Got your beefsteak right here

[Robin Garr]

This is a beefsteak tomato. Heirloom "steakhouse" variety, one beefy slice weighs about a half-pound. With benedictine on rye toast.

OK, so that's clearly not liqueur on the toast. What else gets called benedictine?

Dang. And I grilled a dry-aged Porterhouse for supper tonight. (Well, half of it; the whole thing was a pound and a half.) From Willowside Meats near Santa Rosa. They don't have a website. They do sell good meat. Trust me!

Robin, why didn't you cut the core out?

[Robin Garr]

OK, so that's clearly not liqueur on the toast. What else gets called benedictine?

Oops, sorry, Mike. It's a traditional Louisville summer specialty, allegedly created by a 19th century local caterer and restaurateur named Jenny Benedict. It's just a mix of shredded cucumber, onions and cream cheese (and, in some errant variations, green food coloring). Probably not the only place this mix has ever been invented, but perhaps the only place that named it.

[Robin Garr]

Robin, why didn't you cut the core out?

This tomato is so good that even the green spot at the center is good.

Ref the other thread on growing veg, can I ask if you grew this marvellous tom?.

[Robin Garr]

Ref the other thread on growing veg, can I ask if you grew this marvellous tom?.

Sorry, Peter, I thought that was implicit, but I should have been more specific. Yes, it came from Mary's garden. We got the original plant from a local farmer at a farmers' market in the spring.

[Jenise]

What a gorgeous tomato.

Want to hear a sad story? In this, perhaps the best summer ever for growing tomatoes in our area, my plants are a bust. Why? Because we stupidly bought Black Gold potting soil, not Black Gold compost, to amend the raised bed with and didn't realize it until we started wondering why our plants were so un-robust.

[Robin Garr]

Because we stupidly bought Black Gold potting soil, not Black Gold compost, to amend the raised bed with and didn't realize it until we started wondering why our plants were so un-robust.

Awww.

I have to attribute some of the success of Mary's garden to the fact that all the soil now has close to 20 years of our own compost worked in. It's so rich that one year we got a whole bunch of "volunteer" cherry tomatoes under a bird feeder.

[Jenise]

Because we stupidly bought Black Gold potting soil, not Black Gold compost, to amend the raised bed with and didn't realize it until we started wondering why our plants were so un-robust.

Awww.

I have to attribute some of the success of Mary's garden to the fact that all the soil now has close to 20 years of our own compost worked in. It's so rich that one year we got a whole bunch of "volunteer" cherry tomatoes under a bird feeder.

Best way to do it. We don't, unfortunately, compost, though we certainly generate the vegetative refuse as would be required. We just don't have a place to put/keep a composting operation that wouldn't be a bug/rat nuisance to us and one of our close neighbors.

Get a tub with a snap-lock lid and raise/lower it into the bay?

[Robin Garr]

Best way to do it. We don't, unfortunately, compost, though we certainly generate the vegetative refuse as would be required. We just don't have a place to put/keep a composting operation that wouldn't be a bug/rat nuisance to us and one of our close neighbors.

Maybe there's an environmental difference, or something about urban composting, but our compost doesn't seem to attract either bugs or rats, or dogs. No meat in it (even before we did the veggie thing), and frequent turning with a pitchfork, but it's just a pile sitting in a wooden box.