One of the things that I truly cherish about a vegan lifestyle is the overwhelming awareness of food, its role in people’s lives and, most importantly, where it comes from.

Now, this is not to say that you simply must be a vegan, a vegetarian or have other dietary restrictions in order to have an appreciation for the origins of your victuals. There are plenty of people out there who subscribe to nothing more than a joyful investigation of the starting point of the items that end up on their plates. That in and of itself can inform the way you make your food choices. But this isn’t their blog. It’s mine, so you’re going to listen to me wax philosophic about my garden for a while.

Or not. It’s still a free country.

This year was the very first year I had the opportunity to plant my own garden. I’d always been interested in it, in an “I wonder what will happen if I put this seed in some dirt?” kind of way. But up until this point in my life, I’d always lived in apartment buildings with not so much as a porch on which to grow a tomato plant. The best I was ever able to do was some windowsill herbs (which my cat ate without abandon, resulting in some pretty intense kitty morning breath).

Then, I had the opportunity to rent a house. Not a condo. Not a big apartment with a porch. An actual house. With a yard. A big yard. So once the days started to get a little bit longer and the weather wasn’t quite so terribly frigid, I eagerly started planning my very first vegetable garden. And let me tell you, dear reader. I had high hopes.

I used a website I StumbledUpon called Smart Gardener. If you’ve never done a garden before, I highly suggest this website. You basically fill in all your information for your area of the world, what you want to grow and how much space you have. Then Smart Gardener lays out your garden plots for you and sends you weekly updates about what you need to be doing for your garden (plant this, transfer that, harvest those). I haven’t had it this easy since naptime was a given.

So with visions of bounty dancing in my head, I started to imagine my ideal garden. I eventually ended up planting red onions, yellow onions, shallots, garlic, lettuce, peppers, sugar snap peas, carrots, tomatoes and broccoli. And, one by one, I watched them all die. The pepper plants succumbed to my eagerness to watch my babies grow that was so overwhelming, I put several things in the ground when they were simply not ready. My black krim tomatoes were brutally murdered by an unexpected frost. I can’t even tell you what happened to my broccoli, but now it’s approximately 5 feet tall and has pretty white flowers all over it. And my poor, glorious sugar snap peas, which formed a lush green fence all down one 8-foot side of one of my raised beds, turned to a dry brown sheet one hydration-deprived weekend while I was out of town. I was ready to turn in my gardening clogs.

However, somehow, my beefsteak tomatoes survived. The one plant that I had been told would give me the most heartache, be the most persnickety to take care of and probably yield nothing, has been my saving grace this gardening season. If it weren’t for these brave little dudes, I’d rip up those beds tomorrow and replace them with a Slip ‘N Slide.

But every day when I come home and I pull into my driveway, those tomato plants greet me. They say “Welcome home! We were growing and getting ripe for you all day! Come see!” I track their growth and change in color the same way a parent marks new heights on the doorjamb on each child’s birthday. And this is the difference, my friends. Going to the local grocery store and picking up mealy, watery tomatoes in the dead of winter kills a little bit of your soul, whether you realize it or not. Your body doesn’t want any part of that. Not the sub-par nutritional content, not the lackluster taste and certainly not the disconnect between the season you should be eating in and the season you’re trying to eat in. But when you plant and tend something with your own hands, watch it grow, fret about it, see it blossom and know that you’ve done something that links you to your very most ancient ancestors, even to the earth itself, that tastes pretty damned good.

So I had a couple of nice, red ripe babies on the vine the other day that were just aching to be put to good use. Accordingly, I chopped them up, covered them in garlic and smeared them on toasted bread!

Garden Fresh Tomato Bruschetta

(I’m telling you, if you use out-of-season tomatoes in this dish, you are going to hate yourself and your choices and your life for the rest of your time on this earth. The tomatoes are the star here. Don’t give your mouth a B-list hack. You deserve Oscar winners, all the way.)

• 2 – 3 ripe tomatoes in season (heirlooms if you have/can get them)

• 3 – 4 cloves crushed garlic (use powder if you must)

• 1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

• 1/4 tsp sea salt

• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil (God save your soul if you use dried)

• Oil of your choice

• 3 – 4 pieces of good, crusty bread

– Dice tomatoes into 1/4 – 1/2 inch pieces (getting rid of as many of the seeds as you can in the process)

– Combine diced tomatoes in a bowl with garlic, pepper, salt, basil and 1 tbsp oil. Mix gently, so as not to crush tomatoes

– While you let the tomatoes luxuriate in their garlic and basil bath, spread one side of each piece of bread with the oil you chose (I used a garlic-infused oil for extra kiss-me-breath goodness). Toast the bread in a toaster oven on high for approximately 4 – 5 minutes

– Remove bread from toaster, top with heaping spoonfuls of tomato mixture and return to toaster over on high for another 1 – 2 minutes.

– Impress your guests with your casual culinary prowess or, do like I did, and stuff your face in the most attractive manner possible.