Live & Kern

Sometimes I write things for St. Louis Public Radio. Here’s what I wrote this week.

• Missouri Botanical Garden horticulturists answer gardening questions
• St. Louis CPA warns of fraud, identifies big changes in tax code
• LeVar Burton asks what if, expands Reading Rainbow for a new generation
• Ferguson library director looks for new ways to serve community
• Children’s book shares plywood paintings from Ferguson
• Looking for summer activities for kids? A new website could help
• Go marathon will be grandmother’s 100th marathon
• Festival spotlights local students’ music compositions

That’s the end of my tenure at St. Louis Public Radio. It’s been fun.

I’m moving to Norfolk, Va., where I’ll be the digital news editor at the Virginian-Pilot.

I have too many tomatoes, so I came up with a tomato salad recipe tonight.

Tomato Salad

3 tomatoes, chopped
2 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
1/4 cup onion
1/2 cup croutons
6 slices of crispy bacon, crumbled
1/4 cup Italian dressing, or 1 tablespoon red-wine vinegar with 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon red-wine vinegar
1/2 cup shredded cheese

Slice, chop, crumble and mix it up.

Now I need to figure out what to do with too many zucchini squashes.

I came home with lots of fresh-from-the-garden produce last weekend. Here’s what (part of it) turned into. (Bonus: What salad isn’t better with bacon?)

7-layer salad

6 cups lettuce (or lettuce and spinach)
1/3 cup onion
1/3 cup sliced radishes
12 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 cup peas
1 to 1-1/2 cups salad dressing
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar or grated Parmesan cheese

In a large bowl, layer lettuce, onion, radishes, crumbled bacon and peas. Top with salad dressing (I used Caesar dressing, but do whatever you like), spreading it to cover the peas and touch the edge of the bowl. Sprinkle cheese to the top. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate the salad for at least two hours. Toss before serving, if desired.

When I was at my mother’s last weekend (pre-roller coaster ride), we picked and picked and picked and picked green beans. This wasn’t the first time, by any means. I brought home about half of the bounty — snapped, there was one-and-a-half gallon-size Ziploc bags of green beans.

That’s a lot of green beans. They’re fantastic steamed with a little garlic salt and pepper.

I have been assured that when I got back next weekend (when, hopefully, I will have a car to pick up. Or a progress report of some sort.), there will be just as many.

Plus sweet corn.

And zucchini. (I don’t do zucchini.)

And some maybe tomatoes.

Mom’s (very big) garden has cut down on my summer grocery bill, for sure. Now if she could only get that bacon to come up at the same time the tomatoes are ripe …