Sandwich Prep - The Long Game

You know how I usually try to post a photo of the ingredients before I use them in a recipe? Well, here's one that is going to take a little more than just some slicing or blending to be ready to go.

Not actually the plants involved in this story - but two Super Chilis, which are both pretty and pretty spicy.

Let me explain.

The Friends' School in the Twin Cities has a massive plant sale fund raiser every spring (typically Mother's Day weekend). The plants are often smaller than what you'd get at a landscape center, which also means that they're typically a lot less expensive.

This means that there are often a lot of people at the sale, and you kind of need to bring your own carrying containers, because once you leave the shopping cart behind you've got to figure out how to carry your purchases multiple blocks to your car.

This year, I got smart and took three stacking "milk crates," which I stacked in my cart and filled with plants, then carried out to my car. It worked great. And - since I shopped almost entirely off of my planned plant planting list, I spent about $80 and walked away with something like 65 plants.

Four of which are Brandywine tomatoes, which were so small that they were discounted even beyond the regularly low price.

I knew I had a picture of them!

It took me a while to get all of the plants into the ground. Between other things I needed to do and keeping an eye on the weather (planting anything in Minnesota before Memorial Day can be a crap shoot), I finally got everything into the ground about a week later.

The last time I tried to grow tomatoes, they did fairly well, but about when they were ready to eat the squirrels got to them first. So this year the plants - which should be fully grown by the end of July - are going to grow behind some chicken wire, which I finally got put up on a dry day this week.

Little tiny plants inside the cylinder of chicken wire - or, as the packaging called it, "Poultry Netting."

Looking at the largest of the four plants, I have to admit that it's hard to imagine I'll have anything to eat this summer.

Yep. At about three inches tall, that one is the tallest.

I just have to keep watering and hoping, and - if all goes well - some time late this summer I'll be showing you the ingredient stack that will yield this:

In 2015, I had four tomatoes, one which became fried egg and tomato on toast. I'm salivating just thinking about it.

Fingers crossed.

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While we wait for the tomatoes to reach fruition, do you have anything you'd like to see me try out in the kitchen for you? Let me know and I'll see what I can do!