My Summer Planting Experience

Over the summer I tried to grow my own vegetables. I planted three different kinds of lettuce, two varieties of beans, peas, carrots, and tomatoes. I bought all the recommended soil and even bought myself a book on how to do it right with only pots!

That being said, my crop was unsuccessful. I could blame the aphids that coated the leaves of all my plants with their sticky black goo, or the squirrels that could not help but dig up all roots of my new sprouts, or even the frost that came in June (twice and then again in July). But the fault lies within my own neglect. The aphid spit made the plants look like they were always sick and near death no matter what I put over them to repel the nagging green insects. After replanting my beans eight times and covering the soil with whatever deterrent I read about on the internet (barring poison although it did get close), I admit that I lost interest. By the end of the first week of August, the only care I was giving the little potted midgets in my backyard was a watering every couple of days.

So you can imagine how stunned I was when my tomato plants started to produce fruit. A lot of fruit. So much vibrant, plump, and juicy fruit that I was compelled to go through my favorite Jamie Oliver book and do all of the recipes that included fresh ripe tomatoes! I know that it's possible that the plant was only producing fruit in a last ditch dying effort to procreate, but the little tomatoes were so delicious and perfect looking, that I think maybe the plant was heartier than I gave it credit for.

As a final note, I didn't plant the carrots in pots, I planted them in the garden. What I didn't realize though, was how rocky and shallow the soil was where I planted them. This made for yummy, yet somewhat disfigured miniature carrotlings that most people were somewhat reluctant to eat. It could be because of their nuclear-waste-mutant-like qualities. But I don't know where that came from.

My Quest to Understand Cheese

I don't like cheese.

For as long as I can remember, the only cheese I would eat would be the kind melted on pizza, nachos or inside a grilled-cheese sandwich. And the only way it tasted any good was if it was heavily laced with salt, pepper, pickles or ketchup. I limited myself to cheddar and mozzarella. Parmesan smelled like bile (it IS made of bile...), brie smelled like dirty socks, and havarti had the weirdest texture that I just could not get used to no matter how many times I tried it.

My Austrian grandparents love their cheeses. Gouda and swiss emmental especially. You sit down for lunch and no matter what it is you're about to eat, there will be a platter with gouda and swiss cheese handily sliced up for everyone to enjoy. However, while everyone else is blindly masticating, I sit there and think about how it smells like a pile of pungent old laundry mixed with a unique sour smell that I can't even describe. My mom is also a huge fan of melting brie cheese in the microwave and eating it with a spoon. The smell of the melting cheese permeates the whole entire house so that you can't escape the heavy musky odor.

But over Christmas, with all the wines and cheeses and crackers and people, I was peer pressured into trying some different cheese. And in doing so, I discovered Boursin cheese. It's light and fragrant and has the consistency of butter. It doesn't even smell like an old man's body odor! I went back for cracker after cracker until the whole ball of cheese was gone and I was picking up loose crumbs of cheese with my fingertip.

From here, I decided to begin a quest to try and understand people's love for cheese.

I can say that I've made a conscious effort to buy new and different types of cheeses to try in recipes, like applewood smooked cheddar in potato soufflees (recipe here, from Almost Bourdain). I've made these soufflés a few times, and the best was when I incorporated the applewood smoked cheddar instead of regular cheddar or parmesan. It adds a whole new level of subtle flavor to the dish that you can't get with just spices, salt and pepper.


So while I won't claim to love cheese, I will say that I am trying to understand the (odd) fascination some people seem to have with it and use it to my advantage.