Summers have always been my favorite time of year.
Granted, I was rarely home during summers as a kid (we were either in Jersey or on a camping/road trip- I’ve been to 45 states and we drove to most of them…). However, whenever I was home, I was normally joined at the hip with my best friend, who lived on the other side of the street plus one house away.
One day, she came up with a winning game- Barbie Bungee Jumping. We would tie a Barbie to a piece of yarn and throw her down the laundry chute, only to jerk the string at the end so she bounced back up.
I should probably note that neither one of us played with Barbies. Instead, we terrorized her younger half sister (I don’t know why she was always the target, but she was) and stole her Barbies instead.
I then came up with an even better addition- we should head over to my parents’ house to do this, since my parents had a second story porch deck- that way we could watch Barbie fall!
We then packed up the Barbies and the yarn and headed over to my house, grabbed my two younger brothers (who were often in on terrorizing her younger sister, too), and made multiple Barbies bungee jump for the next hour. I’m not sure why it was so enthralling to throw a Barbie over the porch railing and jerk the string up so she didn’t hit the ground, but it was. (I do promise that Barbies are the only thing that I have thrown with a chance of injury.)
A few days later, her sister noted that one of her Barbies had a leg that no longer seemed to fit quite right…and another with a broken beaded outfit.
There might have been some issues with the yarn breaking or coming untied mid-jump, causing Barbies to crash onto my neighbors’ driveway, but you never heard that from me. 😉
No Injury Required Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
I never ate tomatoes as a kid until my best friend made me eat them in middle school…raw with TONS of salt
Ingredients
- 1 container grape tomatoes
- 3 cloves garlic, whole
- Olive oil spray
- Salt
- Pepper
- Oregano
How-to
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Place the tomatoes and garlic cloves into an 8×8 in baking dish. Spray with olive oil, then toss with salt, pepper, and a sprinkling of oregano.
- Roast for 20-30 minutes or until tomatoes and garlic are nice and soft.
Serve as a side dish. Toss with pasta and chicken for an easy meal. Mix with ciligine mozzarella and some fresh basil for a different take on caprese salad.
domestic diva, M.D. 
I like how you mix up entertaining stories with tasty recipes (am a veggie and have tried a couple of your veg recipes like the one above). Keep up the unique writing style 🙂
Thanks! I used to be a vegetarian myself and I still eat a lot of vegetarian meals.
That sounds delicious…. for a second there I thought baking a barbie would come into play 🙂
I didn’t like to torture things that much 😉
I did play with Barbies, however, I thought I was the community hair dresser and would chop off most of the hair from my sisters’ Barbies or their other dolls. My Superstar Barbie kept her long golden locks in tact though. I’m surprised they never retaliated. {The tomatoes sound yummy…}
We used to soak my sister’s Cabbage Patch Dolls in water and hurl them high into the air and they’d come down and hit the street with a splat and splash water everywhere. This was like 20 years ago and she still brings it up.
I really do enjoy roasted cherry tomatoes. The roasting adds such a great flavor to them and it’s the main reason I have at least one cherry tomato plant every Summer.
Poor Barbie, and poor sister! My own doll was ruined by my younger brother stamping my parent’s business stamp all over her in indelible ink. I don’t think I’ve ever quite forgiven him! 🙂
The tomato recipe looks delicious. I’ll have to try that.
Sounds like an excellent game 😉 (and an excellent recipe of course!)
Funny story about the bungee jumping Barbies. Mattel has to consider that idea! I have four brothers so car games would fascinate me. I had a Barbie when I was ten but I would play hit and run with remote controlled jeeps.
I only started eating tomatoes when I was in college! They didn’t have a good impression on me when I was younger, I guess. 😀
The tomatoes sound great, but you just gave me a laugh because I remember doing the same thing as a kid. Instead of Barbies, however, we used our stuffed Troll Dolls. We’d use a jump rope to hang them from the 2nd story bannister that overlooked the entryway of our house. We’d throw them and pull them up, or go downstairs and just swing them back and forth. Like you, I have no idea why we thought this was such an innovative and captivating game.
The recipe sound great. We’ve done something similar with sausage on top and thyme instead of oregano. I’ll give yours a shot sometime soon. About the Barbie owner; with two girls and two boys singling her out for torture, how much black did she wear in high school and was the inevitable poetry any good?
She actually emerged goth- and poetry-free. Surprising, I know 😉
Love your story. The imagination of kids is incredible! My friend and I did hamster olympics, although there was no harm involved!
Know I understand what I missed – when I never had a Barbie. *smile
The tomatoes easy and looking taste – something for the lamb rack this weekend.
I never had a Barbie (my mother was a dyed-in-the-wool 1960s/70s feminist), but if I had, I probably would have been at the front of the line for dropping her from high places! Thanks for sharing.
I’ll bet this would also be good spread over a split and broiler-toasted baguette—almost bruscetta style, if you catch my drift.
Definitely! I’ve done that before and it’s delicious.
Your tomatoes look amazing, but what really pulled me in was your Bungee jumping Barbie story! I’m actually doing an experiment in my physics class doing that same exact thing. Haha I’m doing it as part of my grade and not to terrorize any little siblings, but hey! It’s still been fun so far. 🙂
So glad it was an inanimate object! Hoping you weren’t going to graduate to gerbils or something!
Lovely post – I wasn’t quite as sophisticated and had a habit of just chucking eggs over the balcony. Extremely satisfying for a kid when you live on the 23rd floor 🙂
I love tomatoes, and your story reminds me of when my ex-husband would take my little brother out into the drive way and they would take an old GI Joe jeep and tie a barbie on top and either fling through the hills, or they would try and put a firecracker on the end to see how far it would go….fun times…
I should try this because I myself am not a tomatoes type of person. Thanks for the recipe.
Tomato recipe sounds great! I will be trying it…thanks for sharing!
I have always loved tomatoes and our family, including my kids, eat them raw straight out of the garden. There so much better than the store bought ones. But grape tomatoes have never been that appealing to me, and the package contains far more than I need for the occasion side salad. But I will have to give this recipe a try, roasting them would definitely make them more flavorable…by the way love the end of the Barbie story…keep up the light humor!
I used to play bunjee jumping with my Barbies too!!! and the peg basket used to be a sort of outdoor lift too !! 😀 this recipe looks delicious, especially with pasta as you said!
Yumm! Love it…
Haha that’s one funny story, I used to love cutting all of barbies hair off for fun, I got into stupid fights for that!!
Barbie Bunjee jumping?? Sounds like one wild game!! Hilarious. But then, Barbies are meant to be hurled off a cliff. I mean…because they are so damn perfect and all.
I tried your recipe for the roasted grape tomatoes Sunday night, and the tomatoes were a nice complement to my grilled chicken dinner. So I pressed this to my new wordpress blog: myroadtohealthyredemption.wordpress.com. May also pick up some more of your recipes in the future.