Twelfth Night Tomatoes

Every year it's the same thing and every year it's different. Maybe that's the real appeal of gardening. The regular annual cycles provide a way to hold on to the minutiae of daily life, the precious details that slip away unless they are gathered into patterns. Long after you've forgotten what happened last year, a similar milestone shows up and a whole sequence of years comes into sudden focus.

I think that's how it became a kind of ritual to celebrate the last of the tomatoes. And there's usually been a handy holiday to coincide with using up the final few jewels collected from withered vines hanging in the garage.

In 2011 we had tomatoes on Valentine's Day (and beyond); the year before we celebrated with New Year's tomatoes; before that we've had Christmas Eve tomatoes. Part of the ritual has been to see how long the season can stretch, so we've been pushing the celebration later and later. But this year New Year's came and went and I realized we weren't going to make it to Valentine's Day. Last summer wasn't such a great season for our backyard tomatoes and the supply overwintering in the garage was meager to begin with. By this weekend we were down to a handful of Sungolds.

No worries. There was a perfectly respectable holiday just sitting there waiting to be noticed. January 6: Twelfth Night! What does it matter if we have never observed the last of the twelve days of Christmas? It was a fine time for one more feast. Since we were over-feasted and over-feted from the previous twelve days, we settled for a brunch, strictly in-house.

There were enough Sungolds for scrambled eggs with fresh parsley and thyme from the backyard, blending two garden seasons in one festive dish.

B. produced a handsome loaf, so we had homemade whole grain bread.

We also had a King cake, or Rosca de Reyes ("kings' ring") because, well, you know -- Twelfth Night. The Magi arrive bearing gifts. Celebrated with a special cake. I went to a local Mexican market to buy one ready made but the ones for sale there were clearly intended for large extended families. They made me think of the scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the groom's family -- two nervous Anglo parents bearing a small Bundt cake -- comes to meet the bride's family -- a crowd of uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, second cousins and two very jovial parents presiding over a large feast.

So I went to Trader Joe's and bought a teeny coffee cake, some cream cheese, and various fruits and nuts to decorate the top. I hid in the cake one of those foil covered chocolate coins, because that's what you do with a Twelfth Night cake, hide a token in it. We weren't exactly sure what it means if you get the piece with the token. In the British tradition it evidently means you are king or queen of the revels; in the Hispanic tradition it means you have to make the tamales for Candlemas on February 2. But it didn't matter because no one got the coin until much later when the leftovers disappeared and whoever got it is not openly admitting to it, perhaps concerned about making those tamales. It wasn't me, I know that much.

Anyway, it was a very fine brunch. We toasted the occasion with goblets of water, the wine of heaven. And the Twelfth Night tomatoes still had their homegrown savor.

Our Daily Loaf

Was this the first loaf of the new year? I'm not sure. It has become so routine now to have a new one coming out of the oven that it's hard to keep track. This is our daily bread, with only occasional supplementation from the grocery store. We can pretty much count on fresh green salads from the back yard and fresh warm bread from the oven.

We have moved on from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day to the advanced version: Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The process is the same but is adapted for whole grain flours.

B. has mastered the process to the point where it is a normal part of daily life to mix up a new batch of dough, let it rise a while and stick it in the fridge, or pull the container of dough out of the fridge, shape a loaf, let it rise, and bake it. One batch of dough will serve for four or five loaves, which get tastier and more tender the longer the dough sits. It seems like the hardest part of the process is to find room in the fridge. (That's my job.)

I really like the feeling of having a productive homestead, even if it's only on the very small scale of our whimsical two-person operation plus dog and occasional son. Years ago I saw a magazine article (Time or Newsweek, I think) about the shift over the centuries in the American household from a center of production to a center of consumption. It was the illustrations that were memorable.

On one side of the page was a drawing of a colonial family gathered around the huge hearth in their cozy kitchen. The whole family was there, three generations worth, staying warm by the fire. Everybody was doing something: winding yarn into a ball, shelling peas, mending a rake, stirring the pot hanging over the fire. The scene was alive with activity and interaction.

On the other side of the page was a photograph of a modern family circle. There were only two generations and the hearth had been replaced by a TV set whose wan glow lit up the faces of the silent, unmoving group.

This is not to say, of course, that we don't spend time clustered around the electronic fireplace, passively consuming mass-produced entertainment. In fact, we each have our own little screen to look at, more often than not, happily surfing, streaming, gaming, blogging, to our heart's content. But that's why it's especially satisfying to have the tangible daily projects of garden tending and bread making to confer about. Every day we produce something useful and enjoy every part of the production process.

Except perhaps trying to cram that bread bucket into the fridge.