This week is the week I wait for every year with eager anticipation.. Ah yes, my favourite week of the year: the week the tomatoes arrive. I plan to gorge myself.
Of course, you can buy tomatoes every week of the year at the grocery store, but what's the point when they taste nothing like a tomato, and actually, like nothing at all.
The tomatoes you buy the rest of the year have been bred for travelling, for ease of picking, and to ripen all at once for the convenience of the superfarms in California. Like much of the food we buy in our industrialised food chain, they're not actually bred for things like, say, taste or nutrition. Flavour is nowhere on the list of factors for the breeders of the seeds.
But for those of us who know the difference, this is the week. The first of the real, honest to goodness, ripened in the sun in a field that's not in California tomatoes start to become available. I'm gobbling them down two at a time even as I keep a close eye on the little green beauties that continue to swell in my backyard.
While some people are complaining about the heat, the growing conditions for backyard tomatoes have been perfect this year, as long as you can keep them from drying out.
And there really is a difference. On my plate with a little white vinegar and salt or squeezed into a pasta sauce for use in the winter, there's a difference between the food you get at the industrial grocery and the stuff you can watch growing. More and more of us have noticed, and that's why you're seeing the proliferation of farmers' markets.
It might be about the 100 mile thing, but for me, it's all about the taste.
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