From the time I was around 9 months old up until about the third or fourth grade I lived in a little community nestled in the Appalachian mountains just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee near Hall's Crossroads. My Pop and I stayed with my grandparents in a neighborhood like many other post-war settlements from the golden era of American Capitalism, an odd mix of suburban & rural with our neighbors across the street having horses and chickens and maybe a pig from time to time but my memory is a bit fuzzy on that point. Of course, the house next door is where I fell from a second story window and landed on my head which might explain the memory loss.
Grandad had purchased 2 lots side by side. On the first sat a cozy 2 bedroom 2 bath ranch with a finished basement. Grandad had finished the second bathroom downstairs for my Pop who had turned the rest of the basement into his hip bachelor pad, and I slept in the second bedroom upstairs. The entire second lot was an AMAZING garden that my Grandad had planted and maintained until he was no longer able to do so. Cancer would take him from us several years later.
I grew up alternately racing through those planted rows, my arms outstretched, jubilant face to the sun (and high-tension power lines I realized on a recent trip back home), and skulking around backstage at any of the many playhouses and entertainment venues that were liberally sprinkled throughout the metro Knoxville area while Pop was completing his studies as a Bachelor of the Arts at UT Knoxville. It was a peculiar alchemy of nature and nurture. I know now that this is where my life long liaison began, pickin' beans, shuckin' corn, & tradin' with the neighbors for fresh eggs or butter.
That was the last time I really remember LOVING vegetables as a kid. Fresh from the garden, fresh from next door, fresh from the stove top, and fresh in my belly made for a robust foundation in what food could and should be. I remember that even as a child I was sensitive to flavors and textures, not in a bad sort of way, but in a curious investigatory manner. Hell, the first thing I ever ordered at a Chinese restaurant as a kid was Moo Goo Gai Pan because it had ALL the vegetables. Sadly, it took roughly 20 years to regain that true appreciation for good fresh food , respectfully prepared, and proudly served.
Don't get me wrong, this was the early 80s and we were swept up in the furor of Reganomics so we certainly weren't opposed to running out to the grocery store, and neither were we so far removed from civilization that it would take more than a few minutes drive in any direction to reach some sort of retail oasis, and there certainly wasn't enough swine being butchered anywhere in the neighborhood to sate my hunger for hog's jowl & belly bacon.
My Gramma's own curious investigation into why the smell of charred flesh and smoke were waking her from a perfectly restful bit of sleep would reveal my own origins into the realm of Obsucra Epicuria Culinaria. Being a young upstanding lad of a robust 4 or 5 years I had elected to provide the family with a fresh hot breakfast of fried eggs and bacon like I had watched Gramma do countless times. She entered the dining room just in time to see the kitchen suddenly illuminated by the flame of a grease fire erupting in her favorite iron skillet, and me scrambling from a precarious perch atop a stack of phone-books resting on a chair. She rushed into the kitchen and expertly contained the fire with a nearby lid and instilled in me two very important elements of kitchen paradigm. Never use water to put out a grease fire, and a burnt pan of bacon is NOT the worst that could happen (contrary to one despondent boy's teary eyed beliefs).
So, eager beginnings, the first stops on our journey: a foundational element, a melange of delicious, and the tomatoes you've been looking for.
Recipes:
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