Tomato salad days

Finally, my tomatoes have started to come in, even if so far it’s only the Sweet 100s. Yes, you read that right. Here it is the first week in August and my cherry tomatoes are just getting ripe. Well, the Early Girls have started to show some color as well, so I guess that’s something.

I suppose when you live close to the coast there is a trade-off you have to pay for all of those 65-degree evenings, but I didn’t really expect it to be this drastic. After years of struggling to ripen my favorite heirloom tomatoes -- Cherokees, Black Krims, Brandywines (oh, Brandywines!) -- this year I gave up and went strictly with early-ripening commercial varieties. But there really hasn’t been that much of an improvement. If I was going to have to slum, I just wish I’d been more successful at it. Next year it’ll probably be back to the heirlooms; at least then when my tomatoes don’t ripen, I’ll have some fancy names to drop.

But isn’t that just like a gardener to get ripe home-grown tomatoes and turn it into one long whine? C’mon, really: Sweet 100s, halved to let the juice run and dressed with red wine vinegar and good olive oil, fresh burrata cheese cut in thick slices and pungent basil leaves torn over top. I’d have to be a heel to complain.

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