This is the time in summer that we start getting ripe tomatoes from our garden. We eat and eat fresh tomatoes, and we celebrate the fact that now we can.

So with an abundance of tomatoes at hand, I went looking on the Internet for any tomatoes recipes I didn't already have. On one of my favorite sites, Care2, I found something I'd never heard of before, and I am curious to know if our Cook'n readers are familiar with this recipe—it's considered the go-to tomato meal—a simple tomato and bread salad: chopped tomatoes, toasted chunks of peasant bread, garlic, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper all tossed together. Does this sound familiar?

The author of the article, Melissa Breyer, said this salad can also be baked and is then known as a bread pudding. The idea sounded good to me; she said savory tomato bread pudding has long been a southern tradition. What Breyer likes about this version is that it skips the butter, cream, and eggs of a traditional savory bread pudding and instead relies on the juiciness of the tomatoes. She says it's moist on the inside, but the top gets crunchy and layers of cheese impart a nice richness to round it all out.

While the recipe calls for heirloom tomatoes, any deep red tomatoes (locally grown ones instead of the pink supermarket globes grown for transport) will work just fine. In a pinch, you can even use well drained canned whole tomatoes. Which gives me an idea: I think I'm going to get busy freezing some of our heirloom beauties so we can celebrate tomato bliss all year.