The solstice has brought continued real summer weather; more hot, hazy humid, stormy stuff. On the plus side, the plants and gardens are all doing fantastically well – there are flowers on my tomatoes and the basil looks to be overwhelming the rest of the herbs! On the down side, it is hot and sticky and stuffy and all that… you just cannot please some people.
We ended up spending Father’s Day afternoon and evening with some friends just over the border – Wes celebrated his day by organizing his new tool chest and the rest of the garage, and then grilled us all a wonderful assortment of marinated steaks and chops – he did one that was interesting in that he quickly marinated the steak in Tabasco Chipotle before grilling – hot and smoky, but not TOO hot and smoky, if you know what I mean. Some nice side salads from the local deli (I have got to figure out how they do their macaroni salad) and a sparkling South African wine and pomegranate spritzer to wash it all down completed the feast; with play time until 
Parker and Penley’s bed time for desert – Parker was intent on passing out invisible lizards from her laptop for some reason, and Pen’ was just looking for a high, high place to scale and try to leap from before her daddy caught her – fortunately, she was not successful !-)
This is all a rather roundabout way of saying that the basil is in da house, and it smells great! I could make pesto (picked up some pine nuts at the market this weekend) – but instead am going to try an adaptation of the rustic pizza – just replacing all of the extra
eggs and meats and ricotta with fresh tomatoes, basil, onion, garlic, ‘shrooms, ripe olives, orange and red peppers and zucchini with some freshly grated mozzarella and swiss cheese – something I think will be better suited to a hot summer evening.
I have some sugar cookie dough chilling out in the fridge, so I need to go and get the pizza dough/crust together before it’s time to start rolling out the cookies.