Three quarters of a lemon, Steve? How in culinary heaven do I ream a quarter of a lemon, and how much difference would it make if I just reamed both halves of a smallish lemon?

That said, your pasta with fresh tomatoes and herbs looks like the answer to late-summer bounty. My oregano has already gone to seed, however, and the parsley's looking poorly -- we're tippy-toeing up to our first frost.

You have a greenhouse. The green-eyed monster has me by the neck!

Meanwhile, I have a pot of flanken (beef short ribs) braising in the oven (three and a half hours at 275 Fahrenheit), for dinner with The Out-Laws tomorrow. The entire house smells of beef and wine, and the deliciousness has only just begun. The pot will sit in the fridge overnight, and tomorrow I will take off the fat, strain and reduce the sauce, and serve with parsley, chives and lemon zest, and a hunk of polenta.

Himself still wants to know why I could not do this in the barbecue, but the on-line consensus of cooks is clear: flanken belong in a pot, nestled in plenty of mirepoix, and all but immersed in wine and stock. Not one barbecue recipe for them could I find, but literally hundreds of braising treatments -- add carrots, sweet potatoes and prunes, and you get tzimmes, which (I just learned) is traditional for the High Holidays.