Summer

My tomato plants are at peak production.  I have so many ripe fruit. We are eating tomatoes at every meal and enjoying fabulous sandwiches. Last night we enjoyed Bruschetta, and the diced-tomato-with-olive oil-herbs-garlic-and-salt topped toasts are a great way to consume several ounces of tomato per person.

Speaking of ounces, we grew a Yellow Brandywine that tipped the scale at just over 2 pounds! (Regard the photographic evidence!)

But not all tomatoes are the big beauties, ready to be sliced, admired and devoured on a platter with a little sea salt and sprinkling of chopped basil. No, we have prolific plants that produce small fruit—just larger than a golf ball. These tomatoes are, dare I say, almost annoying in their abundance. What do you do with them?

I make an incredibly easy tomato sauce that is great as a pizza or pasta sauce. I am too busy to fuss too much with the tomatoes. I neither peel nor seed the little buggers. I just cut out the little cores and throw them into a pot with garlic and olive oil and basil, simmer it until thickened, and then puree in a blender.

Do you know what happens when you buy a quart size container of fresh apricots? You get about 14 apricots that ripen at the same time (and about 2 that don't). As much as I love fresh apricots, eating 14 of them within a day or two isn't practical or appealing. Apricot muffins, however, are enormously appealing.

Apricot season runs from May-August, so now is the time to buy them. Unlike hardier peaches or nectarines, apricots are finicky. They like mild temperatures and dislike intense heat, which is why they grow so well in California. When selecting fresh apricots look for somewhat firm (not hard) fruit that is brightly colored (they range from light yellow to a deeper orange-yellow). The skin should be velvety smooth without wrinkles or blemishes, and they should yield slightly when squeezed. If you're still in doubt, then take a good whiff – a ripe apricot emits a sweet fragrance. After all, it is a member of the rose family.

Sweet, tender, mild, succulent, moist, and juicy. These are some words that describe one of my favorite seafoods, the scallop. I love the shape and design of their shells, which I collect, but I love the mild flavor of their meat even more. Part of the bivalve family of mollusks, these shelled creatures are prized for their tender, white meat. Harvested at sea usually by dredging the ocean floor or by diving, a more ecological method, scallops have their meat removed before arriving in markets. That is why you almost never see them in their shells.

Luckily, I have had the opportunity to see scallops in their natural yet man-made habitat. When I was a teen I worked on a scallop farm out on Long Island Sound as part of a summer aquaculture program. The scallops were housed in lantern nets, suspended directly in the sea between buoys. On reaching the farm, boatmen would lift the nets out of the sea for the students to work on. We moved the baby scallops from their crowded lantern nets into new ones that afforded them the space to grow to full marketable size. While handling them, the scallops, like toy water pistols, would squirt us with briny water. Besides not being allowed to eat the scallops, it was a fun and memorable experience.

This is one of those desserts you make when you are in a pinch for time.  It's quick, it's easy...easy, as in...no baking skills required, since it's a no-bake dessert.  It's the dish you make when you get a call Saturday morning to come for a barbecue that evening and you are to bring dessert.  You'll have just enough time to get to the store and get this made.

Better yet, stock all the ingredients at home (with the exception of the kiwis) this summer, get it thrown together when the call comes in, and pick up the kiwis on the way.  You can easily add them at serving time.

The taste of this is really nice and refreshing...I guess I never put lemon and kiwi together as a flavor package but it works really well together.

Give it a try! It's a true time-saver!