Made: The Tomato Chronicles 1.1

Part I: Tomato Jam

My friend's parents "gifted" (i.e. we don't know what to do with all these tomatoes) him with a bounty of tomatoes from their garden when they visited him recently. Being the hip young single that he is, he was all, "I don't need no stinkin' tomatoes," and promptly tried to the fob them off onto me. I was amenable to this since there's nothing I like better than to figure out a way to cook 5 lbs of tomatoes (this is a false statement; I do like some things better). And so it was that I embarked upon this mad mad project, at the end of which I should have four amazingly wonderful tomato dishes.

The first dish I attempted to make was Tomato Jam. I ran across this recipe after my friend asked me to what do with a huge bunch of tomatoes. I first saw it on the Homesick Texan, and found it also on the New York Times website, with a recipe by Mark Bittman. I showed him the link, and then somehow, he decided giving me the tomatoes was the better option. Then, coincidentally enough, a day or two later, one of the constestants on Top Chef DC made a tomato jam as part of one her dishes. It seemed the universe was telling me to make tomato jam, and I'm not about to ignore the universe.

Neither Pomp nor Circumstance

Without too much ceremony, this is my umpteenth attempt at a blog. Every time I try to start one, I inevitably stop after about 5 posts. At first, I was trying write down my thoughts. Turns out my thoughts were asinine, so I quickly gave that up. Then I tried to have a food blog. Unfortunately, I use recipes more like guidelines, never stop to measure how much of an ingredient went into a dish, and generally just wing it with whatever I happen to have in the fridge. Due this haphazard approach to cooking, writing out recipes for my own creations was difficult. The food blog fizzled.

So here I am again. I've decided not to post recipes, I'm not any good at that. But I do love food, talking about it, eating it, making it, the whole she-bang. It only makes sense that I write about it, and I've decided this time around, I will be documenting my successes and failures in the kitchen. No recipes from me, but reports from the front lines on how other people's recipes fared in my kitchen and in my (oh dear!) hands. Along the way, I may post other things of interest to me. If it's interesting to you, great! If not, well, that really is too bad.

Here goes!