Some years our garden harvest does better than others. Why? Many factors come into play, including weather, temperature, soil, planting time, pests, and the gardener’s consistency and effort. I’d like to share about what’s happening in my garden:
The parsley in my plot overwintered. Other gardeners mentioned that theirs did too. It’s not the best sign as it means we had another mild winter. I use all parts of the parsley plant in my red sauce and in homemade dressings. This is a lovely dressing recipe from my friend and fellow gardener Melissa. Use this sweet and tangy dressing as a base and add in all your favorite fresh garden herbs.
Shoutout to my neighbor Steve O’Sullivan, for donating his hand-built picnic table to the B91 Community Garden, Thank you Steve!
My cucumbers are doing amazing! I’ve done nothing out of the ordinary. I know cucumbers thrive with plenty of sunlight (check), consistent watering (check) and well-drained soil (check). I add compost to my plot in the Beach 91st Street Community Garden every season and cucumbers (all veg for that matter) benefit from those nutrients. A trellising system is needed. I actually used tomato cages and that worked pretty well. In the past, the community garden had a problem with squash beetles, which will decimate cucumbers, not this year, so that has been working in my favor from the start.
Couldn’t be more perfect cucumbers!
I’m growing green peppers and although they’re coming in slowly, they look healthy. I ate my first one the other day and it had a surprisingly spicy taste. Inconsistent watering can affect peppers, so it’s important to be diligent about watering the plant. Luckily, we’ve had some good rain this season. It’s crucial to keep an eye on the weather—that’s an important job for us gardeners.
I’ve begun making my annual “Paula’s Pesto” batches. My basil is thriving, and my garlic harvest was plentiful. Make sure to pinch off the basil flowerheads, and when harvesting, always take a clipping just before a new leaf node. This will ensure your basil plant keeps producing.
Now… for the tomato update… My tomatoes are behind schedule. I planted them a week or two later than I intended. I walk around the community garden with an eye of envy – everyone’s beefsteaks are turning from green to red. Plot #12 has so many indigo roses and I see clusters of red romas all over. But there’s still hope for a tomato-girl summer. My plants do look healthy and I have cute little tomatoes forming. Only time will tell. Patience is a virtue they say.
My first tomato of 2024!
You start with a tiny seedling, invest time and care. You watch it transform. It takes months. It’s pretty amazing when you think about start to finish. Gardening teaches us to appreciate the value of food and makes us reflect on food waste after knowing its journey.
For more on gardening, follow me on Insta for the day-to-day – @theglorifiedtomato
by Paula D.
on August 10, 2024 10:52 am in Food / Recipes
I thought I smelled French toast but I walked into the narrow surf shack galley kitchen and it was a surprise to see eggs, strategically placed in the middle of sliced semolina bread. My friend Mike – over the stove – said his family calls the breakfast “surprise eggs!”
It makes sense, as the over-easy eggs (if done correctly) are perfectly meshed within the bread, making it hard at first glance to know there is an egg hidden within. As you slice the bread, a golden river of yolk streams out, quickly disappearing as it’s soaked up by the buttery, shoreline toast.
Surprise Eggs by Chef Mike
Many people call this breakfast many different names – egg in a hole, egg in the basket, popeye eggs, yolk in a crater, and sunrise sandwich to name a few. What do you call it?
I’m calling it ‘surprise eggs!’ because, believe it or not, I’ve never encountered this version of over-easy eggs before and thanks to Mike, I’ve been egg-lightened. So, I’m going with his name.
Why so many names? Family traditions play a big part, regional differences (Mike is from the midwest) and cooks love to add their own twist.
Despite not being Italian or Catholic, Mike’s family’s name for this breakfast might carry the most significance. According to the smart internet, the Kinder Surprise Chocolate Egg was created in 1974 by Michele Ferrero and William Salice for Ferrero, the Italian chocolate company. The chocolate egg treat was inspired by an Italian Easter tradition where children (and Pontiffs) received large chocolate eggs with toys inside. I imagine this familiarity translated into the breakfast concept
In 2012, an Italian chocolatier gifted Benedict XVI, with a 6.5 foot tall chocolate Easter egg weighing 550 pounds. Photo by L’Osservatore Romano, AP.
Fran Honan has been contributing her writings to theglorifiedtomato.com for the past 13 years, and her stories have always resonated with me. I’m excited to share this heartwarming piece with you. – Paula
Recently I was in my kitchen getting ready to saute some canned tomatoes to make a little marinara for dinner and I grabbed an old pot from the cabinet – my mother’s pot, part of a Farberware collection she received at her engagement party in 1947.
I have lifted and held and cooked in that pot for decades. But this evening, it slipped out of my hand from the cabinet and fell on my Italian tiled kitchen floor. The black handle shattered into many pieces and I felt my heart sink. I tried to cook without the handle but I knew it was done for.
Fran’s Mother, Rose
That night I mourned a pot that was in my life since the day I was born.
So many of my memories of my mother involve her standing by the stove in all of our different apartments, sauteing and boiling and reheating food using that same Farberware pot. There were copper bottoms that she maintained well with my father’s help; he’d scrub them after each use with a wire brush and copper cleaner. She never burned the pots, never let the sauce boil over. She was a perfectionist, a stay-at-home mom after her working in the sweatshops sewing from the age of 15, and she lived to take care of her family – my father, my older sister, and me.
When she wasn’t cooking she cleaned, taking meticulous care of everything. She ironed the bedsheets, she mopped the floors. She treated these pots with that same love and care she treated everything in her home.
She died more than 30 years ago, and I took the pots to my home. I kept her legacy, cooking and caring for my husband and my own two girls. I am different from my mother; I don’t care about cleaning as much, and I did not scrub the bottom of the pots with copper cleaner like my father did. The bottoms turned black. I often burned the eggs I boiled, and sometimes the sauce bubbled over.
I have shattered dozens of glasses and dishes and coffee cups on my kitchen floor, and I’d simply clean up the mess. It didn’t bother me.
But breaking the pot cut me deep. I foolishly thought the pot would last forever, even with my neglect.
I put the pot in the recycling bin and those memories came back. I saw my mother in her snap-front house dress, her apron tied around her waist, in every kitchen we ever had. She was there when my sister and I came home from school, preparing dinner. I remembered the smell that wafted up from the pot when she took off the lid, whether it was lentil or chicken soup. On Sunday it might have been braciole or meatballs in tomato sauce.
Those pots represented the love and care she showed for us in her favorite place. Losing the last pot, in what I felt was hasty carelessness, was as if I was losing my mother again, so many years later.
All of that thinking about my mother eventually left me feeling happy, not sad, for the legacy I try to continue. I ordered a new pot for probably a lot more money than my mother’s whole set cost, and promise to treat it with more care. I will always miss that last pot from my mother`s hands but I truly miss my mother each and every day.
Fran Honan is a retired NYC educator and a mom who loves to cook and eat. She grew up mostly in Brooklyn and has lived in Rockaway for over 40 years making memories with her husband Mike, two children and her community. “In nearly every memory stuck in my head and heart there’s food lurking in the background. From time to time I’ll reflect on these old stories–not just of what I ate, but with who, where, why, and how I felt. Food is love, they say, and it’s all you need.” – Franny
The adrenaline turns on when I see 10 pies on the line. My arms are moving automatically. My thinking is sharp. I sauce and reach my fingertips for each fresh ingredient. The order you top is important because the flavors fuse in different ways under the 800-degree heat of burning wood.
In April, I made the decision to push myself out of my comfort zone. I needed a shift. Where will it lead? I laugh, at 43 years old I’m slingin’ pies. I work in the pizza industry now.
And I love it.
The team at Seany’s Pizza up at the Beach 97th Street concessions is fantastic. On these hot, summer days we’re all in it together. I’m a part of something and I’m learning how to make pizza and I’m smiling and meeting many patrons of pizza – my neighbors, Brooklynites, visitors from all over the U.S., and foreigners on holiday. Pizza is universal.
I uniformly cut unending balls of silky, fresh mozzarella. I spend an hour on Tuesdays slicing jalapeño paper thin on a mandolin and haven’t cut myself as of this date of publication. You measure things in grams. Everything is supersized. I make the sauce too. You can’t lift the immersion blender above the sea level of the sauce or it will explode everywhere. I made that mistake once and never again. That’s how you learn, by making mistakes.
I named my shifts at Seany’s, “Pizza World” because I entered an alternate space. I’m in the present and all I am required to do is make quality pizza. And all of my life stressors disappear when I’m there. It’s simply, pizza all day.
I used to be scared of the walk-in freezer – like in the movies – where you get locked in and freeze to death, but not anymore. Now I welcome the cold jolt as my eyes scan for more Rockaway Soda to bring to the front of the house.
All food items must be labeled and dated for the Board of Health and we clean, clean, clean! Sean runs a tight ship. I thought I got tennis-pizza elbow from mopping but it was a false alarm! Wet mops are heavy. I feel exhausted and alive at the end of the day. Hard work is good for your mind and body.
The camaraderie at Seany’s is like the perfect dough—supportive, flexible, and essential for holding everything together. Foreground to back: Juliana Rodas, Nick Cregor and Owner, Sean Aiken.
We have a gorgeous Famag IM-8 Italian dough mixer. I gaze from afar at the smooth dough dancing around and around. The machine mesmerizes me. Nick Cregor, our maestro baker, told me each batch makes 132 pizzas. It seems that Nick is constantly in the back, dough-ing. The balls go in big red plastic trays that lock together for freshness. Nick dates each tray and keeps track of the proofing. He’s my “ Second Boss,” my mentor. Nick is a patient teacher and baking artist. I’m trying to absorb as much as I can from his knowledge of the pizza industry. The nuances surrounding dough perfection – proofing time and temperature are a delicate tarantella. Nick keeps track of his dough recipes in a massive spreadsheet where he can change measurements around to adjust for bread types, taste, batch sizes, and temperatures throughout the year.
My goal by the end of the summer is to effortlessly stretch and twirl pizza dough in the air just like Sean’s amazing acrobatics. With his guidance and the support of everyone at Pizza World, I’m confident I can achieve this! Sean took a chance on me despite having zero experience in the service industry, showing his willingness to invest time and energy in helping others. I’m grateful for his kindness and for giving me the opportunity to stretch my boundaries.
Jessie’s Pie is a top-seller, topped with fresh mozzarella, smoked mozzarella, pecorino romano and roasted red peppers.
Follow my Instagram to see the behind-the-scenes and beautiful pies we make at Seany’s Pizza. We’re open 7 days a week from 12-8pm, at the Beach 97th Street concession on the Boardwalk. Follow @seanypizza for more.
