Not a Polish joke

I posted last week about the mutant "peppermato" we found in our garden, but it turns out the joke is on me. My Polish brother-in-law gave us a tomato plant, which we planted near a red pepper plant. And as I've mentioned, everything became tangled so that we could barely tell one vine from another, so it's obvious we are a couple of clueless gardeners.

It turns out we are not the harbingers of a mutant cross-breed, but the owners of a Polish heirloom tomato plant called an Opalka. The fruit is shaped like a banana pepper and has very few seeds, but makes great sauce, apparently. Ours haven't ripened beyond a reddish-orange, so we may never know.

This is what the Opalka should look like:

Photo courtesy of

Thanks to all of the more experienced gardeners out there who restrained themselves from posting huge chuckles after my first post. Needless to say, I'll be doing a lot of planning for next year's garden over the winter.

Mutant vegetable invades messy garden

I don't have a green thumb. My one house plant has lasted because it's hearty and impervious to my inabilities. But in my quest to eat local and organic foods, Dino and I planted a garden this year. I had an empty flower bed that died after the previous homeowners left us in charge of it and I wanted to grow things I loved. To my amazement, we now have butternut squash, swiss chard, cherry tomatoes, jalapeños, basil, oregano, parsley, sage and garlic chives. I can barely harvest the items due to the tangled mess, but everything tastes wonderful.

And as I was crawling through the twisted vines for tomatoes today I came across something rather strange looking. I'm calling it a peppermato.

I did some quick research and discovered that tomatoes and peppers don't cross-pollinate, but as you can see from the photo, we clearly have a mutant fruit/vegetable on our hands. It's not that surprising, really, considering our hap-hazard gardening methods, but it made for interesting dinner conversation tonight. I served it with olive oil, sea salt and pepper to make it more appealing. On the outside it looks like an unripe red pepper, but inside it has the taste and consistency of a tomato. It wasn't overly flavorful, but it was fun to eat something so strange from our own garden. I felt a bit like Frankenstein.

I'd love to know what we ate tonight, but the evidence has been digested. If we get more of them I'll check with someone who knows more than I do at the next farmers' market.

lapiduli

"The events of her life are like the lapiduli of a grand mosaic: each of them is a small thing, but the combination of them makes such a picture..." {Richard Baptist O'Brien}

Not a Polish joke

Mutant vegetable invades messy garden