I caught a squirrel climbing down my plum tree last week, munching a plum. I charged toward him, he dropped it, and bolted up a maple tree. I like to think he crapped in fear as he scurried up his tree. But that doesn’t get my plum back.

My suburban backyard is either dreadfully or delightfully full of creatures, take your pick. I found a baby box turtle meandering through last week — a baby box turtle! — and my neighbor claims to have seen deer sauntering through the lawns. These sitings expand the long list of residents, including birds, squirrels, possums, snakes, mice, moles and rabbits. Something is eating the chard. Cabbage loopers skeletonized a plant. 

And while a certain gray furry “natural predator” is taking a nap so profound it qualifies as a coma, the chipmunks are leaping through the air, performing flying high-fives on their way to my cucumbers. It looks like a scene from frakin’ Willard back there in the mornings.

So I hunted up the garden journal I kept back in my post-hippie, professional garden days to find the exact proportions for The Lethal Brew. It’s simple, but it used to work.

The Lethal Brew
Grate a couple of tablespoons of Ivory soap into 1 to 2 cups of water. Gotta be Ivory — the other bars on the market are detergent. Detergent harms plant foliage. Ivory is the last real soap, except for the handmade artisan types.

Throw in a couple of inches of a cheap cigar or a plug of chewing tobacco the size of a half-dollar

Add a hot pepper pod at least 2 inches long, or a spoonful of red pepper flakes

Let the brew soak for at l east 12 hours. Strain it and add enough water to give it a sprayable consistency. Spray it on plant leaves, tomatoes, apples every couple of days.

It still works — on some things. It stopped the cabbage worms and tarnished plant bugs (which suck the green out of bean leaves until the leaves look bronze).  It isn’t vile enough to keep the squirrels from eating the apples. Or rather, taking one bite of an unripe apple and then dropping it. And then doing the same thing the next day — how stupid are squirrels? And it doesn’t keep the rabbits (or some creature) from eating the chard. If you have a solution — besides a fence — I’m game to try anything.

Fourth of July celebration in the Whitland Avenue neighborhood. We like it for a lot of reasons. It’s a chance to see people we like and hardly ever see. This year, the weather was pleasant. Our friends have a fun party with lots of kids running around, popsicles, and a bouncy castle.

I was lucky enough to be asked to judge the food contest. It’s always fun to meet the other judges, who are sometimes friends, sometimes restaurant people or both. The competition is respectably stiff, with lots of well-prepared and well-presented entries. There are two categories: Great American Picnic Food and Desserts. It’s all about execution: this year, a simple but perfectly executed cucumber salad won, along with a pretty butterbean and tomato salad (blurry photo below) in the picnic division, beating out competitors like a mango and shrimp salad and a pesto and sun-dried tomato pasta.

An apple pie in an unbelievable homemade crust won the Dessert category. The runner-up was a chocolate latte meringue pie, a little bit of innovation that was done well. Excuse the blurry photo — it was the kind of party where I ran into a friend’s sister, borrowed her camera for ages, couldn’t really work it well, then asked her to go to a lot of trouble to post these photos. Seriously, you’ll never come across a better group of people. I wish the Whitland picnic were a commune.

But mostly the day was about the Declaration of Independence, rousing patriotic music, politicking, and talk. Lots of talk and visiting, which I can never get enough of.

We feel lucky to be surrounded in our neighborhood by terrific people we really like. We invited our Japanese neighbors Isamu and Akiko and their children for dinner one night — they are such nice people, and Akiko takes my child to school on the days when the bus arrives too early and we miss it, or never arrives at all.

It’s hard to know what to cook for people you don’t know well, so when Akiko mentioned that they had honeymooned in Lisbon, I settled on Spanish food. We had sauteed pasta with lobster, which is one of those 2 hour, 15-step dishes, even when I skip the whole lobster abbatoir thing and use Better Than Bouillon lobster base. But it is insanely delicious, and it usually makes enough for leftovers the next night.

So what did I make for dessert? Something simple like ice cream and cookies? Fresh fruit? No, of course not. I made Spanish Orange and Almond Cake , an 18-step recipe that includes lining a springform pan with parchment, zesting 8 oranges, separating 6 eggs and toasting and grinding almonds. Making it dirtied so many utensils that after a while it was almost comical. This photo doesn’t even show all the dishes — they wouldn’t all fit in the frame.

Once I’d made these two delicious-but-involved recipes, do you think I had time for bread, salad or hors d’oeuvres? I feel bad for my guests, and for Japanese-US relations — everyone was famished by the time we sat down, and there was nothing on the plate but lobster spaghetti and a piece of storebought French bread. I’ll always be curious to know what they said to their friends back home about their dinner in the home of their American neighbor.

This summer we were all well and truly sick of the 100-degree days. Can I get an “amen”? But I can’t stop thinking with dread about those chilly drafts rushing along the hardwood floors of my house just a month from now. The family is relishing hot breads and braised foods but will miss summer’s raw salads, fresh pasta sauces and grilled everything. Ready for butternut squash. But sad to see the tomatoes and basil go. The end of summer? It’s a combo platter as far as I’m concerned. For instance, there won’t be any potato salads decorated like fireworks, like this one:

Basil Tomato Tart is this year’s last hurrah to summer. Every bite has the flavor of summer: a sweet/tangy bit of fresh tomato, a waft of basil, a salty savor of bacon, plus the richness of cheese and homemade pastry. It’s deliciousness itself, a wonderful way to wave bye-bye to the last little sweet tomatoes, the last great handfuls of basil.

To be honest, making this tart is a two-hour process. It’s about as time-consuming as a lasagna. Unlike lasagna, shortcuts are not a good idea. In the 21 years I’ve been making this recipe, here’s a list of shortcuts I’ve tried.

Do Not Try

Using a purchased crust and crumbling cooked bacon in the bottom (flavorless)
Not chilling the crust, just pressing the soft dough directly into the tart pan (tough crust)
Not salting and draining the tomatoes (disastrous)
Not brushing the top with oil (ugly)

Enjoy your last fling with summer. I miss it already.

Tomato Basil Tart
For the tart shell
4 ounces bacon
1 ¼ cups flour
6 tablespoons cold butter, cut into bits
2 tablespoons shortening
¼ teaspoon salt
Ice water
For the filling
4 large tomatoes, sliced 1/3 inch thick
Salt
1 cup packed fresh basil leaves
1/3 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
2 large eggs
4 ounces mozzarella, grated
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan
Cook and crumble the bacon. Combine the flour, butter, shortening, salt and bacon in a food processor and process until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Withmotor running, add 3 to 4 tablespoons ice water and process until dough holds together in a ball. Pat into a disk on waxed paper or plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour (or freeze for 20 minutes).
(This is the time to slice and salt the tomatoes on paper towels.)
Roll the crust into a circle and fit into a 9-inch tart pan, preferably with a removable rim/bottom. Prick with a fork and bake for 15 minutes.
Combine the basil, ricotta, eggs in a blender and process until well blended. Add the salt, mozzarella and Parmesan and process thoroughly.
Drain tomato slices and pat dry. Line the bottom of the tart shell with end pieces and any less attractive slices. Pour the filling over them. Arrange the pretty tomato slices over the top. Brush with oil. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 to 50 minutes until filling is set. Let cool 10 minutes. Remove side. Garnish with basil and serve warm or at room temperature. Makes 6 servings.

Grocery shopping is on my list of fun things somewhere above “wart removal” but below “oiling door hinges.” I’d rather bake a loaf of bread than go to the store to buy one.

So I loved the idea of picking up a box of organic vegetables from a farmer in a church parking lot. No lines, no aisles, no parking struggles, no junk food luring my child, no endcaps trying to sell me vitamin-enriched vanilla chai pretzel mix.

My friend Susan was leaving town for a few days and asked me to pick up her box of organic vegetables. It was so easy, and the farmers (Todd and Sarah) so terrific that I signed up for the next year with Sylvanus Farm (www.sylvanusfarm.com).. For about $400, members get vegetables and herbs delivered 28 weeks a year plus the opportunity to buy eggs, flowers, chickens and meat as the farmers have them.

It’s been a wonderful culinary and sustainable step. We’ve had to adjust our cooking and eating expectations, though. A big box of vegetables each week means a commitment to seasonal eating. For better (sweet Italian peppers! Juicy heirloom tomatoes!) and not-so-better (eggplant every week). At this point in the year, the family just wants something familiar, like broccoli or salad.

It also means canning and freezing that reckless abundance. I love making homemade pizza sauce because I can add more garlic, and there’s no added sugar. I usually make a couple of half pints. Half-pints work best because the sauce has no preservative and only keeps a couple of weeks. It’s so delicious that you’ll probably use it all within a week anyway. Keen intellects will note that I used an old caviar jar from Russia. NASA should identify the adhesive holding the label on and use it for attaching the heat-shield — that jar has been through the dishwasher about a dozen times.

When I feel really lazy, I just skin and puree the tomatoes, pour them into a skillet and cook until slightly thickened, then pour into sterile jars, top with sterile lids and boil the sealed jars for 10 minutes. Not exactly USDA approved, but it hasn’t failed yet.

Pizza Sauce
2 pounds tomatoes
2 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons olive oil
Sea salt to taste
Pile the tomatoes into a heatproof bowl and pour enough boiling water over them to cover. Let them stand about 5 minutes, then drain and run cold water over then. Cut out the core and slip off the skins. Puree the tomatoes with the garlic in a blender. Heat the olive oil in a skillet and sauté the puree until thickened, seasoning lightly with salt.
Boil half-pint jars and lids until sterile. Spoon in the sauce and seal. Boil the jars 10 minutes. Makes 2 half pints.