The Toasted Tomato

Posted on February 14, 2014June 2, 2015 by thetoastedtomato · 5 Comments

Facing the bathing blues

Bathing suits. It’s time to talk about them. Because as I was lying on the beach last week I realized that about 0.01 percent of women feel comfortable in them and the rest of us? Well, the rest of us just suffer.

I realized this as I was watching a woman with six-pack abs and 6-foot-long legs rearrange her towel on her deck chair. Apparently, she was having an issue getting it how she wanted it because she kept spreading out the towel in the air, as you would a sheet, and draping it across the chair. Unsatisfied, she’d do it again and then again. Then, whoops, she knocked her sunscreen off the table so she beeeennnt over — little deeper, now you’ve got it — to pick it up. Then her back got itchy so she languorously scraaaaaatched, then, oooh, her legs (understandably, given their length) got stiff so she streeeeetched. Then back to the towel: fling, fling.

Posted on January 31, 2014March 25, 2014 by thetoastedtomato

The search of the missing wallet

I was running on empty this morning after I dropped Gabrielle off at school and swung into the gas station to fill up. I had popped open the gas cap, turned off the car and then started digging in my purse for my wallet. Except my new, beautiful wallet I’d gotten for Christmas wasn’t in there.

Posted on January 26, 2014March 24, 2014 by thetoastedtomato

A new cook in the kitchen

One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2014 is to teach my stepdaughter Gabrielle how to cook. Happily, she’s on board with the plan, and yesterday we found ourselves in the kitchen making a roast chicken. Granted, she looked at me a little warily when I told her she would actually have to touch the chicken to stuff it — “Touching raw meat is what separates the men from the boys,” I informed her — but with just a slight wriggling of her nose, she held onto the drumsticks while I shoved onion, garlic, lemons and thyme into the cavity.

Posted on January 17, 2014March 24, 2014 by julie40422

Building snow memories

In the nearly nine years I’ve been writing this column, I’ve tried to vary my topics to keep things fresh. But when we get a good, healthy snow day like this one, I feel helpless to write about anything else. Because snow days are my very favorite thing about living in Kentucky.

Posted on January 2, 2014March 24, 2014 by thetoastedtomato

A Christmas puzzle

Given that we’re geographically scattered all over the place, my family doesn’t have a lot of traditions. But the one thing we can rely on year after year is our Christmas jigsaw puzzle.

For the past three years, I’ve been the one to choose it since my family has come to Kentucky, and I admit to having quite a good time browsing through the options on Amazon. One year, we did a scene from Old Montreal. Last year involved a horse-drawn carriage. And this year was a wintery scene at twilight with a church, a Christmas tree, a few bridges and lots of sky and snow.

Posted on December 28, 2013March 26, 2014 by thetoastedtomato

A Black Magic childhood

When I was a kid, Christmas wasn’t Christmas until the box of Black Magic chocolates appeared on the bar in the basement. It would usually show up around the beginning of December, and my brother and I would hover over it like flies until my dad pulled off the cellophane wrapper.

When he lifted the lid, there was the layer of crinkly protective paper lying like a stiff blanket atop the chocolates. We’d hungrily lift that too and there they were: little, pretty treasures nestled in a tray molded with custom-sized cradles.

Posted on December 20, 2013March 24, 2014 by thetoastedtomato

Goodbye, 2013

There were many times in the past year I wished for 2013 to be over. Each month seemed to present another hill we had to scale, and as the year inched forward, I grew increasingly wary of that ugly 13, wondering what it was going to slap us with next. Now that it is nearly over and we can graduate into a nice, even number — wonderful, beautiful 14 — I realize that, though I longed to fast forward it, this year has taught me more than any other. These are the lessons I learned.

Posted on December 12, 2013March 24, 2014 by thetoastedtomato

The Christmas List

This year, I have been a little disturbed my stepdaughter Gabrielle hasn’t wanted anything for Christmas. In the past, she’s been flush with wishes and so each year, her Christmas list is a big production. I require her to write her demands out on a fresh sheet of 8 x 11 and am usually given a crooked, charmingly misspelled list whose letters alternate in red and green ink.

But this year, Gabrielle Baker, 13 and three quarters in age, was stumped.

Posted on December 5, 2013March 24, 2014 by thetoastedtomato

Prairie bread in the Kentucky hills

Up until I realized it was probably responsible for making me gain 10 pounds, I spent a batch of time each week baking bread. This experiment went on for nearly a year, with each Monday morning spent watching the KitchenAid spin while I slowly added flour to the yeast, water, sugar, salt and oil in the bowl. It was a pleasurable process, and I always felt like a real, live Suzy Homemaker when I turned the golden loaves on the baking racks I’d set up. I especially looked forward to the moment when I could offer a still-warm slice to my stepdaughter Gabrielle after I picked her up from school.

My interest in baking bread started with a Williams-Sonoma cookbook my husband bought before I moved to Kentucky. The pictures looked delicious, and I started working my way through the recipes. The results were mediocre though, with none of them tasting especially memorable no matter how many raisins, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, herbs and caraway I added. Certainly they tasted nothing like the bread I grew up with on the prairies, where flour comes from hard winter wheat that produces loaves with a tasty, soft crumb and a crunchy, equally tasty crust.

Posted on November 22, 2013March 24, 2014 by thetoastedtomato

The sailboat for your skin

Gabrielle and I were at the pharmacy the other day waiting to get our flu shots when I noticed a familiar bottle sitting on the bottom shelf. We were sitting on the bench they reserve for people who are waiting forlornly for their prescriptions, and we’d just had a reasonable amount of fun taking our blood pressure by plunging our arms down that ever-tightening tube they have. But now, with the school day’s highlights reviewed, my email checked and nothing interesting on the Facebook feed, we were just waiting and staring in front of us.

And that’s when I saw the Sea Breeze.