Tomatoes

August 20, 2006 by MoPat.

I don’t know what the things that pass for tomatoes in the grocery stores out west really are, but they sure as heck aren’t the red, luscious, fragrant, firm, juicy fruit that I remember canning with my parents or eating right from the baskets we bought in the country each summer. We’d travel just outside of Buffalo, where the houses were farther apart than they were in the city, and where trusting people left baskets or jars out for produce-buyers to drop money into. I miss the smell of those “real tomatoes.” I miss the taste and texture, the ripeness that arose out of rich, dark soil and someone standing in the evening light with a hose, patiently watering the vines.

How dare merchants use the same label for those pinkish, flavorless products heaped in mounds in the stores!

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