• Home
• About
• Blog Roll

Fresh Look - ‘Tis the season for heirloom tomatoes
July 24, 2007

To state that I like tomatoes is like saying Harry Potter fans casually enjoy the books. Yes, I am a fanatic. In my brasher and more spontaneous college days, I entered multiple tomato eating contests and nearly won a couple. It was all about quantity then.

Now wiser and choosier, I look for quality tomatoes – those that smell and taste like a slice of heaven. While a great variety of fresh-off-the-vine tomatoes are decent, heirloom tomatoes are the only ones that can make me rush to my local farmers’ market. As its name implies, an heirloom seed is cultivated, selected and saved year after year, sometimes for centuries. The farmers or gardeners choose the seeds from plants with desired qualities, such as taste, aroma, or color. Because heirloom tomatoes are open-pollinated – meaning they are pollinated by insets, birds, wind, or other natural mechanisms – the fruit is rarely uniform in its shape or size. But to me those are perfect imperfections.

‘Tis the season for tomatoes (July to September in California). My local farmers’ market alone has more than ten varieties, with lively names like purple Cherokee, mountain gold, brandywine, oxheart, persimmon, pineapple, and of course red zebra and green zebra. Every variety is quite different from another in terms of flavor, sweetness, aroma, texture, tenderness and color.

With divine tomatoes like these, any way you eat them is more than satisfactory. I eat them like apples - wipe on my shirt and bite down. But that’s just me. How about cutting open a loaf of Ciabatta bread and laying slices of purple Cherokees and fresh mozzarella in between. Then chow down. All can be found at a farmers’ market.

In my mother’s house, a dish of stir-fried tomatoes and eggs is a reliable summer staple. Slightly heat up a tablespoon of safflower oil. Throw in a couple of sliced heirloom tomatoes. Mix in 2-3 eggs. Stir fry until egg white becomes solid. Takes about 10 minutes, including the prep time. Yum.

For some reason tomatoes usually do not endear themselves to kids, especially if the kids have only had the grocery store kinds. My toddlers make an exception for heirloom tomatoes. Sometimes, I slice a few tomatoes with different colors and lay them out like flowers on the plate. Sprinkle unrefined sugar on them (1 & ½ teaspoons for the whole plate). The slight tartness of tomatoes mixing with the sweet crunchiness of sugar always brings mine back for seconds.

Aside from the gastronomical pleasure, there are ecological reasons for buying heirloom tomatoes. First as biodiversity decreases due to large scale industrial farming, growing and buying heirloom tomatoes contributes to the upkeep of a world of healthy biodiversity. Secondly by purchasing heirloom tomatoes, you are directly supporting your local farmers. I challenge you to find equally fresh and diverse heirloom tomatoes in conventional grocery stores, if they carry any at all.

If you live in the Bay Area, here are some of the farmers’ markets near you. Nationally, USDA provides a good link to farmers’ markets. So does Local Harvest.

Happy eating!

Visit other Fresh Look entries.

CindyW at Organicpicks

If you enjoyed this entry, please subscribe to the Organic Picks Blog

Copyright 2007 Organicpicks