Here, o friends, is the dish that finally and with no undue rush converted John to the church of the raw homegrown tomato.

So we were hanging around cooking things and drinking champagne: not at all an unlikely saturday night at our house. John had the idea for the corn business: red onion, olive oil, asian eggplant roasted in the oven and scraped out of its skin, basil, salt, and five ears' worth of fresh farmer's market corn, all softened nicely in the pan and then flambéed with no less than Jameson. The result was pretty awesome in and of itself, but it was even better when dumped unceremoniously on top of a halved cherry tomato and sprinkled with yet more basil.

Although John often watches me eat raw tomatoes with a huge shit-eating grin on his face, he never, ever eats them himself. Clearly childhood crap tomatoes from the crap grocery store have a powerful effect. However, these tomatoes were not from the grocery store and they certainly were not crap. I had probably only picked them a couple of hours earlier. They were GREAT. So I ate a tomato-corn concoction, and John watched me eat it with a huge shit-eating grin on his face, as usual. But then! When I made another one for him to try, he did not demur politely such that I ended up eating it, as is standard procedure on raw tomato occasions! No! He ate the tomato. Then he practically fell on the floor gushing over how completely awesome real tomatoes are.

So we had to cut up a lot more of the cherry tomatoes and eat them. Now that the tomato barrier is broken, we can eat them together all the time! Hooray! Tomatoes and basil we grew on the balcony and farmer's market corn and glasses of champagne: awesome.