The Endive Chronicles

My Father’s Tomatoes

No one can grow a tomato like my father.One of my earliest and most fond memories is of standing next to the tomato barrel on the side of our house with my dad eating tomatoes right off the vine. I remember how the tomatoes smelled like the vine, how the juice would drip down my shirt and how irritated my mother grew when she found there were no fresh tomatoes for her salad. Thinking back, I don’t believe my father really intended the plant to be used for anything other than eating tomatoes fresh from the vine.

My father grew up in the Willamette Valley, his father tended cattle and his mother grew vegetables. After my parents were married and my siblings and I came around they moved us all to a suburb near Seattle, it had a beautiful yard with a forest at one side, but wasn’t exactly ideal for growing crops. That however never stopped my father from growing tomatoes in an old wine barrel on the side of the house.

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If I had to describe my week using a color it would be beige. Between fighting off a cold, my impending move to a place yet to be revealed and a debacle with fig pate, this week has left me decidedly non-plussed. So, how do I shake off this beige colored week? Why, by baking a brightly colored tart of course.

The first step in salvaging this week was to hop in the car and head to Lucy’s Whey for a really special chevre to use in the tart. Catherine and Lucy* helped me to choose the right one for my tart and in the end we settled on a Hoja Santo wrapped chevre that worked beautifully with the citrus and basil notes in the tart. Those ladies really know their cheese.

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