Ben’s Southern Summer Tomato Sandwich
This sandwich is almost too simple. But also easy to screw up.
Ingredients are the key to this southern sandwich’s culinary mysticism.
You need:
White bread. Soft, white bread. The kind of white bread everyone is always poo-pooing. Like Wonder Bread. Or if you want to go faux High-Brow, get Pepperidge Farm white bread.
Mayonnaise. Hellmann’s. Or Duke’s, the mayo many southerners swear by, although it’s hard to find anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon.
A Big, Fat, Juicy Homegrown Tomato. Must be at the peak of ripeness. If you don’t grow them yourself or have access to a neighbor’s backyard bounty, get it from a farmers’ market. Again, it MUST be ripe. DO NOT BUY IN A SUPERMARKET! And, did I mention it must be perfectly ripe? I prefer a big beefsteak variety; an heirloom like Brandywine is perfection. The one in the picture is a Black Krim, also delicious. Cut a thick slab, ¾ of an inch, at least. If you don’t have a ginormous tomato, several thick slices of smaller tomatoes will do.
Slather mayo on both slices of bread. Don’t be shy.
Slap the slab of tomato on one piece and liberally apply sea salt and fresh ground pepper.
Apply the second slice of white bread.
Take a bite.
See the mysteries of the universe unravel before you.
Wipe the juice from your chin.
I recommend you eat this while standing over the sink, gazing off into the distance. Ignore all earthly distractions until you’re finished. Feel the ecstasy down to your toes.
And try these alternatives: Substitute toasted sourdough. Add a little fresh basil.
And, of course, adding bacon and lettuce is never wrong.
Do you have a favorite summer sandwich? Or a favorite sandwich featuring tomatoes?
A friend gave me a few seeds from her Cleome hassleriana several years ago. We planted the seeds, enjoyed the flowers, saved the seeds and continued burying them in the soil at a couple of different homesteads, spreading the joy of flowers as we moved. They are in several flower beds around our current home, both bidden and unbidden. We even have a couple popping up in our tomato patch. I can never bring myself to pull the young volunteers, preferring to let them do their thing and put on their spectacular show.
One of my earliest memories is visiting the farm of my Aunt Aubrey and Uncle Mead–my grandmother’s sister and her husband. I remember the farmhouse being rather dark and smokey (both smoked cigarettes) so we kids spent as much time as we could outside. And the cleome, or spider flower, as the old folks called them, were everywhere. We loved popping the seed pods, usually by throwing them at each other.
I still enjoy popping the seed pods, but now collect the seeds to share–Johnny Spider-Flower style.
Its been interesting to see our cleome mature at different sizes, based on nothing more but the quality of the soil they’re in, how restricted their roots are and how much sun they get. We’ve had 1-foot miniatures and 6-feet giants, all from the same seed.
Attractive to both butterflies and hummingbirds, we love addition of cleome to our garden. And the sense of nostalgia they inspire in me is an added bonus.
Do you have a favorite plant that takes you back to your childhood?
It started with a couple of seed heads, lying forgotten on top of the soil in a flower pot in the garage. I’d brought the pot into the garage before a hard freeze last winter, placed it in a corner and forgot about it.
A few weeks later, while puttering in the garage, I noticed a jumble of sprouts coming up from the pot, so I watered them, not knowing what they were, but curious.
I promptly forgot about them for a few more weeks. When I noticed the pot again, the long, spindly plants, almost white from lack of light, hung sadly over the lip of the pot. I watered again, just for fun.
Spring arrived. I began moving pots and gardening materials back outside again and discovered the pot, again. The tangle of whitish stems and leaves hung a good ten inches over the pot. I had an inkling they might be dahlias but couldn’t be sure. I also wasn’t sure that whatever they turned out to be, they’d survive, let alone grow into something interesting.
I put the pot outside and watered. In a week or so, the plants started to turn dark green. They looked healthy! And they were definitely looking dahlia-esque.
I was intrigued.
I added a little fish fertilizer. I kept watering. They grew healthier and healthier but were still draped over the pot and showed no sign of being able to support themselves upright. So I moved the pot to the deck rail. The plants cascaded to the bottom of the pot and beyond. Buds developed. And then flowers. Dahlias!
So a serendipitous end to a little accidental experimentation that resulted in a pot full of spectacular hanging dahlias. Now I just wonder if I’d be able to replicate the trick if I attempted it on purpose.
Ever had a happy accident like this?
It’s our first year planting the heirloom variety tomato, Black Krim. We’re excited! The one pictured is just starting to ripen and we’re curious how long it will be before it develops that lovely deep, dark crimson. We’ve had a couple of heavy rains lately, thus the tell-tale cracking. Fingers crossed, we hope this one survives.
This particular fruit is a big’un–easily 5 inches across and 4 from stem to stern. I’ve read that most Black Krim are medium-sized but this one is definitely a beast. It’s interesting to see how this tomato has sapped all the energy from its stem-mates. I wonder if those will develop after the big kahuna is picked.
Anyone with experience growing Black Krim? What other heirlooms do you grow? Love to hear about it!
We love our Shasta daisies. Some may think them a little too “Mary Ann” and not enough “Ginger”, but we like their cheerful little faces and carefree abundance. And they need almost no maintenance except for a little fertilizer and occasional deadheading and division.
The daisies perform for us from mid-June, continuing into September, bedecking the front of our house and brightening the sidewalk leading to the front door. An excellent cut flower, too, we fill countless mason jars and old milk bottles with them, a bit of summer brought right into the house.
We’ll probably divide them in late summer/early fall this year. This will help keep the daisies vigorous as well as allow us to brighten a few more corners of the yard with them.
If you’d like to plant your own, Shasta Daisies want lots of sun and good drainage. They’re occasionally susceptible to powdery mildew, but a sunny location, good airflow, and watering at the roots will help ward it off. Plan to divide occasionally; the perennials tend to die out at the center as they expand outward in a ring. You’ll have lots of new plants for your yard. And sharing their sunniness with friends and neighbors is never a bad thing, either.
July means the Purple Coneflowers and Daisies are competing for the lavish attention of the bees in our neighborhood. So far it seems the coneflowers are winning. There’s a symphony of bees constantly hovering on and around our stand of Echinacea purpurea.
The June Bugs are enjoying the coneflowers, too, and are doing their level best to make sure every petal has at least experienced a bite or two.
Many of the bees visiting our flowers are Carpenter Bees and a good part of our time is spent discouraging them from nesting in the wooden structures around our home. I’ve used a little insecticide in several nesting holes on our deck followed by stuffing the holes with aluminum foil and wood putty to discourage re-nesting. Our deck is made of treated lumber, but that doesn’t seem to matter much to the bees.
If anyone has any suggestions for discouraging carpenter bees from choosing our deck as home, sweet, home, we’d love to hear ’em! I don’t want to run them off altogether because they’re great pollinators, we just don’t want our deck chewed into a pile of sawdust!
Is it strange that I try to think of new places to build garden walls and fences just so I can cover them with clematis?
When these beauties are going full tilt they’re as spectacular as a fireworks display. Currently ours are climbing our brick mailbox but I want them in a hundred more places at the Nest.
I’ll attempt to expand our herd this year.
To propagate clematis, cut about a 3-inch section from one of the vines. Make sure it has a couple of leaves. Dip one end into rooting hormone and stick into a 3-inch pot full of damp soilless mix. (Or use an empty yogurt container or other suitable piece of flotsam floating around your house…we always seem to have plenty of yogurt containers awaiting reuse in the recycle bin.) Place a plastic baggie over the cutting and pot. Secure with a rubber band, then place the whole thing out of direct sun in a moderately warm spot. We use the north side of our house for our experiments in propagation.
We’ll see if I have any luck. Keep your fingers crossed for me. By the next Independence Day, we’d like to have these explosions of color all around our home.
So the last of the radishes have been gently tugged from the ground (except for the couple I’ve left to go to seed.) We had a pretty good crop this spring; I’ve finally learned to be ruthless about thinning…the only way to get nice big radishes.
I want to try interspersing the radishes with the carrots next time. The earlier harvest time of the radishes (25 or so days) allows you to thin the row to give the carrots room to grow (that sounds like garden poetry.) I’m not sure if I have a steady-enough hand to make that happen. Curse those tiny, tiny seeds.
I think we’ll eat this last batch by dipping them in soft butter and sprinkling with coarse sea salt. What better way to have our last batch go out in style?
NestOfSquirrels 