I was watering the garden Monday evening and mentally encouraging the tomatoes to go ahead and get ripe as quickly as possible.
We have 10 plants and I have been checking them three or four times a day, looking forward to the first tomato of the summer.
One of life’s great pleasures is a ripe tomato pulled from the vine, quartered with a pocket knife and eaten in the garden, and I am anticipating exactly such a treat.
As I watered, I noticed that the Early Girl is ahead of the pack and has several green tomatoes ranging from tennis ball to slightly larger.
They’re still a ways from ripeness, but I thought to myself: “You know, they’d be just about right for frying.”
I quickly nodded in agreement with myself and made a mental note to pull a couple later this week and let them fulfill their destinies in a cast iron skillet.
If you haven’t had a fried green tomato, you really should.
They are staples of the country diet and add a nice whang to any meal.
I suspect people started frying green tomatoes as a way of extending the harvest late in the season. As the first frost nears, you often have green tomatoes on the vine that won’t have time to ripen.
The solution: slice and roll those suckers in flour and cornmeal and fry them good and brown.
They are tasty. Mighty tasty. My mother fried a lot of green tomatoes, but it wasn’t an end of the season thing for her. She liked them and would fry them throughout the summer, often alternating them with fried yellow squash (‘squarsh,’ if you are from Fitzhugh.) because they occupy the same spot on the menu.
We had many a summer meal that came straight from the garden. Fried cornbread with pinto beans, fried potatoes, fried okra and fried green tomatoes, with some ripe tomatoes and a yellow onion quartered on a saucer in the middle of the table.
No need for meat, when you have food like that.
Fortunately for me, I genuinely liked that kind of eating, but it wouldn’t have mattered much if I didn’t. Mom’s attitude was, paraphrased: “You’ll eat what I cook.”
And so I did.
My dad once mentioned that he used to not like blackeyed peas very much. Until the day came in 1935 when they didn’t have anything else to eat.
“I learned to like them just fine,” he said.
Fortunately, I never had to go through that.
Country food is still my go-to. When Kindra asks what I want for supper, I usually ask for pinto beans and cornbread.
I realize that’s a waste of the skills she is honing in culinary school, but hey. If I ever find myself in the awkward position of having to order a last meal, it’s probably going to be cornbread and pinto beans.
With fried green tomatoes on the side.