It’s amazing how quickly the garden landscape and the contents of the days harvest change as the summer rolls on. For a gardening cook, that provides half the fun, and most of the challenge. July has been tomato month for us, a veritable flood of toms to share and cook with. We’ve dug out every tried and true tomato recipe and solicited new ones from all sources. But the vines are looking sorta sad right now (possibly the tomato blight that’s been running through our area) and I suspect by mid-August we’ll be down to a trickle. So it goes.

Thankfully, I over-planted basil this year, and it has a particular affinity for tomato dishes. Bruchetta in it’s many variations, fresh tomato pie (a new one for us I pulled off the internet, with salted tomato slices layered in a crust with chives, topped with a mayo, basil and shredded cheese coating and baked – really good!) and basil pesto slathered on tomato slices justified all the watering and pampering of those basil plants.

I also over-planted parsley, and that’s been a nice herb to have an excess off too. Parsley is such a mild and pleasant herb, it’s almost impossible to add too much, so handfuls of chopped parsley have gone into quiche, crumb coatings for meat, and my famed stewed okra, corn and tomatoes dish (which is still good even if you omit the bacon fat). I just took some excess grilled chicken from last week, that may have been a tad too dry to reheat for dinner, but chopped fine and mixed with mayo will be a very nice chicken salad tomorrow at lunch. Some chopped onion, pepper and water chestnut will add texture, but the parsley and tarragon will provide the driving flavor.

The high heat of summer has brought us ripe tomatoes, but also turned the spring lettuce bitter and some of the herbs scraggly. The cilantro in particular is on it’s way out, and new seedlings need to be started. While the getting is still good, I’ve made use of the cilantro to flavor a very simple fresh salsa, a summertime favorite of ours. Chop and mix tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, onion and the cilantro and salt to taste. It’s better after chilling in the fridge a while.

We don’t make much use of dill, which is also trying to go to seed, but recently ran across a recipe to provide some variety with all the cherry tomatoes we’re currently harvesting. Sugar and salt are dissolved in watered down vinegar, flavored with ginger, lemon and the dill, and the cherry toms are pierced before soaking in the liquid for a while. It made a nice change, although, as my wife said, it’s hard to beat a bowl of just plain fresh picked cherry tomatoes.