Heirlooms

It was late coming, and it may be short lived, but we are living in the time of the tomato.

This year I decided to give heirloom tomatoes a try. Two plants, nothing crazy just two specific types I'd heard good things about- the Brandywine and the Kellogg's Breakfast. The plants quickly turned into huge tomato monsters. Unfortunately the 103 degree weather hit right as the tomatoes should have been setting fruit. Apparently when it's that hot, the tomato loves to grow vines and the flowers dry up on the vine. So it wasn't until recently that we even saw the small green beginnings of proper tomatoes.

Now the nay-sayers are telling us that there's no chance of our little greenies are ever going to ripen into fruit. I am putting my faith in the long season promised by Paul Douglas and the Farmer's Almanac, and in the taste of fried green tomatoes.

So far I'm pretty impressed with my Brandywine heirloom tomato. It doesn't just taste like any tomato, it's sweet and sour and lives up to its name. I expect to plant this next year.

Our first taste of these tomatoes came to us with the help of another kind of heirloom. A trip the the farmer's market yielded a lot of good produce and a loaf of seven grain honey bread from a local bakery. The bread was, however, unsliced. In order to slice it evenly and get enough together we pulled out something I inherited from my grandmother:

This bread slicing guide sat on my grandparent's kitchen table for many many years. When Grandma was moving out to California, I jumped on the chance to get it. Grandma used to make a loaf of bread in her bread maker for us every night, and we'd each get a big thick slice cut from this thing by Grandpa, covered in Grandma's homemade strawberry jam. Right out of a Rockwell painting.

Mostly I wanted this because my Grandpa made it for my Grandma, and I love having things that he made with his own hands. Grandpa was a carpenter, and while he worked on large projects like houses he also built many knick-knacks for the house.

I get a little sentimental about these handmade treasures. My grandfather died when I was nine years old, and my memories of him are few and far between. I enjoy the idea of touching something I know he made with great care and craftsmanship. I have a few other things he made, but this particular combination- something I grew with something he made, made those tomato sandwiches much more delicious.

So I'll leave you with a little song mom likes to sing whenever there are homegrown tomatoes in the house: