On Homegrown Tomatoes
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Saw this on FB today. Some great turns of phrase. I particularly liked "The stuff was so bad that all the flies pitched in to get the screen door fixed."
I found a brown paper bag full of tomatoes on my doorstep, along with homemade tomato chutney. I don’t know where the stuff came from, but the tomatoes were homegrown.
If there is a pleasure more marvelous than homegrown tomatoes, it’s probably illegal. And I don’t want to know about it since I come from Baptists who don’t do illegal things because it could lead to a life of secular music.
But I was reared on homegrown tomatoes. And there will be tomatoes at my funeral. I’m serious. Funeral guests will be encouraged to place tomato products into my casket.
Any tomato product will do, as long as it’s not tomato aspic. I would rather have a colonoscopy in a Third-World nation than eat tomato aspic.When I was a kid, there was a woman in our church named Lida Ann who always made tomato aspic. She peppered her aspic with mature green olives, capers, and little gray canned shrimp. She placed her dish on the buffet table and it looked like a giant, R-rated donut.
My mother would force me to eat it because, “Lida Ann is a sweet old woman, and she went to all that trouble.”
“I don’t care if she’s Forty-Mule-Team Borax,” I would say, “I don’t wanna eat it.”
Then my mother would pinch me until I cried. So I would shuffle toward the potluck line, use a butter knife, and smear the tomato-flavored hell onto a cracker.
Miss Lida Ann would kiss my cheek and say, “Why don’t you take the rest home, since you’re the only one who eats it.”
Miss Lida Ann would wrap it in aluminum foil and send it with me. And for the rest of the week, my mother would leave it on the counter. The stuff was so bad that all the flies pitched in to get the screen door fixed.
My mother was an avid tomato gardener. People would come from miles around to buy her delicacies.
She’d place tomatoes on a fold-up table at the end of our driveway and sell them using the honor system. But the system was broken.
Sometimes my mother’s tomatoes would mysteriously disappear. She would use guilt to make me confess, but I would deny allegations and remind her that there were a lot of starving people in the world.
When my wife and I first got married, we used to drive the Highway 127 Yard Sale (also known as “The World’s Longest Yardsale”) in search of tomatoes.
Actually, we went for two reasons.
Firstly: because it was cheap fun for newlyweds who were so poor that our cat got nervous every year at Thanksgiving.
And secondly: homegrown tomatoes.
Along the seven-hundred-mile route were farmers selling buckets of tomatoes. And I mean the hard stuff like my mother once grew.
There were Early Girls, Better Boys, Beefsteaks, Cherokee Purples, Superstars, Brandywines, Mortgage Lifters, Bama Lama Ding-Dongs, Baby Makers, Marriage Wreckers, and all kinds of heirlooms.
We would eat them like apples. And sometimes, we would fix tomato sandwiches with Sunbeam bread, Duke’s mayonnaise, and tomato slices that were bigger than a grown man’s foot.
And when we finished eating, we had to change our clothes.
I tried growing tomatoes one year. I ordered special buckets from a mail-order catalog. The buckets had holes in the bottoms. You were supposed to hang them from hooks and let the tomato stalks grow downward, but it was a joke.I’m sure the buckets work fine for some, but the squirrels ate my tomatoes. So one summer, I had to resort to a life of crime.
Every morning, I would drive to my in-laws’ house. My father-in-law had a tomato garden that he slaved over.Before sunrise, I would roll into his driveway with my headlights turned off. I would park, make sure the coast was clear, steal a whole bag full of tomatoes, and head for Mexico.
My father-in-law never caught me.
He was a great guy. He used to make the best tomato chutney you ever had. I’m not sure what was in it, but I could polish off three or four jars in one sitting.
On one Fourth of July—I’ll never forget this—my father-in-law gave me several Mason jars of chutney and a five-gallon bucket of tomatoes.
He said, “I thought you deserved your own batch of chutney, since you like it so much.”
I almost cried. His gift meant so much to me. Because when someone gives you a tomato, they aren’t just giving you a tomato. They’re giving you something much more. At least that’s how I see it.
Words will be forgotten. Friends will come and go. Civilizations will turn to dust. Heaven and Earth will pass away. But a brown paper sack of homegrown tomatoes will last for a thousand tomorrows, and then some. Because a tomato is tangible proof that God loves us.
And tomato aspic is proof that hell is real.
“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
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Speaking of tomatoes, I'm an idiot...I forgot to put Tums in a couple of my tomato holes and now I've lost some tomatoes to blossom end rot .
I hate it when I do stupid stuff ...
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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Saw this on FB today. Some great turns of phrase. I particularly liked "The stuff was so bad that all the flies pitched in to get the screen door fixed."
I found a brown paper bag full of tomatoes on my doorstep, along with homemade tomato chutney. I don’t know where the stuff came from, but the tomatoes were homegrown.
If there is a pleasure more marvelous than homegrown tomatoes, it’s probably illegal. And I don’t want to know about it since I come from Baptists who don’t do illegal things because it could lead to a life of secular music.
But I was reared on homegrown tomatoes. And there will be tomatoes at my funeral. I’m serious. Funeral guests will be encouraged to place tomato products into my casket.
Any tomato product will do, as long as it’s not tomato aspic. I would rather have a colonoscopy in a Third-World nation than eat tomato aspic.When I was a kid, there was a woman in our church named Lida Ann who always made tomato aspic. She peppered her aspic with mature green olives, capers, and little gray canned shrimp. She placed her dish on the buffet table and it looked like a giant, R-rated donut.
My mother would force me to eat it because, “Lida Ann is a sweet old woman, and she went to all that trouble.”
“I don’t care if she’s Forty-Mule-Team Borax,” I would say, “I don’t wanna eat it.”
Then my mother would pinch me until I cried. So I would shuffle toward the potluck line, use a butter knife, and smear the tomato-flavored hell onto a cracker.
Miss Lida Ann would kiss my cheek and say, “Why don’t you take the rest home, since you’re the only one who eats it.”
Miss Lida Ann would wrap it in aluminum foil and send it with me. And for the rest of the week, my mother would leave it on the counter. The stuff was so bad that all the flies pitched in to get the screen door fixed.
My mother was an avid tomato gardener. People would come from miles around to buy her delicacies.
She’d place tomatoes on a fold-up table at the end of our driveway and sell them using the honor system. But the system was broken.
Sometimes my mother’s tomatoes would mysteriously disappear. She would use guilt to make me confess, but I would deny allegations and remind her that there were a lot of starving people in the world.
When my wife and I first got married, we used to drive the Highway 127 Yard Sale (also known as “The World’s Longest Yardsale”) in search of tomatoes.
Actually, we went for two reasons.
Firstly: because it was cheap fun for newlyweds who were so poor that our cat got nervous every year at Thanksgiving.
And secondly: homegrown tomatoes.
Along the seven-hundred-mile route were farmers selling buckets of tomatoes. And I mean the hard stuff like my mother once grew.
There were Early Girls, Better Boys, Beefsteaks, Cherokee Purples, Superstars, Brandywines, Mortgage Lifters, Bama Lama Ding-Dongs, Baby Makers, Marriage Wreckers, and all kinds of heirlooms.
We would eat them like apples. And sometimes, we would fix tomato sandwiches with Sunbeam bread, Duke’s mayonnaise, and tomato slices that were bigger than a grown man’s foot.
And when we finished eating, we had to change our clothes.
I tried growing tomatoes one year. I ordered special buckets from a mail-order catalog. The buckets had holes in the bottoms. You were supposed to hang them from hooks and let the tomato stalks grow downward, but it was a joke.I’m sure the buckets work fine for some, but the squirrels ate my tomatoes. So one summer, I had to resort to a life of crime.
Every morning, I would drive to my in-laws’ house. My father-in-law had a tomato garden that he slaved over.Before sunrise, I would roll into his driveway with my headlights turned off. I would park, make sure the coast was clear, steal a whole bag full of tomatoes, and head for Mexico.
My father-in-law never caught me.
He was a great guy. He used to make the best tomato chutney you ever had. I’m not sure what was in it, but I could polish off three or four jars in one sitting.
On one Fourth of July—I’ll never forget this—my father-in-law gave me several Mason jars of chutney and a five-gallon bucket of tomatoes.
He said, “I thought you deserved your own batch of chutney, since you like it so much.”
I almost cried. His gift meant so much to me. Because when someone gives you a tomato, they aren’t just giving you a tomato. They’re giving you something much more. At least that’s how I see it.
Words will be forgotten. Friends will come and go. Civilizations will turn to dust. Heaven and Earth will pass away. But a brown paper sack of homegrown tomatoes will last for a thousand tomorrows, and then some. Because a tomato is tangible proof that God loves us.
And tomato aspic is proof that hell is real.
@Mik said in On Homegrown Tomatoes:
tomato sandwiches with Sunbeam bread, Duke’s mayonnaise, . . ,
When I think of tomatoes, this is what I think of first. One of life's major small pleasures.
One of the rare useful uses of floppy white bread.
Crusty bread or artisan bread or any of those luscious alternatives just won't do.I do gotta eat a Bama Lama Ding Dong tomato before I die. Just to say I did.
ETA: I hope this guy writes for a living. He's too good to not share with the world.
Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace. – Mike Ditka
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Speaking of tomatoes, I'm an idiot...I forgot to put Tums in a couple of my tomato holes and now I've lost some tomatoes to blossom end rot .
I hate it when I do stupid stuff ...
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@Mik said in On Homegrown Tomatoes:
tomato sandwiches with Sunbeam bread, Duke’s mayonnaise, . . ,
When I think of tomatoes, this is what I think of first. One of life's major small pleasures.
One of the rare useful uses of floppy white bread.
Crusty bread or artisan bread or any of those luscious alternatives just won't do.I do gotta eat a Bama Lama Ding Dong tomato before I die. Just to say I did.
ETA: I hope this guy writes for a living. He's too good to not share with the world.
@Catseye3 said in On Homegrown Tomatoes:
@Mik said in On Homegrown Tomatoes:
tomato sandwiches with Sunbeam bread, Duke’s mayonnaise, . . ,
When I think of tomatoes, this is what I think of first. One of life's major small pleasures.
One of the rare useful uses of floppy white bread.
Crusty bread or artisan bread or any of those luscious alternatives just won't do.I do gotta eat a Bama Lama Ding Dong tomato before I die. Just to say I did.
ETA: I hope this guy writes for a living. He's too good to not share with the world.
Try that Wonder bread with some mayo and a nice Vidalia onion slice.
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@Mik said in On Homegrown Tomatoes:
tomato sandwiches with Sunbeam bread, Duke’s mayonnaise, . . ,
When I think of tomatoes, this is what I think of first. One of life's major small pleasures.
One of the rare useful uses of floppy white bread.
Crusty bread or artisan bread or any of those luscious alternatives just won't do.I do gotta eat a Bama Lama Ding Dong tomato before I die. Just to say I did.
ETA: I hope this guy writes for a living. He's too good to not share with the world.
@Catseye3 said in On Homegrown Tomatoes:
@Mik said in On Homegrown Tomatoes:
tomato sandwiches with Sunbeam bread, Duke’s mayonnaise, . . ,
When I think of tomatoes, this is what I think of first. One of life's major small pleasures.
One of the rare useful uses of floppy white bread.
Crusty bread or artisan bread or any of those luscious alternatives just won't do.I do gotta eat a Bama Lama Ding Dong tomato before I die. Just to say I did.
ETA: I hope this guy writes for a living. He's too good to not share with the world.
Not to burst your bubble, but I think I meant to say Sourdough bread. Crusty. Artisan. Whole Foods is the best for that.
Still, I live on tomato sandwiches and sweet corn in season.
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@Catseye3 said in On Homegrown Tomatoes:
@Mik said in On Homegrown Tomatoes:
tomato sandwiches with Sunbeam bread, Duke’s mayonnaise, . . ,
When I think of tomatoes, this is what I think of first. One of life's major small pleasures.
One of the rare useful uses of floppy white bread.
Crusty bread or artisan bread or any of those luscious alternatives just won't do.I do gotta eat a Bama Lama Ding Dong tomato before I die. Just to say I did.
ETA: I hope this guy writes for a living. He's too good to not share with the world.
Not to burst your bubble, but I think I meant to say Sourdough bread. Crusty. Artisan. Whole Foods is the best for that.
Still, I live on tomato sandwiches and sweet corn in season.
@Mik said in On Homegrown Tomatoes:
Not to burst your bubble, but I think I meant to say Sourdough bread.
I hear you, and for practically every other use the better breads are the bomb. But for this, Ima doing a Proust with his madeleines thing. Gotta be the flop.
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Grainger County Tennessee is famous for its tomatoes. They hold an annualTomato Festival, and strict rules determine who can put the "Grainger tomato" label on a tomato - the first rule being that it has to have been grown in Grainger County, of course.
I have never tasted a more perfect tomato, and I've never bought one that was anything less than perfection. If you ever get the chance to buy some Grainger tomatoes, don't miss out.
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Musical interlude featuring the late Guy Clark singing and playing his song, Home Grown Tomatoes
Link to video -
I decided to read up on why Grainger tomatoes taste so good. What follows is paraphrased from what I learned:
Grainger County is a very rural area of East Tennessee, with a population of around 24,000 people. The keys to the taste of their tomatoes are:
- Limestone based soil. It produces an alkilyd (sp) that increases the acid levels in the tomatoes.
- "Fresh market" style produce that is only picked vine ripe, and hand delivered by the grower to the store where you found it. "Home garden" type stuff, in other words..
- All seeds used to grow the tomato plants are heirloom seeds, local, none of the genetically modified seeds used by corporate farms.
- They grow tomatoes with the goal being flavor, not shipping tomatoes. As such, while people come from all over the country to buy them directly from the farms, they are only marketed to a roughly 200 mile radius.
So if you fuss over your own tomato plants in your own garden and are picking tomatoes from your garden that "taste like what grandma used to raise"... you are coming close to a Grainger tomato.
I also found it interesting to read how big corporate farms produce tomatoes: they are machine picked while they are green so they will withstand all the tumbling to come. And are trucked to a centralized packing house. These green tomatoes are from genetically modified seed, with an eye toward shipping and shelf life. Hundreds of tons of green tomatoes are run through a washing that washes and then disinfects the tomatoes. The wash of course gets dirty as the day progresses, and a large number of tomatoes end up being "washed and disinfected" in dirty water. Next these "washed" green tomatoes go to warehouses where orders are filled to ship them out to big chain stores warehouses. On their way to the chain store warehouse they are exposed to chemical vapors that cause the green tomato to turn red. These chemically "ripened" tomatoes are then shipped to that chain's individual stores, each one looking perfect, and as dry and tasteless as cardboard.
Grainer: local farmers and their work crews get up early every morning, go out and pick vine ripe tomatoes by hand, and then deliver them directly to the stores. They never see a warehouse.
Ok... I can fart now....,.,,
