A Regarding the tops, there are two schools of thought. One is that fresh green tops tell you whether the carrots are freshly dug. Another says the greens draw vitality from the harvested carrots.
I look for fresh greens, and also for crisp-looking carrots without wrinkles, signs of bruising or rot, or any telltale little roots springing from their tips, which give away that they've been out of the ground too long.
Here's a cool carrot dish inspired by a catered dinner I had recently in Portland, Ore. It's refreshing and subtle. My first taste was with grilled lamb and duck, but now we eat the carrots as a counterpoint to the lushness of scrambled or soft-boiled eggs, or salmon or chicken.
As a first course, I toss them with rice noodles and fresh mint. You can have them with summer drinks -- as stirring sticks for gin and tonics, martinis and with anything done with mint.
Skip the canning Q Is there an easy way to can tomatoes without the mess?
A There is -- and the technique is: Don't. As in, don't can; instead, freeze. If you have the space, you can pack in a mess of fruit, keep all the lively, fresh complexity of a great tomato because you don't sully it with heat, and barely mess up a counter.
Here is how to do it. Buy only big-flavored, assertive tomatoes with high acid/high sugar for best flavor in freezing or canning. Rinse them, remove their cores, but do not skin or seed (much of a tomato's character and goodness are in the seeds and the gel around them). Pack them into heavy-duty plastic freezer bags, press out air, seal and freeze. To use, just drop the frozen fruit into whatever you are cooking (skins will slip away quickly), or defrost and use tomatoes raw in salsas or whatever. They lose their shape and mush up a little, but every bit of their character will still sing out.
Lynne Rossetto Kasper hosts "The Splendid Table," American Public Media's national radio food show, splendidtable.org. Send questions to table@mpr.org.