Low-tech: Tomatoes and Hops…

At The Digitante HQ, we don’t have a yard, but we do have a great deck on the back of our house. Last summer it was quite spartan: a camping grill and two tiny hops plants were the lone residents.

This summer had brought quite the change: a baby pool, an infrared grill, and 4 heirloom tomato plants have been added to the mix. Additionally, the two tiny hops plants have grown to a couple of massive beasts this year, already standing about 8 feet high.

Here are some fun facts about a couple of the new additions:

• Baby pool – It was free and cleaned well before first use as we were not the first owners.
• Heirloom tomatoes – The typical tomatoes that people eat – you know, the round red ones – are called hybrid tomatoes. They were specifically bred to be uniformly shaped because they were first made back in the late-1930s to ship over to Europe to feed the soldiers during WWII. While they are convenient, they lost most of their flavor and juiciness. Heirloom tomatoes are the original tomato. They are funny-shaped with their lumps and bumps. They are also extremely flavorful, juicy, and come in many colors including yellow, green, red, purple and everything in between. Check out some pictures.
• Infrared Grill – Most grills cook by using the burners to heat up the air then the hot air blows on the meat being cooked. As you can guess, this dries out the meat, taking away its flavor and juices. An infrared grill has a piece of metal in between the flames and the cooking grates. The flames heat this metal and it in turn radiates heat onto the meat, allowing it to retain its juices and also avoiding charing from flame ups caused by leaking grease. I am fairly convinced you would have to try pretty hard to mess up burgers on this thing. Its amazing. Your next grill MUST be an infrared.

So that is my low-tech life. Hopefully once those hops plants get finished producing their cones, I’ll have something to drink while soaking my feet in a pool and eating a burger with delicious tomatoes on it. Now excuse me while I update my twitter account…