Recently, we discussed tomatoes. She has been working with us in the HDS Garden and has been initiating gardens in multiple spaces...as we do. So we talked tomatoes last Thursday. On the day back in March when we began our seedling for the season, she was there, We set eight -- ONLY eight of the thousands -- of tomato varieties in the seed-starting medium. And now, everywhere in New England, there are TOMATOES.
The tomato - Solanum lycopersicum - is in the nightshade family and native to western South American and Central America. It's history is fascinating -- to some of us -- and I won't go into it here though if this intrigues you, seriously: look it up. One fascinating detail I read recently, though because it seems to have originated on Wikipedia and then been re-quoted verbatim (which makes it suspect) is that native Pueblo people believed that there was a power in tomato seeds that gave one the power of divination. Don't quote me on it but I think it's an interesting fact, if true.
You surely have heard about lycopene, the good stuff in tomatoes. Cooked tomatoes give you more than raw...because it becomes concentrated.... and yes, that IS awesome but that's not even why I am writing about them.
So here are some tomatoes that were recently harvested. Beautiful, eh?
We are in the thick of GLORIOUS tomato harvesting, these days. Trying to stay ahead of the ever-present tomato blight, we try to cut off the affected plant parts as fast as we can because the mostly-set fruit will ripen and we want to contain the spread. We are in our race to the finish, before frost closes out the season for us. Still, if we are really inspired, we may grab the green ones for fried tomatoes, canning or pies. My mother was good at wrapping the fully-formed green ones in newspaper and keeping them in our cellar in a cardboard box, until they turned red. They are never *quite* as good as fresh, but still a far cry above what you can ever get in a store.
So what IS it about tomatoes? As you might imagine, because I am who I am, I spend a lot of time in gardens, farm stands, farmers market, nurseries....etc... basically anywhere that the connection to growth and life and food connect.
There are millions of plants and certainly thousands that we grow commercially and personally, but in New England, if there is only one plant that you are going to grow, it will be a tomato. Honestly, I don't know why that is. I could take some guesses based on nutrition and food storage and the need for these to be maximized historically. But today? Honestly, it doesn't even matter.
Because here is the thing, and this is really what it's all about. When you grow tomatoes, if all goes well or even moderately okay, there will be a day and hopefully many days, when you can go out into your sunny garden/deck/farm/box/hanger...and pick one dead-ripe beauty and bite into it. Warm.
Everyone has their own way of enjoying this. Some will talk about salt, some: sugar, olive oil, basil...
But here is what I think: Pick a type you've grown, say: a purple Cherokee, which is one of the varieties we are growing.
But that bite...that first bite.... it's flavor and beyond flavor.
Purple Cherokee is an heirloom, which speaks to chemistry and history. But with that bite, you connect with the work and the love and the reminder of the cycle of life and death. The flavor is exquisite .... but even more than that. That flavor shows you truth. That tomato slows us down and stops us in our tracks.
If that isn't a truth, I don't know what is.
So your encore for today? If you aren't a gardener...and that's okay, because who knows? Perhaps you can join with a friend or others and find a way to connect to this? Your encore is to find someone who has grown tomatoes. Ask them for one. Sit with it and think about this. And then, take that bite.
There's your truth, your truth in a tomato.