Tomatoes ripening; basil in full leaf.

It’s that time of year. Tomatoes on the vine, basil in the ground, heat in the air.

The tomatoes are mainly the cherry type, and they will be prolific. As the vines themselves are over six feet tall, I had to go to that ghastly hardware place and buy stakes. Is there an alternative? Please advise. And I don’t mean ripping thin lengths of timber from a neighbour’s fence. 

The stakes are not really tall enough: they lost two of their seven feet on being hit into the ground; even so they are slightly unstable under the weight of a six-foot vine and will go over completely if we have a strong-enough wind.

Basil is easy but transient. It is impervious to sun even at forty Celsius, but the snails will eat it. Also, pick it before it goes to seed which this year was quickly. 

Ok. Tomatoes and basil organised: now to eat. 

Easiest of all, slice tomatoes over good bread brushed with olive oil, crumble some goats’ cheese over (Meredith Dairy, or Coles has its own version - which probably comes out of the same goats) and finish with torn basil and a few more drops of olive oil. And cracked pepper.

Make a similar dish with pasta: all the same ingredients tossed through short pasta such as shells or farfalle. Or use feta cheese and add chopped parsley as well. The usual shower of Parmesan is not required. 

Toasted ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches: I add extra cheese and press them in a frypan, firstly lightly buttering each side for extra brownability. Just one thin slice of ham, please.

This is not common now, but when I was at school I was sometimes supplied by my mother with tomato sandwiches. Plain tomato: scoffed at by many who believed the bread would go soggy. It sometimes did. However tomato in buttered white bread is - perhaps surprisingly - surprisingly good. Sandwiches - at least in the household in which I grew up - were frequently single-ingredient. Plain cucumber sandwich. Plain cheese. Plain strassburg. Plain home-made lemon butter. Plain egg. Plain beetroot (another looked down on by the nascent food snobs). I was one of seven. No time for complicated salad sandwiches.