Sunday and our guests have left to drive home.  We had some marvelous meals but now we are back to cooking for two.  I bought a big T bone steak for us to share,  grilled some fingerling  potatoes with onions, Pat made a nice salad with pear.  And I wanted to do a special side dish.

We have had the most marvelous cherry tomato plants growing in our side  garden this summer.   Almost every day for the last month we have been able to harvest 20 – 30 sweet cherry tomatoes.   Granted when Andra and the kids were visiting it was not that great because she does not like fresh tomatoes.  Can you imagine that?  I remember her as a kid hating them but I thought maturity would cure the problem.  The freshly picked cherry tomatoes are like candy, so sweet and lovely. 

Andra has apparently transferred her dislike to fresh tomatoes to her kids so we compromised by making Bruschetta and sauces and got by. 

Then Lois visited and we enjoyed the little tomatoes in many dishes.  This last week Mary-Ellen and Pat’s mother came to stay and they glorified the fresh cherry tomatoes with lunch and dinner.  Used them as a snack and in many of the meals like the quiche and the pizza. 

Now cherry tomatoes are wonderful, but after a month I was looking for another way to serve them.  In one of our cooking magazines (Fine Cooking) they featured a simple recipe where you make a salad of cherry tomatoes and grilled corn.  So today we went off to pick up the end of season fresh corn from the valley.  I grilled the corn cobs and cut the succulent kernels off.  I personally picked 25 ripe cherry tomatoes and sliced them up.  Mixed cherry tomatoes and the corn with a little melted butter and lemon juice AND ADDED ONE TABLESPOON OF DRIED TARRAGON.   Now the recipe in the magazine called for 1 tbsp of fresh tarragon.  We did not have it and I used dried.  My Bad.

Pat tells me that you should cut the quantity to a quarter when you deal with dried herbs versus fresh.  Never bothered me with Basil or Oregano but never do that with Tarragon.   Apparently Tarragon is powerful. 

The salad looks great but the flavour of the tarragon is overpowering and I do not like it.   Pat says it is very nice but I suspect this is her Catholic martyrdom complex kicking in.   Fortunately she has agreed to eat the rest of the salad (which could take a week) and I can be comforted that the rest of the meal (the grilled fingerling potatoes with onions and the T Bone and her salad) was wonderful. 

As my regular readers realize, this diatribe about the warning about too much Tarragon is a delay while Pat polices the kitchen and loads the dish washer.  Does not minimize my warning about Tarragon.  Nice in small quantities, but too powerful for a sophisticated palate.