[Curtain rises on the produce department of the New Pioneer Co-op in Coralville, Iowa. STEVE picks up a hothouse tomato.]
STEVE: I want some salad. Let’s get stuff for salad.
GENIE: We definitely need to eat more salad.
[STEVE goes to put the tomato in the shopping cart.]
GENIE: [Wails.] Noooooo! Put that back!
STEVE: Why?
GENIE: Tomatoes are not in season! We can’t eat them now!
STEVE: But this is a very expensive hothouse tomato. It’s good.
GENIE: It’s not good! It’s never good! No fresh tomatoes out of season! None! We can only use canned!
STEVE: Harrumph. [STEVE replaces the tomato on the pile and drifts away in search of lettuce.]
Steve obviously doesn’t appreciate what a close call he just had. Lucky for him, you take good care of him! :)
Kim, that’s a great way to look at it! I’m not sure that’s what he was thinking, but I’ll point that out to him. :-)
That’s what happens when you grow really good tomatoes in the summer. In the winter, you want a good tomato so much, that you start to think about buying a hothouse tomato. Thankfully, you were strong and resisted!
Not to mention the cucumber, if it’s not in season *rolling my eyes*
Carol, you’re right…I will admit to having been tempted by them myself a couple of times. But they just won’t be the same.
Mrs. Lifecruiser, you’re absolutely correct on the cucumber front, too. We’ve bought them from the store a couple of times, but they’re so bitter and gross…I just can’t do it.
Lovely.
The fruit of the root showing it fancy side.
mine is up
Lynn, thanks for letting me know about your photo! And thanks for visiting.
No point in wastint the money on tomatoes in winter. That said, I do, rarely, buy one in winter to use in cooking. Must be the color I can’t resist…or the memories.
Katie, if I buy one in the winter, I use it for cooking, too. There’s not really any other way to do it, especially now. Sigh. Can’t wait until July…
Although saying it out loud may get me into trouble, you guys are on your own with that store-tomato boycott idea! I buy Romas all year long, choosing ones that are orange and firm, then letting them slowly turn red in a 3-tiered wire basket hanging in the kitchen.
They’re not perfect, but we need chopped tomatoes for our thin corn tortillas, and prefer eating lots of ‘only okay’ tomatoes rather than waiting for the homegrown ones. Of course, we don’t have that midwest-type tomato glut to anticipate. Our tomato season consists of two short windows in spring and fall, so they’re not a crop, more like a hobby.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Annie, it won’t get you in trouble with me! If I had those short windows, I’d probably do the same thing.
YUCK! CANNED tomatoes! I’ll continue growing my delicious, beautiful hothouse tomatoes, thank you!
Rex, that’s fabulous…if you have a hothouse that produces actual, good, tasty tomatoes in the off-season. I have yet to see one that does, but that’s simply my experience.
Besides, the canned tomatoes? Fabulous for cooking. Obviously not for salad!
The hothouse stuff I get back home will never match the farm-fresh stuff I can get a block from here, but you’re off your rocker if you think I’ll use canned tomatoes instead. Fabulous for cooking? Maybe in a stew.
Confused, the hothouse stuff is, well, pretty flavorless. Nothing’s ever going to match farm-fresh tomatoes — not hothouse, not canned, nothing. But I do think that for sauce, stew-y dishes, the fire-roasted canned tomatoes do the trick during the 10 months a year that aren’t part of tomato season.
I am trying some hothouse tomatoes this winter, I will let you know.
Morris, I would love to know how that goes. You’re growing them yourself, right? I’d love to hear more about it, over at my new blog location, http://www.theinadvertentgardener.com