Roasted Tomatoes

Okay, Okay so it's been a while. Forgive me please! I could go on and on about my horrendous schedule and lack of time but that hasn't really stopped me from writing before…perhaps I'm getting old. Perhaps my body is actually starting to crave that strange thing called sleep. And when a person sleeps, as most of us know, it's hard to write. You can walk, you can talk, ….but can you sleep write? Well, I can't. So please kindly accept my futile apology and excuses.

Truth is, I do plan to make it up to you. I have a ton to write about so there will be many more posts to come after this one. I just have to tap into my memory bank. For now we'll start with a recent endeavor.

Monday afternoon.

I had just finished my last sanitation class. Orientation was also over. What could this possibly mean? An entire evening and partial afternoon to do whatever my heart desired! So what do I do?

I drive with much conviction to the bank and withdraw some much needed cash.

I zip over to Whole Foods(*cough* Whole*cough* Paycheck*coughcoughcough*) and walk right up to their tomatoes. Bright, red, seemingly juicy. They are now out of season, which is sad….because if any of you know me at all, I'm a goner when it comes to tomatoes. When I was a little girl in the summer time in Tennessee, I would eat them whole like an apple. Tomato in one hand, salt shaker in the other, savory juices running down my chin…a custom much brought on by my sweet grandmother who did the exact same thing. I still, in fact, can be spotted devouring them in such a way. I can also eat them with sugar, a taste that my stepfather introduced me to. I will eat them stewed. I will eat them sun-dried. They are the first morsel I dive for in a salad. I eat them with pasta (the Italian's are genius for coming up with that combination!), and yes, being a southern girl, I will eat them fried ,green, and crispy.

But what is my favorite way? Well, I have 2. When they are fresh, in season, bursting with redness, I prefer to appreciate them in their most simplistic state with only salt enhancing their beauty.

Unfortunately, it is November, and even if I buy the best organic Roma tomatoes from Whole Foods, they still don't do justice to what I picked out of my mother's garden in the summers.

A solution?

I take the roma tomatoes, I halve them, I sprinkle them with a wee bit of salt and basil and coriander and just enough olive oil so see them glisten and then I let them go in the oven until they're shriveled and wrinkly and fragrant, and oozing oil and juices. Ideally, if I weren't a crazy tomato maniac, I would be patient and let them roast slow and low for 6 hours. But let's get real here. I'm hopeless and positively bewitched by a roasting tomato (oh, I'm hopeless - by any tomato at all, really). I make the oven hotter and then chain myself to a sturdy piece of furniture for two hours, because otherwise I'll be absolutely compelled to continuously wrenching open the oven door in despair because it's not time to take the tomatoes out yet.

And what to do with them? Namely, anything.Use them as a pasta picker-upper, or store them in the fridge covered in olive oil, lay them over chicken, salmon, tuna or mixed vegetables. Put them in salsa. My favorite thing to do with them though is put them… in my mouth. Or mix them with white beans or slivers of basil. Or in my mouth. Or in salad. But mostly in my mouth.