The Invasion of the Tomato Snatchers

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My $33 tomato venture has officially ended with the harvest of a third tomato, and the economics improved considerably, dropping the per-fruit cost to $11.

A green tomato plant in a pot with wooden stakes for support, placed beside a wooden trellis. In the background, a purple pot with a small plant and a green watering can are on a metal table.

I’m not calling it a successful business venture, but I learned to trust the division of labor and buy fresh produce from the food store.

I’ve heard that backyard gardening is a labor of love. I had optimistic thoughts of turning my brown thumb into a green one at the beginning of the summer.

Maybe I’m more of an arborist. The avocado tree has been doing much better. I’ve been nurturing a pine tree seedling that has survived for 18 months. It’s supposed to become a bonsai-worthy tree, assuming I can keep it alive long enough to find out. I’ll bring the pine tree inside soon.

A small potted plant with green shoots in a purple pot, placed on a table next to a bright green watering can.

Across the sidewalk, I’ve been tending a patch of milkweed. Monarch butterflies migrate through Boulder in the summer, and milkweed gives them a place to lay their eggs.

They’ve grown tall, and I’ve tied them up with strong twine to keep them from flopping over and avoiding the purge by over-eager gardeners who think it’s time for them to go.

Close-up of a green, spiky fruit growing on a plant, surrounded by large green leaves.

Now the seed pods are finally forming. This is where my gardening project takes a turn toward science fiction.

The pods resemble miniature versions of the seed pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In the 1956 movie, the pods are the machinery of an alien invasion.

The body-snatching Pod People grow duplicates of sleeping humans, absorbing the person’s physical form, memories, and characteristics. When the metamorphosis finishes, the original human disappears, leaving behind an emotionless replacement.

My milkweed pods, I assume, have no such ambitions.

I think of them as little botanical spacecraft carrying the next generation of milkweed seeds. The Monarchs are doing their own version of biological time travel, arriving each summer to lay eggs on the plants that will feed their caterpillars, which metamorphose into the next generation of butterflies.

I wonder who is tending whom.

I learned that this summer in my little garden, I’m not much of a farmer. Three tomatoes isn’t much of a harvest. Gardening is about the few fruits of my effort and the satisfaction of having kept an organism alive through its lifecycle.

A colorful display of fresh vegetables at a farmers market, featuring green, red, yellow tomatoes, various types of eggplants, and a bell pepper arranged in cardboard boxes on a red table.

The pine tree is still growing. The avocado tree will have avocados in 20 years, and the milkweed is preparing its pods. The Monarchs have a nursery. I cut back the tomato plant, unaware that our business model had failed.

In the meantime, the farmers’ market runs through October.

Wonder Woman, Dolly Parton, and Gloria Steinem

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A couple of days ago, I sorted through my last box of autographed baseballs, and I found another artifact I’d forgotten about. Behind the printer and a 1962 “Life” magazine with a Roger Maris – Mickey Mantle Post cereal baseball card insert, I found my first edition of “Ms.” magazine.

The cover with the headline “Wonder Woman for President” threw me back to 1972.

Here’s another case of uncanny timing. The night before, a neighbor asked if I’d set up a projector in my Silver Sage Village community courtyard to screen “9 to 5,” the 1980 comedy starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and the late Dolly Parton.

Three women fed up with a sexist boss turn the tables, take control of the company, and change the workplace. It’s slapstick funny and a pretty good primer on workplace misogyny.

Then I read in my Yahoo! news feed that Gloria Steinem had died at 92.

Steinem and others founded “Ms.” The magazine in my collection seemed a lot more significant than it had the day before. I read the table of contents and flipped through the pages. The country had changed, but much of it hasn’t.

The first regular issue of “Ms.” appeared in July 1972. It began as a preview inserted into “New York” magazine in December 1971. That preview sold 300,000 copies, generating thousands of subscription orders and letters. The response showed that the world had seriously underestimated what women wanted to read about.

The women’s magazines of the day largely revolved around fashion, beauty, marriage, children, and how to keep everybody else happy. “Ms.” treated women as citizens and political actors, not just consumers.

Steinem stood at the center of it.

She wore several hats in the startup. She had to be a businesswoman, a strong writer, a savvy political activist, and one of second-wave feminism’s most recognizable figures.

Steinem believed that the feminist movement needed a national publication where women’s experiences and political ideas could be taken seriously.

She and the magazine editors wanted Wonder Woman on the first cover as a symbol of female strength and independence.

At the time, DC Comics had stripped Wonder Woman of her superpowers and put her into a more conventional secret-agent role. DC restored Wonder Woman’s powers and traditional identity.

“Ms.” chose Wonder Woman to make a point about what happens when a powerful woman is made less powerful.

Inside the first issue, Steinem wrote an article with the provocative title “Women Voters Can’t Be Trusted.” Steinem took on the conventional political wisdom that women were unreliable, politically passive, or voted the way the men in their lives told them to vote.

In the article, Steinem argues that society misunderstood and underestimated women voters. She encourages women to discover their political power.

The political world looked very different in the 1970s when only 15 women served in Congress. No woman had been a major-party presidential or vice-presidential nominee. Democrat Shirley Chisholm changed all that when the Congresswoman became the first African American woman to run for president.

I learned that “Ms.” named Dolly Parton one of its “Women of the Year” in 1987. Steinem praised Parton for infusing feminism into her music and for celebrating women who made their own way. You can hear that spirit in “Just Because I’m a Woman,” “9 to 5,” and “Travelin’ Man,” the theme for “Transamerica.”

Parton gave voice to women’s independence, working lives, and the double standards they faced. Steinem observed that Dolly didn’t give political speeches but walked the talk through her song lyrics.

My copy of “Ms.” had survived, tucked away among baseball memorabilia.

That’s appropriate.

Baseball is all statistics, records, and arguments by armchair coaches about who belongs in the lineup. In 1972, women had no records to compare and had to battle to get through the turnstiles.

Gloria Steinem spent her life arguing that women belonged in the seats and in the field, diving for hard-hit line drives.

Dolly, Gloria, and Wonder Woman for MVP!

Dolly, Brothers and the Search for the Perfect Rib

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Do you like BBQ like Dolly?

I discovered that Dolly Parton and I have one thing in common.

I’ve never considered myself much of a Dolly Parton fan. Nothing against Dolly. She’s had an extraordinary career, but I wouldn’t have expected to find a culinary connection with the Queen of Country Music.

Dolly likes smoked barbecue ribs.

Maybe it comes from her humble Eastern Tennessee roots. I don’t know that for sure, and I don’t pretend that every food preference Dolly has can be traced back to the Smoky Mountains.

BBQ has a place in her empire. Her theme park, Dollywood, serves smoked and barbecue dishes, and her dinner attractions turn a meal into part of the show.

So, Dolly, this one’s for you.

*******

Wet or dry?

I’m beginning a little series on BBQ ribs, because ribs are one of those foods I could eat far more often than is advisable.

Like Dolly, I prefer them smoked, and I prefer dry ribs.

There are two BBQ rib camps.

Wet ribs are finished with barbecue sauce. The sauce can be sweet, tangy, spicy, smoky, or some combination of all four. It gives the ribs a glossy coating and plenty of flavor.

My favorite is yellow sauce that includes mustard. The recipe originated in the Carolinas and the Florida Panhandle.

Dry ribs rely on the rub and the smoke. A mixture of spices, at least salt, pepper, paprika, garlic, onion, brown sugar, or other seasonings, is rubbed directly onto the meat before it goes into the smoker. The result is a darker, crustier exterior, with the smoke and seasoning doing most of the talking.

I like that.

If the meat has been smoked properly, why cover it up?

A good dry rib should taste like pork, smoke, and seasoning, and not like whatever happens to be the dominant ingredient in a bottle of barbecue sauce.

*******

Brothers from England, BBQ in Denver

Today’s ribs came from Brothers BBQ in Broomfield.

I had been fasting, and after leaving the doctor’s office, I didn’t have to travel far to find an early dinner. About two miles later, I sat down with a plate of ribs.

Brothers BBQ has an interesting history. I came across their first store at Monaco Parkway and Leetsdale Drive and struck up a conversation with them in 1998.

Chris and Nick O’Sullivan hailed from England but were raised in Denver. While traveling around the country, they stopped at barbecue joints everywhere they went, sampling regional traditions from Kansas City and Memphis to Texas and South Carolina.

Their style is essentially Colorado BBQ, a little bit of everywhere. That fits Denver, where people have arrived from just about everywhere else.

*******

The usual

I’m not much of an adventurous eater.

When I find something I like, I tend to stick with it. There is no need to scan the menu and take a chance.

I ordered the rib special. Compared to other BBQ joints, Brothers serves huge Daddy Back ribs, rather than smaller Baby Back Ribs.

For sides, I went with baked beans and coleslaw. Instead of sweet tea, I bought a Voodoo IPA brewed by New Belgium up the road in Fort Collins.

The ribs arrived looking like ribs ought to look: smoked, seasoned, and ready to be attacked with my hands. I go through a lot of napkins.

This is one of barbecue’s great advantages. It doesn’t require much ceremony.

Pick up rib.

Eat rib.

Repeat.

*******

The $23 special

There was a time when ribs were associated with inexpensive food, the kind of thing working people could cook slowly and feed a family without spending a fortune.

That isn’t the case anymore.

My rib special, a beer, sides, and tip came to about $23.

That’s not unusual for BBQ these days. The once simple pork rib has joined the ranks of foods that can make a respectable dent in the wallet.

I suppose that’s what happens when something once considered ordinary becomes an American culinary art form.

People now debate barbecue the way wine people debate grapes.

Texas or Kansas City?

Memphis or Carolina?

Wet or dry?

Hickory or oak smoke?

The server brought over a condiment rack with three kinds of sauce on the side.

*******

Smoke beats my backyard grill.

I try my hand at grilling ribs from time to time.

Every once in a while I’ll buy a rack and throw it on the grill. I get reasonably good results, but the flame burns off most of my rub. My version is edible, and it makes me appreciate restaurants that know what they’re doing.

I haven’t managed to duplicate the flavor of properly smoked ribs. My upstairs neighbor is from Florida and has a smoker. I should collaborate more with him.

Time is an ingredient, too.

You can’t hurry good BBQ. The meat has to sit there and absorb the smoke while connective tissue slowly breaks down and the exterior develops that beautiful crust.

That’s the magic of barbecue.

Fire does the cooking.

Time does the work.

Smoke and rub supply the personality.

Dolly and me

Now, every time I eat ribs, I’ll think about Dolly Parton, except when I hear “Jolene.”

I may not have listened to enough Dolly Parton songs over the years, but we agree that ribs should be smoked.

BBQ doesn’t care about your roots.

Dolly came from the hills of East Tennessee.

The O’Sullivan brothers came from England and traveled America looking for BBQ.

I came from Wyoming and eat ribs wherever I happen to be.

Different roads. Same destination.

Put a rack of ribs in the smoker and don’t mess with it too much.

Dolly, I’m with you on this one.