Caitlin Flanagan Hoe-down

So the recent skewering of Caitlin Flanagan for her The Atlantic article "Cultivating Failure" on nearly every garden blog, including Garden Rant got me looking more into this lady and here is further info on the woman if you are interested in where she comes from.

I'm not a fan of anything in excess or overzealousness of any sort if it involves the lives of people and their futures, this including centering an education COMPLETELY around a garden (which I can only assume Ms. Flanagan is dramatising in her article), but she sounds like a bit of a ninny to me.

I always wished for a school garden growing up, when I lived with my parents' at their house and was thrilled to have one when I got my own property.
You can't force parents to have a garden,  but you can legitimately call gardens an educational tool, if not in the best subject: health, I think gardens are a great tool to combat obesity in America's children and an excellent way to allow kids to know how your food works and damn, it really makes vegetables more fun to eat to see how it grows.
But as I am a little flighty here, I was struck by Garden Rant emphasizing Flangan saying "let them eat tarte tatin" and then Garden Rant exclaiming, "Let the kids eat tarte tatin!  Make sure to let all the kids have a bite!"

I  thought to myself,"What is tarte tatin?"

Because, if it involves the delicious, I am there. 

This is where things get a little stupid(er) and soon thereafter I was flipping through my super awesome Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book  (thankyouthankyouthankyou Mother Earth News for alerting me to this publication and for posting the recipes online for so long until I caved in and bough the book!) and saw an Aubergine Tartine recipe.

Husband and I just bought a boatload of cheap eggplant recently from our Jungle Jim's expedition earlier and had to use it like mad, so I thought, tarte tatin =tartine...?

And made this lovely creation:

Homemade baguette with hand roasted aubergine (eggplant), hand roasted red peppers, home grown garlic still leftover from mid last year roasted to nutty perfection, winter garden mustard greens, manager special Kroger Camembert cheese ($2!), and a few unrolled anchovies from a can (78 cents, hey, we needed to use them!)

Mwah! C'est Magnifique!

But yeah, later further investigation shows that Tarte Tatin is not Tartine. 

Whoops.  Tricksy French.

Ah well, I'm sure the kids would rather eat tarte tatin than tartine and tarte tatin will just be another food adventure for another day for me.

Viva la jardin!