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Last night I harvested three enormous tomatoes from my garden.
I've been picking little ripe cherry tomatoes for weeks, but to get these big guys, bright red and sweet, before August seems odd to me. Of course I'm an amateur gardener, so maybe it's not as strange as I think. But these plants weren't started in a greenhouse or planted out early under covers. I grew them from seed under an inadequate lamp and stuck them in my straw bales right after Memorial Day weekend. Now, they've formed an intimidating jungle that I already have to carefully peer through to spot the ripe fruit.
Not that I'm complaining - it's one of those moments when the effects of global warming seem like they may actually be liveable. As long as I can ignore my fears about big hurricanes that could come charging up the Bay, not to mention all our beaches disappearing. 
Tra la la, in any case I picked so many veggies - also green beans, eggplant, onions, chives, garlic, new potatoes, peppers - that it inspired me to make an Indian curry. It's amazing what tempering some black mustard seeds, cumin seeds and frozen curry leaves in oil will do for the flavor of everything else you dump in the pan afterward. I browned the aromatics to form a base for the sauce, then added some garam masala with the tomatoes. It came out great. Of course, using vegetables that were picked ten minutes before didn't hurt, either.
Celebratory cocktails seemed in order, and following the whole Raj theme, gin and tonic was the obvious choice. Gotta keep that malaria at bay, old chap! Presumably it'll be finding us here in these latitudes some time in the next few decades. I used the Stirrings tonic - it's good, with the sharp taste of real quinine - and added some pureed cucumber and freshly grated ginger.
So - a late summer feast in July, and my first ever all-home-grown meal. (Not the drink, of course, but maybe I can work on that if I can get my Portuguese neighbor to show me the secrets of his basement still. He's been making his own wine from the vines he grows for 50 years.) Anyhoo, it was all lovely. And still the whole month of August before us! My summer cup has plenty of time to keep running over.