As I write this, I am days from leaving… yet when this posts goes live I will have been gone for a few weeks.

We (family of four) packed up our lives and [when you read this] are cycling across the Netherlands, parts of Belgium, a smidgen of Germany and into Paris. We made the big decision to go for a year abroad, to check out of our American lives to interject a year of adventure with our two [junior high] sons.

After a summer of cycling, a visit to London, and a week-long soccer camp, we will fly to Florence, Italy, and take up residence for the school year. Officially I will have an ex-pat blog! Notes from me to you will be parlo di pomodori (aka ‘talk of tomatoes’).

My blogging may be a little inconsistent for the next two months, because I will be writing in multiple venues. First and foremost, we have launched a family blog to capture our adventures. You are welcome to stop by or follow our frenzy at www.familyfrolics.com. And [hopefully] along the way there will be chunks of time that I can spend working on a book. Something I have always meant to do.

And much like this blog, culinary school, and our trip abroad, writing a book falls under my ever-widening umbrella that reads “things I want to do in my life” AND “seize the day” AND “I only have one chance at this life and want to make it count.”

Much of our trip is about capturing moments, stalling time and soaking up our rapidly growing boys (ages 12, 13). In that vein let me leave you this quote to ponder (passed along from someone wise):

“The days are long but the years are short.”

Stay tuned, talk of tomatoes will include tales from the road and will turn even juicier when we land in Florence come end of August. In the meantime, feel free to stop by our already bursting family blog: Family Frolics. As for now, I hope you are enjoying your summer, that it is filled with fabulous food and cooking, friends and sun on your faces. More soon…

It has taken me a few weeks time to muster up the courage to write about this very book. For no other reason than the fact that it is my blog’s namesake. It is like commenting on fashion after reading the annals of Vogue, or sharing your thoughts on politics to the nearest, listening governor. Even better, it is being a backseat driver (we are talking caboose) or being a sideline parent yelling recommendations to the referee, from his/her ideally angled position.

This book is called the Heirloom Tomato. Author Amy Goldman wrote two similar books on melons and squash; both of which were front and center in Martha Stewart magazine. She is guru to tomato, and this book includes no less than a scientific, historic and neighborly description of 250 tomato varieties. The photos are museum quality, mountable to my every wall (oooh, I like that idea: tomato pictures on my every wall). The photos by Victor Schrager reflect his talent and serve justice to all tomatoes involved.

Can I even be unbiased? If I were to pick a coffee table book out of 200 of the most impressive, I would be magnetized to this one, and all of its tomato love. My biases aside, author Amy Goldman can be credited with giving tomatoes their due. She champions them, preserves their seeds, documents and scientifically defines them. Over half the pages in the book archive countless varieties—each with a cover-worthy photo. But then she does not leave us hanging: she touches on the importance of biodiversity, shares her gardening methods and provides a mound of recipes to round out this tribute to tomatoes.

I named my blog as an example of a food that I found intriguing and versatile. But cooking and growing tomatoes myself, and seeing—and reading about—the dedication of someone like Amy Goldman, makes me fall in love with my blog’s namesake all the more.

It cheers me to have this book displayed in my home. It cheers me to know I have cherry tomatoes outside, basking in the sun. It makes my heart swell with happiness to think of the jars of roasted tomatoes I have in the refrigerator and the frozen, homemade tomato sauce I have stored in the freezer. Tomatoes add much to my life: and it satisfies my soul to know someone cares enough to carefully cull seeds from massive amounts of tomatoes, to save them from oblivion. Tomato seeds are being saved in a vault; tomatoes are here to stay.

I cannot wait to make her recipe for creamy tomato soup, baked black cod with tomato butter, tomato chips and the Thai tomato cocktail. And you will know when I do, because I will be talking of tomatoes—literally.

A few highlights from The Heirloom Tomato:

• You will appreciate the importance of crop diversity, and will wish you could taste beyond the grocery store variety. You may decide to frequent more Farmer Markets, or order your own tomato seeds.
• This book is fitting for agricultural historians, casual and master gardeners, cooks and coffee table owners.
• Tomatoes are documented by: size and weight, shape, color, soluble solids (Brix ratings to determine sweetness), flavor, texture and best uses, plant habit and leaf type, yield, maturity, origin, synonyms, and seed sourcing.
• Vegetable MD Online was regularly offered by Goldman, as a resource for gardeners.
• Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsavers.org) is a brilliant resource for ordering your own heirloom seeds.
• You will learn how to grow—and save—pure tomato varietals; Goldman provides step by step instructions for seed processing.
• Tomatoes in all their historical glory, offer over 5000 cultivated varieties; Amy trialed more than a thousand, many of them twice to validate her results.  In this book you will find 250 gems.
• A cool place to buy cookbooks, including this one: ecookbooks.
• Click here for a list of articles about Amy Goldman.
• Click here for the Martha Stewart article on The Heirloom Tomato.

You know I love talking about tomatoes—and I could go on and on—but I seriously need to go outside and water my own humble tomatoes.