Tomatoes Straight from the Garden? Seconds, please!

Cold, sliced or chunked, beautifully orange-red and roundly plump. Makes a Southern mouth water.
Yep, first of summer's tomatoes. In a salad dressing so good you'll drink the left-overs out of the jar when no one is looking!

Think early evening backyard get-togethers with long-time friends laughing and swapping tales; magaritas and beer or bourbon with branch water; steaks and marinated shrimp on one end of the grill, unshucked corn and skewered mushrooms and onions on the other end. Think the children at home with a teenaged babysitter, pizza, and Disney movies. Oh, yeah.

Now. About the dressing: I call it "Frances' Superb French Dressing" for the family friend, Frances "Red" Taylor of Como, Mississippi, who brought it over to my Mama's house as a "little summertime pick-me-up" when my Mama was ill. The just-a-teeny-bit-sweet dressing on tomatoes may not cure ills, but it does produce moans of palate pleasure. Here's the recipe:

Frances' Superb French Dressing
2 cups oil
1 cups cider vinegar
1/2 cup ketchup
1 Tab. salt
4 Tab. sugar
1 small onion, grated
dash pepper
Combine all ingredients except oil in blender. Add oil then blend again for a few seconds.
Makes 1 quart. Keeps indefinitely in refrigerator.
Delicious over freshly sliced tomatoes, cucumbers or onion slices. (Can be drunk straight from the quart jar!)

This recipe was included in High Cotton Cooking, a cookbook edited on my dining room table some years ago to benefit a local school. The book has gone through six printings, sold more than 25,000 copies, and includes back-home, like-Mama-made recipes. Extra features are extensive sections on breads and preserving section.The 348-page book is still in print and sells for $25 plus $5 s/h. It's a good buy.

Recipes soon: Mississippi Tomato Aspic? Dede's Fig Preserves? Quick Cranberry Nut Bread?
Blueberry-pineapple Preserves? Decisions, decisions.

To buy a cookbook, contact averydear aka:
Grace Henderson
PO Box 727
Marvell AR 72366