We are suddenly overwhelmed by the burgeoning of our half dozen tomato plants. We planted them early in May in the raised garden bed on the side of the house, where they would get lots of afternoon sun. We also planted a row of zinnia seedlings in the front, and another line of hollyhocks behind them, thinking the hollyhocks would provide a colorful background wall, planning ahead for my Instagram feed. We hadn’t planned on Nature running its own headstrong course.

Because of the serendipity of a week of rain, good soil, an attentive neighbor who watered when we were out of town, and a practically weedless growing environment, the tomatoes and the flowers are now enormous. In the two months since they were planted, the tomatoes have spread their wings and fully occupied the small enclosed space. There seems to be competition among the plants to see which can grown the tallest first.

And then there are the tomatoes. The tomatoes are coming in waves. In spurts, in drips, in rivulets, and in quick succession. I promise you, all I did was go out and coo at them a couple of times a week, and now they are the sorcerer’s apprentice of fruit. We have a bowl full of crimson orbs on the kitchen counter, another six or seven resting on the window sill as they ripen, and a bulging paper bag waiting to be delivered next door.

I thought we overplanted last year, when we had tomatoes, beans, peppers and basil all elbowing for space. This year the basil farm lives on the back porch, and we gave up on peppers and beans altogether. The tomatoes are rushing to the sea. The tomato cages are listing under their weight. Now it is time to get practical in the kitchen.

Yesterday I had my first tomato sandwich of the season, thinking fondly of Harriet M. Welsch, (a.k.a Harriet the Spy) the eleven-year-old snoop and scribe who carried a tomato sandwich to school every day. Living below the Mason Dixon Line as I do, I am supposed to slather on the Duke’s mayonnaise – but Hellmann’s is what was on hand. I dusted the slices of juicy tomato with a little Maldon salt and some black pepper and enclosed all that deliciousness between two slices of Pepperidge Farm bread. The result: nectar of the gods. And today I will repeat the process. But that only uses up one tomato. I need to think exponentially.

The eager beavers at Food52 have gone a wee bit overboard, I think, with their tomato sandwich variations: https://food52.com/blog/17722-the-be-all-end-all-tomato-sandwich-4-ways-we-couldn-t-leave-it-alone/

Thursday night we had Tomato Pie.
https://www.southernliving.com/recipes/heirloom-tomato-pie/

https://www.saveur.com/southern-tomato-pie-recipe/

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/228381/summer-tomato-pie/

On Friday night, which is Pizza Night, we will be grilling some Big Love Pizzas. The dough is rising in a big bowl, and there is plenty of basil wafting in the breeze on the back porch.

Big Love Pizzas


1 pound tomatoes, you can eyeball this, depending on how many people you are feeding – because if you need more, you know where to go.
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 cups grated mozzarella

Pizza dough
Flour, for dusting
2 bunches of fresh basil leaves, torn
Pepperoni
Garlic – at least 1 clove for each pie

Seed and chop tomatoes

Oil and then heat up the grill – we used a gas grill which has 3 bars, using the 2 outside bars. The fire is medium-hot when you can hold your hand 5 inches above rack for 3 to 4 seconds. We lowered the heat once the dough was on the grill.

Divide the pizza dough into 2 and roll it out.
Oil the side that goes on the grill.
Toss with care onto the grill.
Grill for 2 to 3 minutes and then flip with tongs.
Cover the cooked surface with tomatoes, garlic, pepperoni and mozzarella, drizzling it with a little oil.

Close the top of the grill to let the cheese melt.
The dough will rise, and when you start to smell burnt bread it is time to take it off the grill, about 3 minutes.

Add the roughly chopped basil just before serving.

Experience matters. We discovered that it is easier to combine the oil and garlic and tomatoes in a bowl first and then distribute that mixture on the pie. Lots of burned fingers resulted when putting all the ingredients on by hand.

And since it is Friday night, a celebratory glass of wine, please.

Don’t forget you can always whip up a batch of bruschetta, or make a panzanella salad, too. https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/classic-panzanella-393403.

We seem to have made an initial dent in our ever-growing stash of tomatoes. It looks like it is going to be a nice, long summer of fine eating.

“In this world of uncertainty and woe, one thing remains unchanged: Fresh, canned, pureed, dried, salted, sliced, and served with sugar and cream, or pressed into juice, the tomato is reliable, friendly, and delicious. We would be nothing without it.”
– Laurie Colwin

It’s time to claim your fair share of the back seat. Clamber in, and be ready for quality family time. You are going to get along with your brother and no, you cannot roll the window down again. It is too stinking hot. We will get there when we get there, and not a moment sooner. Did you go to the bathroom? Do you have a book from your summer reading list? Batteries charged? Let’s go!

When I was a child we seemed to spend every summer driving up and down the eastern seaboard visiting Civil War battlefields. My father was an elementary school teacher, and had the summers off, and we were his malleable minds. Every moment was a teaching opportunity. We were grist for his mill. The best time he has was spent at the dining room table, unfurling the AAA map, plotting our routes, and showing us everything that we would be seeing. He would have loved Google Maps!

My mother was a complete bluestocking. Everything one needs to know could be learned from reading a book. Somewhere she had developed a romantic notion that picnic lunches were homemade fried chicken, hard boiled eggs and brownies, with Dixie cups of lemonade from the Skotch Kooler to wash it all down. The lunch was best when packed in shoe boxes, everything wrapped in crinkly, unmanageable waxed paper. The March girls must have had a fried chicken picnic luncheon with the Lawrence boy once, passing little paper twists of salt and pepper for the eggs. I haven’t been able to find the literary precedent. But that is what my mother thought was a good meal for a family vacation.

But when you were driving to Gettysburg from Connecticut, the brownie was gone before you reached New Jersey. The waxed paper was probably tasting delicious along about Princeton. We couldn’t pull off the interstate into a handy dandy McDonald’s then. The closest we came to fast food was an elegant evening meal at a Howard Johnson’s. Ah. Peppermint stick ice cream. Divine.

My own children fared a little better. They had McDonald’s. And an obsessive compulsive mother who loved all those cute little carcinogenic plastic boxes for Cheerios, Capri Sun juice pouches, yogurt in tubes, string cheese sticks, apples, oranges and grapes. I must have been like Charlie Brown’s friend Pigpen, with a trail of plastic recyclables following us at all times.

Things have gotten better here in the twenty-first century. We now have adorable containers that won’t kill us – I am a big fan of stainless Bento boxes. Mom is laughing at me, for using nice, safe brown, waxed-paper bags. And the snack foods are better, and easier to assemble. I won’t be sweating away in an un-air conditioned kitchen, frying up a batch of homemade fried chicken the night before our trip, and I reluctantly toss those shoe boxes into the recycling bin instead of creatively repurposing them as adorable little lunch boxes. I still call the window seat, though.

To pack up in cunning containers:
Popcorn – pop your own for heaven’s sake
Protein bars – but I won’t tell if you toss in a couple of Snickers bars
Bananas – be sure to get rid of the peels ASAP! Nothing worse than old banana smell in your car!
Carrots – excellent nutrition, easy to hurl at your brother
Grapes – ditto
Peanut butter crackers – Ritz and Peter Pan, simplicity itself
Pistachios – get the red ones and see whose fingers get the most disgusting
Trail mix – you can do this yourself, too
https://food52.com/blog/22624-how-to-make-a-trail-mix
Pretzels
Cheerios – tried and true!
Slim Jims – you must have a disgusting boy in that car
Cheetos – because you are on vacation
Cookies – because you know you want some yourself
https://food52.com/recipes/78188-chewy-chocolate-chip-cookies
Reusable, leakproof water bottles – PBA free, of course

Civil War battlefield alternatives:
https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/8543

https://www.ourstate.com/local-landmark-the-worlds-largest-frying-pan/

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2006404_2006095_2006204,00.html

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2006404_2006095_2006026,00.html

https://www.littlethings.com/weird-roadside-attractions-america/6

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”
― Mark Twain

Drive carefully!

Here we are on the very first day of summer! It starts at 11:54 AM EDT today, Friday, June 21, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. Are you getting ready to celebrate? School is out, the summer reading list is varied and full of challenges and delights, the shady front porch beckons with its welcoming wicker chairs and the creaky glider. Tomorrow is Saturday, a day chock-full of potential. Who wants to sleep late when it is summer vacation, and the farmers’ markets are in full swing and in all their glory?

Some of you might be lucky enough to live just a stroll or a bike ride away from the market. We have to drive about ten minutes. Last week we decided to have a Saturday road trip, and we drove an hour to try out another town’s market. There is nothing like a little Saturday car ride, with NPR playing softly in the background, as we drove in the sunshine over bridges, past farms and miles of car dealerships, tooling through little towns and hamlets. After one stop for coffee and a Diet Coke, we arrived.

I don’t care if it is 8:30 in the morning, or 3:00 in the afternoon, those wretched kettle corn vendors always stop me in my tracks. Popcorn is such a miracle and a delight, and kettle corn is insidious and always irresistible. Here is my money, give me some fillings, please. This fool soon parted with her cash, and then had the necessary energy required to walk around the couple of dozen white tents nestled under a grove of large oak trees. In the tents were tempting fruits, vegetables, flowers, crafts, live geese and bunnies, organic eggs, jewelry, seafood, and coffees. There was even a live music performance, with a little family jug band: I bet holidays at their house are raucous and joyous events!

We wandered around for a while, saying hello to the many dogs who were behaving so nicely. I fear that Luke the wonder dog might have a little too much energy for such a public outing. The other dogs all seemed inured to the passing variety of people and dogs. There were few surprises for these farmers’ market habitués, as they tagged along with their yoga pants-clad people. An ancient, white-muzzled black lab waddled after its plump, madras shorts-wearing folks. A young springer spaniel struggled to contain himself on a short pink and green leash with its young Lilly Pulitzer family. A mutt (rather like Luke) was sartorial in a pink bandana; nothing makes a dog look more jaunty, I think.

Luke would have leapt at the opportunity to gambol with his fellow dogs, scarfing spilled kettle corn, hoovering up dropped sausage biscuits, and sniffing appreciatively at little girls who walked by with ice cream cones, held temptingly low to the ground. Poor thing. Don’t tell him what he missed.

We stood in one line that snaked out of a tent and around an oak tree for some ears of corn and heirloom tomatoes. Then we found the second longest line for some new potatoes. The farmer told us as he manipulated the digital scale and calculator that he had dug the potatoes on Thursday afternoon. Pretty amazing when there is no middle man! While waiting our turn to pay we admired some produce that was unusual for us – golden beets! Gorgeous! To describe them as jewel-like is not excessively florid.

And then we got in the car, hoping that it was time for Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, as we turned toward Luke and home. We could have saved a couple of hours and just buzzed over to the grocery store to make our produce purchases, but it was a worthwhile adventure to get out and meet the folks who raise and grow and dig our food. It was a sunny beginning to summer.

Now it’s your turn. Go out to your farmers’ market tomorrow and buy some kettle corn, some home-churned ice cream and some heirloom tomatoes. Pat some dogs. And maybe you’ll try one of these recipes for those beauteous golden beets. Happy summer!

https://food52.com/recipes/26822-roasted-golden-beets

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes-menus/our-unbeatable-beet-recipes-gallery

https://www.marthastewart.com/314119/golden-beet-salad

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald

I guess I was actually thinking about Barbara Fritchie. I am forgetting my fifth grade history lessons. Barbara Fritchie, was from Frederick, and the Whittier poem about her is from the Civil War. Betsy Ross, equally sentimentalized and linked to our nation’s flag, was from Philadelphia, where she sewed the first flag, the Stars and Stripes, in 1776. Or maybe 1777. History is a little vague about this Colonial American legend.Move to Trash

I remember reading a fifth grade-level bio about Betsy Ross, where she smartly showed George Washington (who came to her upholstery shop, to personally discuss the flag situation with her) the beauty and economy of motion required to make a five-pointed star, when he and Congress had wanted six-point stars. It was easy to trim a five-pointer out of fabric, which she demonstrated with aplomb. I suppose it is a daydream worthy of a hardworking seamstress. http://historicphiladelphia.org/betsy-ross-house/what-to-see/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw6IfoBRCiARIsAF6q06u-QI74ao7rqysARw6DSqRL6XLQhkQxM2mrbOAdTCxaQlEB2caAhkEaAt0BEALw_wcB

Flag Day commemorates the day that the United States adopted this flag design (maybe sewn by Betsy Ross – her grandchildren waited 100 years before making their claims on the flag’s origins) on June 14, 1777. In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed June 14 as Flag Day. And so it goes.

I have decorated our window boxes and the pots of unhappy geraniums on the front porch with lots of little American flags. I am waiting for the Fourth of July before I break out the bunting and flag swags. I am also waiting until the Fourth rolls around before I start to bake (or assemble) labor intensive flag-inspired dishes. I think Betsy Ross would agree with me – speed and efficiency are required. And so, instead, tonight Mr. Friday and I will indulge in a couple of Betsy Ross-inspired cocktails. But you might want to be a little splashier with your patriotic gestures, so here are a couple of red, white and blue recipes to get you started.

This first recipe is pretty easy, and colorful. But HUGE! If you are having a neighborhood Flag Day Fete it will be perfect. You can substitute whipped cream or vanilla pudding for the custard. Vanilla ice cream works, too. It all depends on what kind of Friday you have had. Simplify!

Betsy Ross’ Berries
INGREDIENTS
3 pints cleaned raspberries
3 pints cleaned blueberries
Creamy Custard Sauce

INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups milk
4 beaten eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In large saucepan, stir together sugar, cornstarch, sale and milk. Cook and stir over medium-high heat until mixture comes to a boil; stir and boil 1 minute. Remove from heat; stir a little cooked custard mixture into 4 beaten eggs; return eggs to saucepan; stir well to blend thoroughly. Stir in sour cream and vanilla; blend well. Remove custard to medium bowl, cover and refrigerate until serving. Makes 3 cups.

In large bowl, gently mix together both berries. Portion about 1/2-3/4 cup berries into individual serving dishes; top each serving with about 1/4 cup Creamy Custard Sauce. Makes 12-16 servings.

http://alfafarmers.org/local-flavor/recipe-results/search&keywords=creamy+custard+sauce/

Patriotic Angel Food Cake
https://aclassictwist.com/angel-food-cake-with-coconut-whipped-cream-and-berries/

The Classic Fourth of July Sheet Cake
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/flag-cake-recipe-1941624

Betsy Ross Burgers – of course!
https://www.farmergirlmeats.com/blog/recipes/post/betsy-ross-burgers

Our Flag Day option:
Betsy Ross Cocktail

2 ounces Cognac
3/4 ounce Ruby Port
1/2 ounce Grand Marnier
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Grated nutmeg, as garnish

Shake with ice.

Yumsters.

There is another cocktail recipe from Epicurious that calls for a raw egg yolk. Your call – but I am not inclined to try that one. https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/betsy-ross-200071

Betsy Ross (and Barbara Fritchie), we salute you!

‘“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,

But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman’s deed and word:

“Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.’

-John Greenleaf Whittier

Are you enjoying the bounty of spring vegetables and fruits? Are you rhapsodizing poetical as you cavort around the farmers’ market, gazing affectionately on new asparagus, young beans, tender strawberries and brilliant, jewel-like radishes? Have you found your way yet to the shrine of green garlic? You must search until you have achieved the bliss that comes with spring and young garlic.

There are some notable folk who do not enjoy garlic, and keep it off their menus and out of their kitchens, these poor sad, misguided creatures. The Queen, for one, cannot abide garlic. Which is why, perhaps, that at the grand state dinner at Buckingham Palace this week, this was the menu: steamed fillet of halibut with watercress mousse, asparagus spears and chervil sauce, followed by the meat course of Windsor lamb with herb stuffing, spring vegetables and a port sauce. There were no double cheeseburgers. There was no shrimp scampi. It looked as it it was delightfully bland mélange of locally raised meat and produce, without a trace amount of garlic.

Enjoy the tender, young green garlic while you can. It is deelightful. And it is not like the truculent garlic we depend on in the winter to get us through the long cold nights without Jon Snow. We need that strong, reassuring garlic in our spaghetti sauces and our beef bourguignons and garlic roasted pork chops with winter vegetables. We need heaps of garlic in the winter. But now, as we trip into summer, something lighter and more merry is in keeping. Something like the smell of onion grass when the lawn has just been mowed. Something ineffable, like the scent of warm tomatoes as you walk past the tomato patch, sneaking a peek at the burgeoning zinnias, whispering encouragement to the nascent sunflowers. We are not coping with the oppressing heat of summer just yet. Our dog still likes lying in a liquid puddle of buttery sunlight. We are enjoying the emergence of fireflies. Life is good.

I, for one, could live on this garlic bread. My apologies to Her Majesty. This is sheer genius. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inx8GlcdIOw

https://www.thekitchn.com/jump-into-spring-with-green-garlic-lets-try-something-new-218135

I expect that this recipe will send out plenty of scented warnings, so any errant Windor-Mountbattens who are wandering by my house will keep on their royal way: https://www.marthastewart.com/341743/pasta-with-three-kinds-of-garlic Thank you, Martha.

And in case you want to explore more garlic avenues all year long, here is a handy dandy garlic cheat sheet: https://food-hacks.wonderhowto.com/how-to/ultimate-garlic-cheat-sheet-which-type-garlic-goes-best-with-what-0156924/

“Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime…Please, treat your garlic with respect…Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screw top jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don’t deserve to eat garlic.”
― Anthony Bourdain