This past weekend was a “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs”-type situation at our house after Kyle shed his normal skin and transformed into KYLE KING OF THE GARDEN.  I was standing in the kitchen doing something really good for humanity (although I can’t remember what) when he emerged from the doorway carrying a single tomato.

“We have a lot of tomatoes back there,” he said.

“Very nice,” I said.

“I didn’t even grow them; they were volunteer,” he said in the same type of voice that one would use for the phrase, “It’s not my fault.”

“I guess you just cultivated the perfect vegetable environment,” I said in the same type of voice that one would use for the phrase, “Yeah, huh, it is,” since I wasn’t sure why he was acting so guilty.

“Well, there’s a lot,” he repeated.

“Okay,” I said.  “Do you think there’s enough to make pasta sauce?”

“How many do you need to make pasta sauce?”  He asked.

“I have no idea,” I said.

“There’s probably enough,” he said.

On Saturday morning, I woke up, had a cup of coffee, and then pulled up my friend’s Italian mother-in-law’s recipe for pasta sauce.  The recipe came after several hours of celebrating at another friend’s graduation party and so I don’t feel right about sharing it here in case it’s actually a family secret made public thanks to too much red wine – but the long and the short of it required three hours of simmering crushed tomatoes mixed with other stuff.  The recipe was for a standard amount of pasta sauce, and so I figured I’d scale it based on whatever amount of volunteer tomatoes voluntarily offered themselves up when Kyle went out to voluntarily harvest them.

“Here you go,” Kyle said, dumping a load of twelve tomatoes onto the counter.

“That IS a lot,” I said.

“Aaaaaaaaaaand here’s a few more,” our nine-year-old said, adding five more to the pile.

“Oh, boy,” I said.  “Welp, maybe I’ll also make some salsa.”

“Pineapple salsa?”  Kyle asked, hopefully.

“Yes, definitely,” I said, because I had never made salsa and could therefore make any salsa using any ingredients available in the whole world, including pineapple.

I spent the next 45 minutes cutting the tops and slicing X’s into the bottoms of the tomatoes and then blanching them in one of my mother’s – which I guess is mine since it’s in my house – giant stockpots.  While they cooled, I ate a bagel.  After they cooled, I spent 30 minutes peeling off the skins, which was a sensation similar to rubbing your fingernails in a bowl of lukewarm tomato soup (not something most people would seek out) and then combining all of the secret ingredients back in the stockpot and setting the whole thing a-simmering.  For the next three hours I watched college football and made and cleaned up lunch and went for a walk with Kyle.  Then I blended everything in the pot, let it cool down, and put it in the fridge.

“That smells really good,” my thirteen-year-old said as I packaged it up.

“I think it smells gross,” Nine said.

“It doesn’t smell gross,” I said.  “We’ll have spaghetti for dinner tonight.”

We didn’t have spaghetti for dinner because we ended up taking the boys hunting and by the time that was over it was 7:45 and everyone was grumpy.  Instead, we had KFC.

On Sunday morning, I woke up and had a cup of coffee.

“Do you want to have spaghetti for lunch or dinner?”  I asked Kyle.

“Could we have chili instead?”  Kyle asked, because we normally make our chili with pasta sauce, which I know is a food travesty but we like it.

“Sure,” I said.  “I’ll make that salsa, too.”

“Do you want the rest of the tomatoes?”  Kyle asked.

“There are MORE tomatoes?”  I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “But this time bring in all the tomatoes.”

“Do you want the cucumbers?”  He asked.

“There are cucumbers, too?”  I asked – and then, without waiting for a reply, said, “Sure.”

Kyle brought in twenty more tomatoes and ten giant cucumbers.

“Oh,” I said.

“There are a few beets, too,” Kyle said.  “Nine has them.”

“Bring in some dill,” I said.  “I’ll make refrigerator pickles.”

I got out my mother’s second-largest stockpot – which is also mine, I suppose – and started the chili.  Next to that pot went the big stockpot for the latest round of tomatoes, and behind those went a small pot of vinegar and pickling salt for the refrigerator pickles.  While the tomatoes blanched, I got the cucumbers sliced and into a jar with garlic, dill, and red pepper flakes; and while the tomatoes cooled I chopped up another cucumber because I decided the pineapple salsa recipe I had found probably had unmentioned cucumbers in it.

By now it was almost noon, so I made lunch and Kyle turned on the Vikings game (I feel compelled to tell you that he was also mowing the lawn and doing laundry, not sitting around watching me cook and smacking a wooden paddle with “Wife” painted on it).

After lunch, as the chili and the tomatoes simmered and the refrigerator pickles pickled and the Vikings blew away the Texans, Kyle and I went for a walk.  On the walk, our neighbor gave us a dozen apples from their tree.

“We’re going to have to eat a lot of apples,” Kyle said as we rounded the corner.  “I just bought a dozen of them.”

“I’ll make an apple crumble,” I said.

Back at the house, I peeled the apples and got the crumble in the oven, and then turned back to the salsa.  I stuck the pineapple, tomatoes, cucumbers, and a bunch of other random items (onions and salt, mainly) in the food processor.  When I lifted the lid, I realized that I had suddenly forgotten what salsa looked like.  I went to the fridge and pulled out a jar of grocery store salsa.  It did not look like my food processor salsa but I had no idea why.  Too chopped?  Not chopped enough?  Wrong ingredients?  Lack of sombrero?  I decided the best course of action was to stick my “salsa” in a giant container in the fridge and move on with my life.

As the afternoon NFL game kicked off, I peeled the apples and made a quick crumble (brown sugar, oats, flour, butter, apples, oven, eat).  I blended the latest pasta sauce and put it in the freezer.  I cleaned up the kitchen while Kyle washed the 300,000 dishes I had used.  Then I stuck the remaining five cucumbers in the refrigerator, stuck the beets in the oven, and stuck my butt on the couch for a full fifteen minutes before dinner would be ready to be served.

“Man, that was a busy weekend,” Kyle said.

“Was it?”  I asked.  “I don’t know what we did.”

“You did a lot of cooking,” he said.

I thought about that for a moment.  “But I didn’t, really.  I made, like, four things.”

“Well, those four things were delicious,” Kyle said.

“I didn’t like the chili,” Nine said, helpfully.  “And I didn’t like the refrigerator pickles or apple crumble.”

“You’ll like the salsa,” Kyle said.

“Probably not,” Nine said.

“Maybe next time I should grow volunteer peanut butter sandwiches,” Kyle said, as the oven dinged to finish off the roasted beets.

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The photo above was taken by Nine on our hunting trip. His contribution to the hunt was to shoot artsy photos. This is me artsily thinking about tomatoes.

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This week on North Dakota Today we talked about Mary Ann Devig and the Unforgettables Choir, my Nice Person (+ choir) of the Week, as well as a Grand Forks para sharing kindness through books. Check it out. (Valley News Live)

Because the waiting list is 900 veterans strong, the SDAY WWII Honor Flight took not one, but TWO planes carry 215 veterans to Washington D.C. for this latest round of Honor Flights. (Fargo Forum)

Speaking of veterans, Lt. Col. John Nolan was gifted a new roof thanks to Roofs for Veterans. (Valley News Live)

Toot toot!  The train at Dakota Zoo is chugging along thanks to John Risch. (KFYR TV)

This past Saturday was the 2nd annual Kick’n 2 Stay kickball tournament, which both raises awareness of suicide prevention and honors East Grand Forks’ Brian Milling, who was the umpire at his family’s weekly kickball game. (Fargo Forum)

Fargo’s Emmet Kenney kicked the game-winning field goal for Stanford to win their first game in the ACC. (KVRR)

Grand Forks brought out the backpacks for Throttle Addiction Motorcycle’s annual “Feed the Need.” (Facebook)

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