Thomas,

I can so relate to your post.  I am Italian and was raised in a home where we didn’t “Eat to Live” we “Lived to Eat”.  Every tableside conversation almost always included what are we having to eat at the next meal.  Your post made me a little sad remembering all the good times when we all lived in the same city.

To my Mom Love was food whether you were making it or sharing what you had with someone else.  Our lives focused around food.  The refrigerators and freezers (yes plural) were always packed with food regardless a holiday or any given day of the week.  Mom had two kitchens one up and one down.  The messy foods were prepared in the basement kitchen to reduce the mess.

Mom made everything from scratch.  Just yesterday my sister and I were joking about how my Mom had a long-standing disagreement with her sister-in-law over whether you used regular potatoes or instant potatoes to make Gnocchi.  My Mom did nothing by mix, it’s how she was raised, and she passed that on to the three of us.  My older sister and I love to cook and my little sister not so much. She is more of a career girl so didn’t care much for the kitchen.

It’s beginning to feel like this virus has started to rekindle some of those old family traditions.  I know we are cooking almost every meal and I love it.  We might order out once a week or so but other than that everything is home cooked and I love it.

Thanks for your post.

Very nice!  The planter with the herbs resembles the hanging pots my FWB and I purchased at Lowe's last week.  He has beautified his 4-plex with predominantly tropical and fragrant plants, some of which are huge specimens.  We harvested a single fruit from his Monstera deliciosa recently and it was, as the name suggests, delicious!  There's another one coming, but they take a year to ripen so it'll be a while before it's edible.  He's lucky that his landlord (a friend of mine) has allowed him to use parts of the driveway and parking area for his plants, some of which are in huge pots.

I'm not so sure how well the apple tree will do in a pot, and in L.A.  Apples need a certain number of hours of winter chill in order to produce a good crop, but it's worth a try.  If I lived in L.A. I'd have a cherimoya tree for sure, and lots of lush tropical ornamentals.   I currently have a fig in a pot, which was a cutting taken from a friend's tree.  I hate the black "Mission" figs, but these taste more like berries.  They're almost ripe.  If they taste as good as what her tree produces, I'll find a place for this tree in the ground.

Darryl, I have friends who some 20 or so years ago bought (back in the day it would have been through mail order I'm sure) a slim apple tree that was genetically designed for a patio or balcony container.  It never produced, even after they bought a house with a yard and put it in the ground.  They're moving north to Oregon next month and leaving its sad stunted self behind.  Assuming yours is a standard variety, you have a much better chance of seeing it bear apples than my friends did with theirs.

Best of luck to both of you, and this is just the start.  I'm amazed at what my FWB has been able to pack together in the limited space he has.