I love eating in the summer.
(In complete honesty, I love eating all year round. You don’t get the hips I have without a strong, multi-seasonal commitment to food.)
But in the summer, food just tastes better. There are homegrown tomatoes and corn on the cob that was harvested five hours before I cook it. I have fresh basil in my garden, there are raspberries we pick in the early morning before the sun becomes too hot, and our friend gives us gorgeous little heads of broccoli from her mother’s garden.
Once you eat a tomato still warm from the sun, or an ear of sweet corn that was growing in a field only a few hours before you cook it, it is impossible to go back to the bland, available-any-time-of-the-year, grocery store varieties. So I don’t. We only eat tomatoes and corn on the cob in the summer. I’d rather gorge myself on the real deal for a few months out of the year than go back to eating sub-par products year round.
All of this means that lately we’ve been eating tomatoes every single day. Our plan is to gorge ourselves on them and about the time we’re completely sick of tomatoes and never want to see another one again, it will be fall and tomato season will be over.
(My oldest daughter would like me to tell you that she’s already tomatoed out and if you could please send her an apple or orange, she would be extremely thankful.)
Here are my two favorite things to do with tomatoes:
Homemade caprese salad. I grew the tomatoes and basil myself and then I took it one step further and made my own mozzarella cheese. (It takes 25 minutes to make your own mozzarella, and it is worth every. single. second. This cheese making kit here makes it easy-peasy lemon squeezy.) Additionally, this dish tastes even better when you have a seven year old who tries to say “caprese salad” in an Italian accent whenever you make it for dinner. I’m not sure why that is.
Homemade tomato and corn salad, which I love with all my middle aged heart. I have been known to have intense cravings for this simple dish in January when the snow blows and the temperatures drop. The recipe couldn’t be easier. Some chopped tomatoes, with all their delicious, tomatoey juice, leftover cooked corn cut off the cob, chopped up onions (any kind), lime juice, salt and pepper to taste, and cilantro- if you’re lucky enough to not live with the cilantro police. My kids won’t eat this unless I leave it out. They are real cilantro buzz kills.
So there you have it, my favorite ways to eat tomatoes.
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Why are you still here? Go! Eat tomatoes like the wind! Viva la tomate!
