A Tomato Summer

This summer has gone down in my record book as the winner for the one with the most sunny days and temperatures above 75.  It's what I call a "tomato summer"--a summer when the days and nights are warm enough to produce truly vine-ripened tomatoes bursting with the kind of flavor I remember from my childhood back East.  If you've never had a ripe tomato fresh off the vine in New Jersey, where all that heat and humidity produces heaven in a red, round vessel of bliss, it might be worth the airfare to give it a try!  I digress.  

Yesterday I visited Joe's Garden, our local organic farm which I wrote about here to pick up the week's worth of veggies for dinner.  

They were reasonably priced and at the peak of their flavor.  

Jessi and Josh have joined a co-operative farm where the put in "sweat equity" in exchange for unlimited fresh vegetables and fruit all summer long.  We stopped by there when I was visiting her last week

We picked some blackberries and  raspberries and then filled two shopping bags with tomatoes, lettuce, beans, potatoes, zucchini, rhubarb, kale, corn, carrots and herbs and then walked out...without paying anything!  Now that's my kind of shopping!