More Tomatoes

If you come to my house right now, you'll smell two things: sunscreen and garlic. The boys and I stayed at the pool as long as possible, and when we got home we were starving. As soon as I walked in the door I started cooking. There's a pile of cherry tomatoes on our counter that's been growing larger every day. And I can see more out there on the vines, ready to be picked; cherries, Romas, the works.  Makes a person a bit panicky. I'm happy to say that our indoor tomato pile just became a little sauce, simmering on the stove. This is a tomato sauce with the barest essentials: cherry tomatoes, garlic, basil and oregano, salt and pepper, crushed red pepper. (I've mentioned that my husband has a thing for peppers. He made the crushed red pepper with last year's batch of peppers.) I heated a pan, poured in some olive oil.  Just threw everything in at once. The result: a little taste of summertime.

We had a jar of Alfredo sauce too. I stirred this into the fusilli, and topped it off with the tomato sauce. Kind of Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade of me. But addictively good. An achievement for someone who  maybe got a little too much sun today. 

Tomato Sandwiches

I was plugging my digital camera into the side of my computer just now, and it reminded me of the scene in A Christmas Story where the dad goes to plug in his lamp, and there are so many cords. That's exactly how it looks. What the heck are they all for?

The friends we share our CSA box with went out of town this week, so we got the whole box to ourselves. It's quite the haul.

I've been celebrating the tomatoes with tomato sandwiches. I made basil mayonnaise: mayo, lemon juice, a bit of lemon peel, salt and pepper, a dash of Dijon mustard. And basil, of course. This has been my lunch every day this week.

And just in case you think I've run out of squash ideas, I have one more. I made this Summer Squash Gratin from 101 Cookbooks. I had stayed up way too late the night before, so I was struggling and every step of this recipe took twice as long as it should have. It turned out to be well worth the effort though.