Summer-of-Jane. And tomatoes.

I'm happily ensconced in Austenland for a few weeks, preparing my little lecture on Northanger Abbey and Mysteries of Udolpho, and Ann Radcliffe, gothic romance, and the female novelistic tradition in general for the final meeting of Watermark's Jane Austen Challenge on August 12. As per usual, I expect to require diversions. I shall also most likely subject you to the whole text of whatever I come up with. You'll read it and like it.

And I bought another cookbook: The Too Many Tomatoes Cookbook, by Brian Yarvin. O the delights contained therein: sauces from Greece and Romania, Basque country and Serbia, Albanian marinated green tomatoes, an African chicken dish with a tomato-and-peanut-butter sauce, a Turkish eggplant-stuffed-with-tomatoes called Imam Bayildi ("The Imam fainted"). I'm going to have as much fun as I've been having with our bumper zucchini crop (is it ever not a bumper crop, with zucchini): I've made pasta and pancakes, brownies (vegan!) and pie. All as local as can be.