (and a bit embarrassing) how much junk you can accumulate over a winter. The garage no longer requires crampons to negotiate; there is ACTUAL FLOOR SPACE you can walk in.

The county rents giant dumpsters they’ll deliver on a Friday and pick up on Monday; over the weekend you frantically fill them. I tossed glass experiments and samples from 20 years ago, added old palettes and chunks of wood, metal and glass that “might make something really cool someday.”

You name it, we dumped it, and that dumpster went from “how could we POSSIBLY fill that whole thing up?” to “d’ya think we can squeeze just a little more in THAT corner…”

Part of Nathan’s shed–the forge–has been storage space since it was built, and all that’s gone to make a proper blacksmith shop. Nathan’s knifemaking skills are hitting new heights; he made his first Damascene knife this week, and it is, literally, a thing of beauty.

“NOBODY gets THIS knife,” he proclaimed, staring lovingly at his latest creation. Damascus steel, for those of you who don’t follow knifemaking, is sort of the puff pastry of the steel world: You cut at least two different types of high-carbon steel into short bars, stack them, weld them together, and then forge them down into a single bar.

You cut up THAT bar, stack and weld and forge again, and keep going until you have N layers of steel. Then you deform the stack somehow to make patterns, square it back up and draw it out into a knife blank.

Nathan’s first is a modified raindrop pattern with 52 layers of steel. An acid etch colors each layer differently, and the result is similar to mokume gane (if you know jewelry metals), or maybe moire taffeta. It’s a difficult artform, originally intended to impart the best characteristics of several steels to a single knife.

I see MANY Damascus knives in my future (hint hint).

I probably won’t go back to plain old fused glass that’s slumped into molds and stuff, although I’m definitely returning to sculpting and casting. (hint: there will be a LOT of sheet glass, stringer, rods, and molds coming up for sale in the very near future)

This weekend, The Resident Carpenter-Blacksmith’s carting a lot of unused building supplies, both from our house and stuff accumulated from various jobs, off to Habitat for Humanity. Another load has gone to Goodwill, emptying the front porch so it no longer resembles something from the Appalachian backwoods.

Now it’s my turn: I need to get my studio back into shape so I can work there without cringing. I’ve cleared a space to serve as a mini-photo studio, I’m setting up the old sculpting stand again, and my new hobbies, marquetry and resin work, are getting their own spaces. I’ll move my laptop and monitors down there (right now my work computer owns the office and my personal laptop lives on the kitchen counter).

The clean-out is already getting my creative juices flowing; apparently I just don’t work well in clutter.

I took a brief break to supply Grizz with his beloved puppichino (two squirts of whipped cream on a paper plate), and then I’ll head back down and start organizing to my heart’s content.

Tomatoes in two weeks! Maybe.