Here’s the thing. If you know how to cook and take just a bit of time here and there to teach your children what you know, there is payback. Sure, you have to wait years for it — and clean up lots and lots of messes along the way — but the payback is worth it. After 10 long hours at the computer, I came home to this feast: Stacked enchiladas with corn and roasted red peper salad and classic tortilla soup.                                                                      

Two days ago I went out to visit my vines and discovered that someone had manhandled my tomato vines, killing off dozens of blossoms, which means my tomato basket will not overflow in weeks to come. I realized right away what had happened.

Heirloom tomatoes are not prim and proper. Instead of growing in an orderly fashion, they send their long arms this way and that, arching up and down, over and under, creating a tangle of tomato-bearing branches that are best left alone.

The person in question did not understand this little fact, and went to great lengths to grapple with the vines; pressing, pulling and chopping them to get them to behave like plants grown from mass-produced, store-bought seedlings.

Thankfully, the tomato-mangler only managed to maul half of my garden. The twine — his weapon of choice — has mysteriously disappeared.

SAD TOMATO

 No matter how much I water the tomato, it’s leaves are weary and limp, the blossoms and under-leaves are turning yellow and brown.

HAPPY TOMATO

The tomatoes that were allowed to be their own tangly selves are bright green, perky and hiding lots of nearly ripe tomatoes; and have lots of yellow blossoms bursting out all over.

When my kids ditched me last weekend to go out to dinner without their mom in tow, I could have felt sorry for myself and eaten a piece of toast or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Instead, I spent 11 minutes in the kitchen throwing together a delicious taste memory: garlic-toasted bread cubes topped with fresh tomatoes and basil. A hunk of seared salmon, a dash of balsamic, and a dousing with a fruity olive oil from Quinta Nova in Portugal made for most tasty – and peaceful — meals in recent memory.

Better than green tea, green apples, green peppers or anything else green are the globes of green and red hanging on the vines in my backyard. These, I say, are a promise of many great meals to come…

More than a year ago, I blogged about my crazy kitchen project that grew and grew. Today I feel like dancing on my new granite countertops as I polish the Italian tile backsplash that I just finished grouting. I’m so happy to see this project near completion that I had to share a photo…

My daughter called it: Indian feast night. She set the date, rounded up a cooking partner and requested that I take on the naan, a skill I learned — and tweaked – while writing a story a few months back.

Since it was hot in the kitchen and naan requires a blazing hot oven, I hefted my Hearthkit stone out to the gas grill and fired it up. Thirty minutes later, I started flattening the balls of dough and flopping them onto the stone.  This is by far the best way to make naan if you (like most of us) happen to be lacking a clay tandoor. 

After flopping it onto the stone, I closed up the grill for about 4 minutes. The dough bubbled up nicely, crisped and brown enough to be flipped over. Not a speck stuck to the un-oiled, unfloured, super-hot stone.

The recipe we published a few months ago used baking powder as the leavener. This time, I used a recipe from Bay Area cook and author Laxmi Hiremath that included an egg — which made for more bubbles in my bread.

Turns out that I was wrong about those tomato vines, as you can see. There are tomatoes ripening on the vine, but they were over, under and around all of that vine, on the inside, as it were. The bad news is that when I went out to have a closer look I discovered that my heirloom vines are trying to commit suicide. They’re growing so long that they’re b-e-n-d-i-n-g over the tops of the wire tomato baskets, crushing their limbs in the process. Left to their own devices, I’m afraid we would have few tomatoes at all — and the ones we would get would be munched by snails since they’re on the ground.

Time for some emergency repair. I tied, taped and staked for nearly an hour. We’ll see if they recover from the procedure.

Clever person that I am, I order up a sample of this special whiskey made from beer. I taste it and enjoy it so much that I put my tastebuds through a marathon to find exactly the right food to go with, then make the food, take the pictures. Only then do I check the fine print. The Domaine Charbay whiskey in question is $375 per bottle. That is what we call an oops.

Since I can’t bear to field the calls of protest from readers, I’ll share the lovely photo and pairing with you — and let me just add that except for the rather large price tag on the libation, this is a great pairing.

The Hangover Buster folks just hung up on me. Some delightful person convinced me that I needed to experience their product, so they sent a box of three wafers in the mail. These wafers are specially formulated to rehydrate the club-goer who may have ordered one too many.

After looking over the ingredients and tasting the fizzy water — you drop the wafers in water and drink it down before you put your woozy head on the pillow — I couldn’t help but think that these wafers deliver pretty much the same thing as a sports drink. They have vitamins A, B-12, C,  some caffeine, glutamine, white willow bark (aspirin?) and a spot of ginseng.

When I shared my thoughts with the publicist, I was lectured about how I am not a scientist. The person on the phone was correct about that, but I still don’t understand why I’d want Hangover Buster for $5.99 per 3-pack instead of a tall glass of water. If you’d like to do a little scientific research of your own, go to www.hangoverbuster.com.

Of course I’d love to be home playing in the garden. Since that doesn’t get the work done, here’s the next-best thing — a treat from the garden. Spicy greens topped with a just-picked tomato.