Hot Weather Treat

Actually I have this dish quite frequently — it’s one of my favorite warm weather snacks (or meals, if you eat enough of it!). It’s easy to make, cold, very digestable, and tasty:

Tom’s Hot Weather Food

Ingredients:

— one or two (depending on size) good eating tomatoes, chilled

— one can of chilled garbanzo beans, best quality you can get (they vary widely)

— half cup or so of frozen corn (optional)

— two or three tbsps of tarragon — fresh if possible, finely minced just before use; otherwise dried whole leaves powdered just before use. This is important!

— two or three tbsps of good olive oil (don’t be cheap here!)

— splash of basalmic vinegar (optional)

— fresh ground pepper and salt to taste

Prepare the tarragon, salt, and pepper in the bottom of a bowl large enough to hold the entire concoction. Then cover with the olive oil and mix thoroughly. Set aside (or make in advance; you’ll get even more of that lovely tarragon flavor). Dice the tomatoes into eatin' sized chunks. Throw the tomatoes into a strainer to drain them. Dump the garbanzos out of the can on top of them, to drain them too. Dump the whole mess into the bowl with the olive oil and spices. Throw in the corn, if you want it. Splash a little basalmic vinegar onto it, if that sounds good. Mix it all up. Eat it.

I just finished this meal…yum! And now I’m headed off for a nice, big glass of cabernet…

Demo Done!

But no thanks to this rotten tool that I was not very optimistic about. No, that thing turned out to be even more useless than I feared — both because of the lawsuit-mandated low mass, and the particulars of our laundry room.

We were told this house was built in 1982 (we bought it in 1999). But judging from the fossils we found under our tiles, and the primitive nature of the glue that held them down (closely resembling the more viscous portions of the La Brea tar pits), I’d say our old laundry room tiles were laid in the late Cretaceous Era. Enough time has passed so that the tiles had themselves mineralized, and had become one with the concrete.

So in the end I dragged out my trusty air hammer, put my biggest chisel bit in it (just one inch wide), and hammered off all 150 square feet of tile. Oh, my aching arms!

But it’s done. Debbie cleaned up while I hammered (which was a huge help), and we got it all done in just four hours. Now for the cleanup!