Help! Under Attack!

Help us!! We are under attack! For days on end they just keep coming and coming and coming......gigantic killer tomatoes! Some of them are uniquely formed earning them the title of butt tomatoes. I HATE that word. My mother taught us to say "behind, bottom, rear end....." and butt was a bad word. Yet, it is spoken in my house and I shall earnestly and enthusiastically blame this on the children's friends : ). Anyway - what to do when under the attack of ferocious killer butt tomatoes? Make tomato soup! mmmmm mmmmm good. I shall print my delicious recipe at the bottom (see how I didn't say butt?) of the post.

Speaking of the butt issue....I have a childhood friend (who will recognize herself in this story) whose mother also considered it crude to say butt. She has, as have I, passed this genteel butt restriction on to her own boys. When our boys were playing together one of them (surely it was one of hers) used the word "butt" to which I replied "we don't say butt". Actually, since I was the one responding it might have been one of my boys.....Anyway - my friend's son was like, "You can't say butt? Oh my gosh! WE can't say butt, either!" Oh what a wonderful moment it was. I thought they were all going to weep. "We are not alone! We are truly not alone in this torturesome restriction that makes us the butt of jokes! Oh excuse us, we mean the gluteus maximus of jokes!" There were hugs and bonding all the way around. Then one of my boys said he had to go pee. There was an awkward moment of silence. Finally, my friend's son said, "We can't say pee."

"Oh God," I thought. This was one word restriction I had suffered as a child. How many times did I explain to stunned adults that I needed to "urinate"? Urinate! No kid should have to say urinate....geez. I let my kids say pee. I waited for the child to explain that he had to say "urinate" but to my relief (and this is some bizarre rationalization on my friend's part) he said, "We have to say pee pee."

My son picked up on this and immediately tried to use it to his advantage. "Mom, can we say butt butt?"

Anyway, back to the tomatoes. I cooked tomato soup for what seemed like all day but my husband pointed out was more like an hour. He is the cook in our house. I used to like to cook but now it is just one of the many tedious activities of my day that keeps me from reaching my true potential : ). I took some to my friend, Janet, who has just had a baby. She looked beautiful and the baby is precious, of course. I enjoyed hearing the story of her son's beautiful water birth, which took place in the comfort and holiness of their family bedroom (attachment parents). I love to hear birth stories. Maybe I will write a book of birth stories.....

BTW - speaking of births - if any of you are considering birthing options you might want to check out the video "The Business of Being Born". You have probably heard a lot about it (it is somewhat controversial to mainstream birthing practitioners) but reserve your judgement until you've seen it. I've listed it with my other Amazon items I believe in.

And also BTW - speaking of books and such....I am going to be attending the Writer's League of Texas Agents Conference in Austin in a couple of weeks. I will be pitching my book. I am so nervous! Like I totally don't know anybody and there is all this pressure to network and mingle and pitch....I'm probably going to lock myself in my room and watch HBO for 3 days.

Share my blog with your friends and online groups! The more traffic I get the more "me" I'll have to pitch to agents (if I ever manage to come out of my hotel room).

Back to more important things: It looks like the Killer Tomatoes are not letting up. We have an entire row of these things! I am going to have to get the pressure cooker from Jeff's bother, Pee Wee. My kids used to call him Uncle Wee Wee, which for some reason the family considered worse than Pee Wee.

The boys have a bumper crop of basil, weeds, and grass growing in their herb garden.

Carol's "Killer" Tomato Soup (this makes a gigantica stock pot - trim it down if you don't need that much)

4 Tlb olive oil

3 onions, finely chopped
A (head?) of celery...you know...all the stalks
4 shredded carrots
Approximately 16 tomatoes, crudely (i like to say crude rather than coarse) chopped
A handfull of fresh basil, chopped
9 cups of vegetable stock (I use the organic kind in the boxes)
2 cups of half and half (you knew there had to be something bad in here)
3 TBL of salt
1/2 cup of sugar
Heat the oil in the stock pot and saute the onion, celery, and carrots until vegetables are tender. Add tomatoes and basil and simmer for awhile, until everything is tender. Here is the unpleasant part: Transfer all of this into a really big bowl, and then begin scooping it into the blender. Blend (in portions) and pour back into the stock pot. You need to do this in smallish portions and be careful as it is hot and you don't want to blow the lid off of your blender and aquire 3rd degree burns which will make you want to sue me. In fact, here is my disclaimer: "The hot bubbly soup that has been simmering on your stove is, in fact, really hot. Should you dump a bunch of it into your blender and then blow the lid off of your blender you will acquire serious burns to your person and possibly other persons in your general vicinity. Sardine Mama is not responsible for lapses in judgment of the readership." There. Liability taken care of. NOW: Once all of the tomato mixture is pureed and back in your stock pot - add the vegetable broth, salt, and sugar. Right before it simmers, add the half and half, stirring constantly. Allow to simmer for about 10 minutes or so.....then enjoy with some crusty bread. We like to sprinkle a little Parmesan on our soup.

Yay! Cinderella is home and unenthusiastically washing dishes!



Enjoy!
Sardine Mama
PS In the course of writing this post I asked Jeff how to spell "gluteus maximus". He didn't know, of course. He also didn't ask me why I needed to spell gluteus maximus and this says something about him, me, or both of us. I'm not sure what, though.