Table Dancing
When I die don’t bury me
In a box in a cemetery
Out in the garden would be much better
I could be pushin’ up homegrown tomatoes
Homegrown tomatoes homegrown tomatoes
What’d life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can’t buy
That’s true love & homegrown tomatoes
— Guy Clark
Even after a rather temperate Carolina winter, folks have suffered from cabin fever and are getting out of the house. Whether heading out to a baseball game, grabbing a few drinks on local café patios or hitting the golf course for a well-deserved round, people are starting to put a little spring in their steps.
Yes, this time of year offers many pleasures, no matter what your interests. However, one annual offering that often gets overlooked is as simple as it gets: the farmers’ market. Fresh fruit, vegetables, meats and eggs, all prepared locally and benefiting the local economy.
(This isn’t working, is it? OK, forgive the mealy-mouthed intro, all that “reverse triangle” bullshite they teach you in journalism school. Let’s cut to the chase, and then ramble awhile.)
What’s up with tomatoes?
All winter we suffer eating pathetic hydroponic, “farm-fresh” tomatoes, which taste like masking tape soaked in Red Dye #7. We eat them why? Because most of us live in ready-made suburbs, and we work hard all day, and we quite frankly want nothing more than to hit the local Harry Teeter for our groceries and then head back home for a few oat sodas.
As regular readers of this column no doubt know (irregular readers: eat more fiber), I’m not the pickiest food columnist in the world. As Chris Rock once opined, I’d probably “eat a pig’s ass if they cook it right.”
However, there are certain things I just can’t stomach, and one of them is a winter tomato. Waterlogged, pink and totally devoid of flavor, they’re the culinary equivalent of pornography compared with the real thing. They offer all the visual pleasure, perhaps, but none of the taste. None of the excitement. No head-shaking “Wow, that was good, wasn’t it?” asides.
Yet, you find these winter tomatoes everywhere, from the local grocer to the finest steak houses. Biotechnology can give us a seedless watermelon, pest-resistant corn and fuel for cars made from sugar cane, but it can’t give us a tomato with a little oomph? A man has walked on the moon, and yet we still have to settle for saturated Nerf balls masquerading as the real thing?
Most off-season tomatoes are picked before they ripen, ensuring they make the journey from whatever warm climate they were grown in to our supermarkets and restaurants. To ripen them after they are picked, they are sprayed with ethylene gas, a gas naturally emitted by fruits and vegetables, but in a much less concentrated form. You know when you put a fruit or vegetable in a paper bag to speed its ripening? Same concept.
However, the concept still needs a lot of work. Isn’t it funny how the most beloved fruit/vegetable in America — used in ketchup, pizza sauce, salads, and on fries and sandwiches — is only good for a few months a year? Even though every man, woman and child in the US eats on average 80 pounds of tomatoes a year?
Then again, maybe it’s part of the allure. When I do get my hands on a truly vine-ripe, fresh tomato, tangy and sweet all at the same time, it’s one of the closest things to culinary nirvana I can think of. A little salt and pepper, dollop of Duke’s mayo and a couple slices of bread? I’m set. (I’m also salivating.)
I know they say good things come to those who wait. Whoever came up with that probably never waited eight months for a good tomato sandwich.
Timothy C. Davis is an associate editor with Gravy, the official newsletter of the Southern Foodways Alliance. His food writing has appeared in Gastronomica, Saveur, the Christian Science Monitor, and the food Web site www.egullet.com. He may be contacted at timothycdavis1@gmail.com.
This article appears in May 17-23, 2006.
