Tomato Bob

Ever since Kyle moved to Seattle, I’m finding myself with spare pocket money. We had a happy habit of post-work beers at the Clinton Street Pub. Now that he’s gone though, I’ve found something new to invest my spare dollars in: heirloom tomatoes.

Portland has an incredible local grocery store chain called New Seasons where we go for things like maple rosemary trout, Shitake pork sausages, and freakin bomb produce. Enter the heirloom tomato. An heirloom tomato is an open-pollinated (non-hybrid) cultivar of tomato. My research led me to Tomato Bob, who knows everything there is to know about heirloom tomatoes. Tomato Bob runs a family farm in Ohio and sells seeds online, and is really awesome about answering questions from black thumbs like myself. One thing I particularly like about Tomato Bob is the fact that he will donate a selection of seeds to any school gardening program or community garden that supports local food banks.

Feeling inspired by the lovely summer weather today (read: procrastinating), I took the camera, shot some photos of my tomatoes and my neighbor’s tomatoes.

These are my neighbor’s tomatoes. I have seriously considered yanking one of them, they’re so damn beautiful. But that’s bad karma, so I smell them instead.

These are my tomatoes. Yum.

Yum yum.

This is our basil plant. The leaves are small and the taste is slightly peppery. Excellent with the Jubilee cultivar.

And this is the man, Tomato Bob.

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The other thing on my mind today is Greg Oden. Poor Greg Oden. He has to have knee surgery. It’s a minor surgery, but still surgery. He just wants to play ball. Go Blazers!