The first bunches of green tomatoes are starting to appear in our garden, which triggered an immediate Pavlovian response (a la Homer Simpson) — mmmmm, tomatoes. mouthwatering, drool, drool. Then a tinge of fear struck me, what if we get hit by the blight, what if I don’t have enough tomatoes! (we’ve got over 60 plants in the ground)

Rick likes to call me out on the fact that I once said I didn’t like tomatoes. Yes, I did say that. But commercially grown, grocery store tomatoes aren’t really tomatoes. Sure, they are red, but that is about it. They taste like nothing and their mealy texture makes me gag. Can you blame me for not liking tomatoes all those years?

This guy’s got my back.

Barry Estabrook’s been making the rounds promoting his book, Tomatoland, he and got a lot to say about why industrially grown tomatoes taste like superballs.

• Over the past fifty years or so commercial tomato breeding has been geared towards weight. Tomato growers get paid by weight. Not taste.
• Commercial growers need to breed tomatoes that can ship well and store well, so we can have our red superballs whenever and wherever we want – even in the middle of winter. Anyone who home grows luscious tomatoes will tell you that the best tasting tomatoes need to be handled with care just to get them from the garden to the kitchen.
• If you gotta buy tomatoes out of season, at least buy California tomatoes. Florida tomatoes are grown in sand with very little nutrients to feed the plants. The tomatoes live off fertilizers and chemicals that are injected into the soil. California uses fewer chemicals.
• And there are the depressing labor issues. I won’t go into the politics behind the tomato, but if you are interested in learning more about the politics behind your food, check out Barry Estabrook’s blog Politics of the Plate.

The hubby gets annoyed when I refuse to buy tomatoes from the grocery store in the middle of winter. Really, what’s the point? I might as well eat my money. Those tomatoes have no taste, especially after I’ve acquired a taste for home grown, seasonal tomatoes. I’ll can as many of my tomatoes as I can and when I run out then I’ll throw myself a pity party.

I challenge all of you, especially those of you who claim you don’t like tomatoes, to avoid industrially grown tomatoes, visit your local farmer’s market and sample their bootie, or grow your own. If ever there was a food worth eating only in season, it is the tomato. drool drool.