QUIET SUNDAY

No peas and cornbread in this first post, though they are loved, and will come later.

Today, we Southern folks skipped Sunday Dinner and had popcorn and a big diet Coke instead, at the early matinee of Harry Potter.

And just now, no collards or snap beans or pintos for us---I put a pot of salted water on to boil, washed several of the huge juicy red tomatoes, right from the vine, and chopped them into a bowl. I went out to the garden and cut the shiny-bright heads from three stems of basil, scissors-snipped them into the salted tomatoes with a little stream of olive oil.

A quick toss with the hot, just-tender farfalle, leaning into the steam for a deep breath of Summer's best pasta dish: Hot Caprese pasta, with a great snowing from the block of Parmesan. Salad and toasty-bread and another installment of Warehouse 13, with the one ever-present Southern must-have: Big glasses of 40-weight iced tea.

Nice restful day.