Tomatoes - The Darling Children of my summer Crop

Summer Produce and the ongoing abundance of Tomatoes
Well, I’ve gone over this before. I have a lot of tomatoes and at some point I will be cooking them into pasta sauce. Until then? Well, they are perfectly ripe and incredibly tasty so they are factoring into just about every meal. Here is how it works:
Breakfast? Toasted bagels with cream cheese or humus served with thick slices of deep purple or red tomatoes. Yesterday morning I got up and began the morning ritual of wandering around the potted tomato plants. It seems every day now there are more and more ripe ones. For a while it seemed there were nothing but green tomatoes out there and this was cause for concern. Disease, bugs or lack of direct sunlight? (I am told it is bad form to cut your neighbors oak trees down to better facilitate your farming needs.) But? Today, like yesterday I see new tomatoes coming up with color. The purple cherry tomatoes look amazing today. Yesterday the cluster in question was mostly green with only a hint of purple. Today some of the Japanese Trifiele are also getting softer to the touch and ripening with more color. The striped green ones, the “Green Sausage” tomatoes are still a bit firm. I’ve been checking on them daily now to ensure I don’t miss the perfect window of ripeness. Green heirloom tomatoes are, at least for me, a bit perplexing. They do not change color. Green, yet perfectly ripe. A quandary. I study them and continue hoping to be given a sign. Today? We’ll see.
So, yes. Sliced tomatoes with the breakfast bagels. Last night at a BBQ up on the ridge top I tossed a mixed salad of tiny motzerrela balls, a double fistful of mixed basil and six or seven kinds of tomatoes. Large and small… all of them into the mix. It was a mini-caprese salad and it worked out well.
Sliced on a hamburger? Lovely. Can you eat them three meals a day? Well, sure. For a while and then you begin to realize that you can’t eat them all. No need to panic here. Give them to your neighbors. This act of goodwill could earn you points which you might later redeem for transgressions such as loud late night parties with death metal blaring from your sound system. They do taste better than any that you can buy at the store. Yes, I am a proud parent of my tomatoes and am happy to report that the house heirloom tomatoes here in The Santa Cruz Mountains are most certainly on the honor roll. They are better by virtue of their rollicking diversity and their attention to detail. These are some precocious tomatoes. If they had arms they would play the violin. They would be fluent in Cantonese and Dutch. These tomatoes are exceptional. Really.
So, keep eating them. Give them away and, any chance you get be sure to brag about them. Tomatoes are incredibly fun. They are a lifestyle and not just some wacky hobby.