Last Gasp of Summer Salad: Spilled Milk #256

It's prime time for peaches and tomatoes. Celebrate with this colorful dish!

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Around where I live, summer is coming to a fast close. September is quiet. Kids are back in school. And while the month includes plenty of opportunities to boat on the lake and get outside during our beautiful warm days, the fireplace will see its first use in a few weeks and the thick blankets will go out on the chairs by the fire pit and the three-season porch.

The biggest sign of the seasons change is happening NOW at the farmstands and farm markets. Tomatoes are at peak, and 20 pound buckets of bruised and “ugly” ones bursting with flavor are available for making sauce and paste.

My sauce recipes are superb (try them: simple tomato sauce, charred tomato sauce, and more), and I make paste from oven roasting tomatoes for six to eight hours, cooling and mashing them. That’s what I use all year long, and the flavors of summer come roaring back in the dead of winter.

So as I was doing my bulk work last week, I had some peaches from Colorado, which are at peak right now, too, and I oven roasted those with some tomatoes, taking them out after five-ish hours and plating them as the centerpiece of a salad. My son ate a plate of it and said, “…it tastes like the last gasp of summer…” and he’s right.

One of the cool things is that you can do this with so many fruits and vegetables from plums to nectarines, pineapple, kiwi, grapes, fennel, onions, tomatillos and peppers. Make this salad just about any time of year…but for some reason, it’s most special right now.

I emptied the vegetable drawer on this one, even using the last of some pickled onions I had sitting in a jar for the last few months.

Recipe: Last Gasp of Summer Salad