Welcome back to Table Talk, where Daily Memphian food and dining editor Jennifer Biggs sends the latest food news (along with a dash of this and that) to your inbox every Wednesday.

In spring 2020 I planted an ambitious garden. We were all home most of the time and I was ready to up my gardening game. But it turned out to be the worst garden I’d had in years. I have no idea why, but gardening often perplexes me.

This year, I kept it simple, though of course when it was planting time I had no idea of what was ahead of me, how I would have absolutely no interest or time for gardening.

I planted herbs in pots and cleaned out the raised beds; the kids and I sowed flower seeds in those in June and while we haven’t had any great success there, we’ve had enough flowers to keep them satisfied.

But herbs in pots! That’s the way to go and I might never go back to anything else. I don’t have the huge harvests I’ve had when the raised beds have flourished, but I have plenty. I made my first pesto of the year last weekend, on a day when my Timehop showed me that six years ago, I canned 13 half-pints of pesto for the freezer.

I wonder how long I let those stay in there before I tossed them. I know I used some, but also know I didn’t use them all. They weren’t all basil pesto, and in today’s recipe, I share some pesto riffs with you. And I caution you to hold on to some of the basil, because I have, finally, a long-requested recipe for you that uses basil. 

Judd Tashie, one of the new owners of La Baguette, promised to share the recipe for the restaurant’s spicy tomato soup for this week. He has it in hand and sent a photo of it to me, but we’re stymied right now. It calls for a “bucket full” of tomato juice and “2 dressings full” of hot sauce.

I can cut down a recipe, but I have to know where to start —and “2 dressings full” isn’t much to go on. The good news is that the woman who makes the soup will be back at work this weekend in preparation for La Baguette’s Tuesday opening and we’ll have the recipe for next week. 

Chris Herrington told us about the upcoming move for Bala’s Bistro, one that will give the West African restaurant in Whitehaven about an extra 1,000 square feet and roughly triple his seating.

Out in Lakeland, folks might be getting a new grocery and it’s a mystery: Which one? Could this finally be a Publix in our market? Maybe — be still my heart — H-E-B? It’s fun to speculate, anyway. 

And if you haven’t read it, please don’t miss Chris Herrington’s tribute to the late Tom T. Hall, which he’s woven into his $10 Deal about country ham and red-eye gravy at Bob’s Barksdale Restaurant.

Finally, I told you about the ordeal Angela and Tony Sarwar went through after they tested positive for COVID while on a Caribbean vacation. This story received a lot of comments, mostly because the Sarwars traveled outside the country without being vaccinated. 

It also prompted people to ask about my own vaccination status, which came as a surprise because I’ve written about it and talk about it on podcasts. But as I will readily ask someone if they’ve been vaccinated before I socialize with them, I’ll answer again:

I received my first Moderna vaccine in Mississippi in February and my second in March; I’ll get a booster as soon as I qualify. Because I was out in restaurants from the day they reopened, I took regular COVID tests until I was vaccinated — 19 in all. This was at the advice of my doctor and was also what I felt was the right thing to do: What if I was positive and asymptomatic? I don’t have a job where I could stay home, and I didn’t want to spread COVID.

I had one test post-vaccine, after a possible exposure, and have done two home tests this week because I have a sinus infection. They’ve all been negative, and I believe that’s because I’ve been careful about wearing a mask, distancing, sitting outside and so on. I resumed wearing a mask in June, because I was in and out of the ICU daily, where it was required, and I didn’t want to take germs I might’ve acquired in the hospital into the community.

In July, I held the hand of my ex-husband when he died on a ventilator. He didn’t have COVID, but the lung disease he had behaved like COVID pneumonia; it was terrible and traumatic. His disease might not have been preventable, but COVID is.

So yes, I’m vaccinated, and yes, I believe you should be, too. By the time you regret not getting the shot, it might be too late.