Once again, I’m getting better tomatoes than I deserve. I don’t water and don’t weed, and my garden is a jungle eight feet high. A disgrace, really. But I grow enough tomatoes from seedlings that despite the fact that half are rotten and some of the plants are so choked they don’t give me anything at all, we can have tomatoes for two meals a day for weeks on end until we are sick of them. Which hasn't happened yet. I'm in tomato bliss.

My favorite varieties this year are cuor de bue (ox heart, a big red one that really looks like an ox heart, pictured below and on the platter), from seeds mailed to me by my friend Ricki, and Blondkopfchen (blond-haired child, a little yellow tomato) from Tomatofest.com. (I just learned that TomatoFest also has cuor de bue, but calls them "oxheart.")