Close to Nowhere

It’s funny about food. You have seasonal stuff, like lasagna and chili — definitely winter foods. Spring and summer foods have to include the sandwich I had for breakfast Monday – tomato!

It wasn’t good. They were the plastic-tasty, kinda funny colored tomatoes you get in winter. I am desperate for spring and summer foods!

I want to go to the farmer’s market on the square or Carpenter’s Produce on Hwy. 4 and get tomatoes. Real tomatoes! Tomatoes that taste like tomatoes!

One of my favorite tomato shopping places closed last year. Located on Old Hwy. 7, just this side of Oxford, it was a ramshackle kind of building and I loved it. The lady who owned it wanted to go back home. She was alone here after her husband passed away, so home to Louisiana she went and the store closed.

There are rumors flying around Facebook that the little store has a new owner and it will be open again soon. You can’t have too many places to buy good tomatoes.

Or squash. Squash is real important as a summer food also. Carpenter’s has beautiful squash.

One of my many favorite ways to have squash is something I call primavera – pasta (for me angel hair spaghetti) with garlic sauce, and squash that you’ve sliced and sautéed until it’s perfect. Mix it all together and die! It’s even better if you add zucchini to the squash and for the last five minutes or so, dump a lot of chunked fresh, wonderful tomatoes in with the squash, zucchini and oh, I forgot, onions. Onions are a necessity. And fresh spinach!

My granddaughter’s father-in-law posted on Facebook that he had planted tomatoes Good Friday. I promptly asked him when I could have a tomato, to please hurry them up.

In the winter, I want chili and cornbread and pinto beans and lasagna. In the fall, it’s too early for that stuff. You (me) can’t eat chili if it’s not cold outside. Oddly enough spaghetti is a year-round food.

I’m tired of chili and lasagna. It hasn’t been cold enough, long enough for real winter foods.

And now, everything is blooming and green. My dogwoods out back are gorgeous.

I’m enjoying the strawberries right now and I’ve been known to have a banana split for lunch a time or two.

But, as good as all that is, nothing is as good as a fresh, home-grown tomato, on white bread with mayonnaise. Perfect!