IN SEASON




Tomatoes

Tomatoes and I have seriously been best friends for life! My parents still remind me that when I was little, I used sit in the trolley and eat tomatoes like apples while they did the grocery shopping. Whatever keeps em' quiet, hey! I can never resist a tomato recipe, especially when they're kept in their simplest form. I love a well-seasoned tomato, but then so does most of the world! Tomatoes are the basis of most cuisines because they're so versatile, but they're also rather easy to grow. Most seasons, when everything else is struggling, our tomato plants are climbing the stakes and their little fruits are illuminating the garden like fairy lights at Christmas.

To me, home-grown tomatoes make for one of the simplest pleasures in life. You can literally watch them grow before picking them at their ripest. I love the prickly little hairs on the vine and on the fruit, I love seeing the veins that run through the fruit, and I don't even mind having a spider crawl up my arm when I'm picking. (Ok, perhaps I care a little.) What I love most about home-grown tomatoes is the smell that lingers on my hands after picking. It's so distinct; sweet and fresh, like nothing else. I wish somebody could make me a vine-ripened tomato perfume. I'd always be in a state of total bliss. 

If you haven't planted yourself a little tomato plant (or three) this season, do it now. The fruits are so much sweeter, so much more worthy, than anything you'll find on a refrigerated shelf.