Tomato Time [NOT 25/8/23]

The Prize of the Dog Days

25/8/23 blue dogcollar 22
Tomato Label
Ripe Red Tomatoes for Sale Here / Samuel Loag, publisher / ca. 1869 / source: https://www.loc.gov/item/95509317

Oozing Red All Over

It’s late August, and all over the Northern Hemisphere that means it’s Tomato Time!

Tomatoes at the Yauco Cooperative Growers’ Association, Puerto Rico / Jack Delano / 1942 / source: https://www.loc.gov/item/2017877807

So tell us, Deadsplintermaters, about your personal relationship with tomatoes. Do you grow them, and if so, what kinds?

Or, if you’re like me and don’t have a good sunny spot, do you have a good source for the good red stuff? Maybe your grocery store actually carries fresh ripe ones? Do you have a farm stand you visit? My local farmers market is bursting to the seams right now and they’re awesome.

Got any favorite ways to cook them? I’ve made BLTs and tossed them with pasta, garlic and Parmesan cheese. Or maybe you just eat them straight?

Detail from Trademark registration by Chapman & Meehan for French Concentrated Tomato Soup / 1891 / source: https://www.loc.gov/item/2020712729

Or, if you don’t actually care for tomatoes, do you have some other summer veggie or fruit you’re really digging now? Peppers, or beans, or squash? Peaches or grapes?

Share what you’re gorging on now, Deadsplinterfeasters.

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22 Comments

  1. This is (not yet, but soon) the time everyone within a 10 km radius of me fill their garages with tomatoes (literally 2 feet high on the floor in 2 & 4 car garages) and invites the family over for assembly line tomato sauce making. My neighbour, Frank, is on his own because his wife of over 50 years passed recently so I am going to ask him if he wants help this year because his daughter is, well, SOME (I said “some”) of the younger generation of w…(I meant most?)…Italian people…just don’t live by the same standards as their parents. I hope he accepts. I really do…because it is going to be a bit awkward when I demand he let me help him.

    anyway…

    I love me a good tomato…just not so much as a handle.

  2. I love a good red sauce… Marcella Hazan’s for example… Stunning in its simplicity and taste.

    Mom raised a lot of beefsteak tomatoes which are great for burgers and salads but too watery for sauce. This year not so much because of dementia.

    I prefer less watery ones because of the taste. I don’t mind farmer market tomatoes but as long as they have that good tomato taste you only get from local ones. Not truck tomatoes. Bleah.

  3. Tomatoes (any color cherry & yellow pear, in particular!), are one of my favorite fregetables😁😁😁

    If I can catch fresh ones, at the farmers’ market, those are the BEST, of course!

    But I buy ’em year round, at the Discount Grocery Store, because I can usually get ’em for between $1.00-2.00 and package there, and i toss ’em into salads, anything I’m cooking that has ‘maters, and I also eat ’em plain, like the fruit they are.

    The three recipes I’d say I *cook* ’em in most often, would be the feta-pasta sauce;

    https://liemessa.fi/2019/02/uunifetapasta/

    Cherry-tomato salad/dressing (cook ’em in cast iron ’til they blister, then toss ’em into a vinaigrette, and pour it over salad greens.

    And Ethiopian Lasagna;

    https://tastecooking.com/recipes/ethiopian-lasagna/

     

  6. I grew 6 varieties this year. Lemon boys – small slicer that I’ve had good luck with for several years. Some rando chocolate cherries that comes back every year – not intentionally planted, just more of a huh, one came up over there in the gravel, can’t wait to get a few dozen cherry tomatoes from it. A patio tomato variety (not going to repeat, shitty yield) and a salsa tomato variety (not going to repeat, low yield, although tasty). Juliet, a paste variety that last year a bunch of old people at Lowe’s complained about not being able to find and you trust the crabby old people who have been growing tomatoes for decades. Holy shit amazing yield of small paste tomatoes. Also delicious. And a yellow pear tomato for the first time, I think that’s earning a spot in the rotation because yield has been high and they’re tasty!

    Biggest sadness was splitting from heavy rains damaged a lot of the early rounds of the yellow pear tomatoes. But that happens.

    Every year I plant way more tomatoes than I need because I assume they’ll do shitty. And then by late July I’m giving away bags of them to the neighbors. 🙂

  7. Also – one of my fave ways to eat them is to get a few ears of fresh corn and cut the kernals off and then sautee some sweet onion in a pan, add the corn, add a few handfuls of chopped tomatoes, and some diced sweet peppers. It’s basically succotash without the lima beans. Both can be added, but some people don’t like limas.

    • i eat them instead of apples

      lovely juicy tomato..mmmm

      beats red onion which i also eat instead of apples

      dont get me wrong…onions are delicious….toms just beat them

      i just dont much like the sweet fruits

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