I had Panera’s (that’s the St. Louis Bread Co. for my Midwest readers) Tomato & Fresh Mozzarella salad for lunch today, described in the menu as
Vine-ripened tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, red onions, fresh basil, salt, pepper & our balsamic vinaigrette, over our Rosemary & Onion focaccia.
It wasn’t bad, but there is absolutely no way in hell that those were vine ripened tomatoes. They didn’t have nearly the flavor of a tomato that’s allowed to ripen on a plant. In fact, they had almost no flavor at all. At most they had a piece of vine attached to a just past green tomato when they transported it.
The XM classic radio channel has been playing a lot of Bob Hope stuff lately. I’ve heard his standup material as well as playing a character in a comedy, and I just don’t understand why he was popular. Hope’s delivery is forced, his standup material isn’t very funny, and his acting is atrocious. I tried to listen to him in a radio version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith from around 1942 and it was unlistenable. Hope kept playing to the studio audience instead of actually doing the acting the script required. I had to turn it off.
Speaking of tomatoes, most of our tomato plants have tomatoes on them. I’m a bit concerned that they formed too early to the detriment of the plant, but we’ll see.
Backyard BBQ: The Art of Smokology by Richard W. McPeake has a lot of good information in it, but the editor should be taken out and shot. Or at least fired. The book is filled with a plethora of really annoying basic grammar mistakes. For starters, there is a big difference between “to” and “too.”
