Our tomatoes never quit producing, but I did.

Here we are almost to the middle of October, and the patch is filled with straggly vines, heavy with rotting fruit, the ground squishy with tomato goo. I’m sure I could’ve harvested at least several more bushels, but I didn’t have the need for them, let alone the interest. Even the occasional tomatoes that do find their way to my kitchen windowsill to await Death By Serrated Knife more often than not die the slow tortuous Death By Rot. My taste cravings have changed with the seasons, switching from tomato sandwiches and fresh tomato salad to stews made with chunky canned tomatoes and roasted tomato sauces. Bottom line? I’m tomatoed out.

I do, however, feel sort of guilty about all the tomato carnage out there in the garden, so last weekend I marshaled my resolve and attempted to make a little kitchen magic with the hard green tomato. Red tomatoes are so last season, you know?

A year or five ago—my aged memory fails me—my friend gave me a quart of her canned green tomato curry. Maybe it was when we moved into this house? Maybe it was when my last baby was born? Maybe it was just a random act of kindness? In any case, I liked it very much, but even though she shared the recipe and eventually posted it on her blog, I never got around to making it—probably because, like this year, I was always tomatoed out by the time I finished with the tomato mayhem, or perhaps because we’ve had a couple bad tomato harvests and there were never any end-of-the-season green tomatoes to turn into curry. Like I said, I don’t remember.

But this year, after a lot of constant staring out my kitchen window at the tomato-loaded vines, I got to thinking about that jar of green tomato curry. I thought and thought and thought, after which I (finally—good grief, it takes a lot of thinking to get me actually doing something!) clicked over to her blog to see how much sweat and toil it would cost me. What was this? I thought, staring at the recipe. Only six cups of green tomatoes? Goodness, this wasn’t some insurmountable undertaking. This I could handle.

I made the curry last Saturday when my parents were visiting. I had spent the morning feasting on donuts and the afternoon running errands, so by the time I got home, I was hungry and tired, as were the seven other souls under my roof. So I sent my husband out to the patch to pluck a bowl of hard green tomatoes, put a pot of rice on to cook, and thawed a bag of leftover roasted chicken. A chop-chop-chop later and supper was on the table. Really, it was that quick.

We topped the curry with coconut, chopped almonds, and plain yogurt. It was a feast, and the best kind, too—flavorful, filling, and classy in its elegant simplicity.

Green Tomato Curry
Adapted from Jane’s blog, Thy Hand Hath Provided

Jane says you don’t need to core the green tomatoes, but I did. Old habits die hard.

You can use chicken broth or water in place of the coconut milk.

If canning the curry, use canola oil in place of the butter and water in place of the coconut milk, and don’t add the chicken. Jane says one recipe yields 5 pint jars—process the jars in a hot water bath for 30 minutes.

2-3 tablespoons butter
2 large onions, chopped
4 tablespoons curry powder
1 tablespoon cumin
3 pounds (about 6 cups) green tomatoes, washed and chopped
½ cup brown sugar
1 cup coconut milk (see head note)
1 cup raisins
4 cups roast chicken, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons lemon juice

condiment suggestions: chopped almonds, coconut, plain yogurt, toasted sunflower seeds, green onions, chutney, etc.

In a large saucepan, saute the onions in the melted butter till translucent. Add the curry powder and cumin and cook for another minute. Add the chopped tomatoes, brown sugar, coconut milk, and raisins and simmer until the tomatoes are fork-tender, about 20-30 minutes. Add the chicken, salt, black pepper, and lemon juice and heat through. Taste to correct seasonings and serve over rice, with condiments.

This same time, years previous: pie pastry, with lard and egg (by far my favorite quiche crust), green soup with ginger, happy pappy-style cornbread

Every once in a while, we get to babysit my nieces, and each time I am struck by how easily and naturally they fit into our family. I look around the supper table, at the three-year-old curled into the captain’s chair at the end announcing loudly, “Jennifer, I like pizza!” (because her mother taught her not to ask for food, so she only states her likes, never her wants), and at the baby on my son’s lap, and I think, If we had continued having children, this would be our family. It’s sweet.

What’s also sweet is that my husband gets all possessive about taking care of the baby. We all do, actually, but that my husband is counted in the “all” is rather exceptional. It’s exceptional for three reasons:

1. He doesn’t really like babies.
2. He’s not a baby person.
3. The only reason he held our babies was because I got tired of holding them.

So I’m exaggerating a little, yes. But it’s solidly true that he’s not a gushy-mushy, gotta-have-my-baby-fix sort of person. He’s generally perfectly content to completely ignore the little Bundles of Joy.

But last night after supper, I handed him the squawking, tired little creature, and said, “She needs to be changed. And give her a bath while you’re at it.”

“A bath? Are you serious?”

“Of course.”

Off he went to the bathroom mumbling things like, “I don’t remember how to do this anymore.” Over the running bath water, I could hear him talking to the baby. The soothing “Shh, it’s okay” talk soon turned to, “Okay, okay! Enough already! I’m hurrying as fast as I can!” And then he hollered to me, “Hey! What am I supposed to use for soap?”

“Use my face cleanser. It’ll be gentle enough.”

When he re-entered the room a few minutes later, towel-wrapped babe tucked under his arm, the kids swarmed him like he was the pied piper, clamoring for a turn to hold her.

“Are you kidding?” he said, stuffing her waving arms into the sleeper. “I just gave her a bath. I’m not giving her up now. It’s my turn to hold her.”

And so he did.

This same time, years previous: a touchy subject (to spank or not to spank),

Hamlet is dead. He was first killed in the reading of the play, and then a few minutes later he again croaked, “I am dead, Horatio,” but that time in the movie.

The kids’ reactions were hilarious. My daughter sat rigidly beside me while I read the closing scenes, her eyes round with incredulousness as she struggled to decipher the meaning of the words. And with each new death, my son shouted with riotous laughter at the outrageous turn of events. They both thought the closing scene, all the dead bodies littering the floor, was comical rather than tragical, which then made me launch into Polonius’s tragical-comical-historical-pastoral speech.

It tickles me to no end that my kids are old enough for Big Literature, the stuff that excites and challenges me. My guess is that they understand only a very small fraction of the play. They get the plot, yes, but the deeper meaning? No way. Heck, even I don’t get all of it. Even the little ones, despite being banned from much of the reading and watching (due to their disruptive behavior more than anything) managed to glean bits and pieces—out of the blue one day, my younger daughter informed me that Hamlet’s father’s name was Hamlet, too.

It wasn’t like they were all chipper-happy to sit still and listen to me plow through the play. If I give that impression, than I mislead you. My daughter fussed and bulked a fair bit, and my son’s mind wandered entirely too much, but I forged ahead, stumbling over the unfamiliar phrases and providing muddled (and sometimes completely wrong) explanations. It helped that we followed up our reading sessions with the movie version (skipping the incest scene).

Last night before heading upstairs to bed, the whole family gathered around the kitchen table to listen as the three of us flipped through the book and discussed our favorite parts. My daughter liked the part where Ophelia went crazy. My son and I both liked the “words, words, words” part. The ending sword fight was tops, too, of course. All four children raced to list off the names of all the people who died in the play, and the older kids wished they could’ve seen the part where Polonius died (that dang incest scene). We read bits of different speeches and then tried to memorize part of the To Be Or Not To Be speech—it’s a lot harder than it looks!

This fall, Hamlet is playing at the Blackfriar’s theater. I’ve heard it’s an incredible production. If we get there, and I hope we do, then we’ll have consumed Hamlet three ways in one short season.

This same time, years previous: my new baby, pear butterscotch pie