Jim is having an exceptionally bountiful tomato harvest this summer, despite the long, hot periods without rain followed by drenching downpours—or maybe because of the weather. With tomatoes, it can be hard to tell.
Whatever the reasons, we are enjoying big, juicy red tomatoes in salads, on burgers, in BLTs, and on white bread with mayo, of course, our favorite summer lunchtime treat. We keep a small colander on the kitchen counter filled with cherry tomatoes to snack on throughout the day, and I roast San Marzanos with peppers and carrots to freeze for winter soups and sauces. We give a lot of tomatoes away, too.
I think of the tomato as the unofficial emblem of summer, just waiting to be picked and eaten warm from the garden. Jim grows them because homegrown is so much better than store-bought, even though sometimes the growing is a lot of work, and the harvest isn’t always successful. Every home gardener has faced the despair of sparse flowering, poor fruit set, blossom-end rot, cra...