All this talk about home-grown or locally-grown tomatoes is driving my taste-buds into overdrive.
First, a point of clarification: I spent the first 26 years of my life DESPISING fresh tomatoes. As far as I was concerned, they ruined a perfectly good salad. I couldn't eat a sandwich once a tomato--even if removed--had been layered in it. Chicken salad nestled in a tomato half was sheer mockery...its tomato-iness tainting the chicken flavor.
All this changed the day George C, age unknown but as sweet as an old, crotchy Italian can be, gave me a paper bag filled with his home-grown western PA tomatoes. George and I worked together at Westinghouse. He was a union draftsman while I was the token non-union female draftsperson hired to counter-balance 144 men. God Bless the math of Affirmative Action.
George had walked home for lunch and picked a bag full of vine-ripened beauties for me. I received them 30 minutes later still warm from the sun.
Unlike my daily 120-mile commute now, back then my commute was a 0.7 mile walk to Westinghouse. I had planned on making spaghetti sauce with the tomatoes, but the smell was almost overwhelming on the walk home. For some bizarre, unfathomable reason, I wanted to eat one, invalidating 26 years of established behavioral patterns.
If I could handle being the only female in a unionized male bastion, I could brave trying a fresh tomato. I placed this intrepid act on the same level as Jonus Salk testing the polio vaccine on himself.
This tomato was tart; it was acidy; it was Love at First Bite. Or, to quote Count Dracula from the movie of the same name: "Children of the night, shut up!"
See link at Larder Barter for offer of "Dyslexic Bittersweet Chocolate Sauce with Issues" for fresh tomatoes. I want to make Laurie Colwin's tomato pie and am not prepared to waste 14 points per slice on mealy, tasteless tomatoes.
http://www.roanoke.com/columnists/macy/recipes/wb/wb/xp-45124
First, a point of clarification: I spent the first 26 years of my life DESPISING fresh tomatoes. As far as I was concerned, they ruined a perfectly good salad. I couldn't eat a sandwich once a tomato--even if removed--had been layered in it. Chicken salad nestled in a tomato half was sheer mockery...its tomato-iness tainting the chicken flavor.
All this changed the day George C, age unknown but as sweet as an old, crotchy Italian can be, gave me a paper bag filled with his home-grown western PA tomatoes. George and I worked together at Westinghouse. He was a union draftsman while I was the token non-union female draftsperson hired to counter-balance 144 men. God Bless the math of Affirmative Action.
George had walked home for lunch and picked a bag full of vine-ripened beauties for me. I received them 30 minutes later still warm from the sun.
Unlike my daily 120-mile commute now, back then my commute was a 0.7 mile walk to Westinghouse. I had planned on making spaghetti sauce with the tomatoes, but the smell was almost overwhelming on the walk home. For some bizarre, unfathomable reason, I wanted to eat one, invalidating 26 years of established behavioral patterns.
If I could handle being the only female in a unionized male bastion, I could brave trying a fresh tomato. I placed this intrepid act on the same level as Jonus Salk testing the polio vaccine on himself.
This tomato was tart; it was acidy; it was Love at First Bite. Or, to quote Count Dracula from the movie of the same name: "Children of the night, shut up!"
See link at Larder Barter for offer of "Dyslexic Bittersweet Chocolate Sauce with Issues" for fresh tomatoes. I want to make Laurie Colwin's tomato pie and am not prepared to waste 14 points per slice on mealy, tasteless tomatoes.
http://www.roanoke.com/columnists/macy/recipes/wb/wb/xp-45124
