When its tomato time in Dixie Just a month or so back, people were jealously guarding their tomato plants. Barbed wire, land mines, TSA officers and other means necessary to protect the red jewels were utilized. Now, not so much. In fact, people hereabouts have taken down the barricades and thrown open their yards, patios and gardens hoping people will come on in and help themselves to their tomatoes. Please. I used to think that it was such a waste when the Spanish held an annual tomato war, wasting thousands of tomatoes and probably an eye or two every year. Now, not so much. Tomatoes have threatened to take over the world as we know it, at least around here. They are growing everywhere. In pots. Hanging upside down. In small and large garden plots. And they are appearing everywhere already ripe and picked. On windowsills. On outdoor tables. On kitchen counters. In paper bags. In plastic bags. In pails and buckets. In tow sacks, for Petes sake. They are here, and people have been gorging themselves. We are eating them fresh from the vine. Were eating them in tomato sandwiches. Were grilling them, frying them, stuffing them, canning and preserving them. Just in case. During the Winter, many of us refuse to eat those hard, unripe tomatoes imported from some still developing country--like Florida-- or from some greenhouse somewhere. We wont eat them because they just dont taste right, and that truth is hard to swallow. There is nothing more disappointing than a bland, unripe, gassed tomato. Its like taking a bite out of a watermelon that just isnt sweet, which happens all too often these days because people here have gotten away, apparently, from adding a little soda, aka as sodee, to their watermelon patch. While people have gotten away from the old fashioned methods of growing tomatoes, they have gotten a little more adventurous in the types of tomatoes they grow. They have returned, in some part, to the past by growing heirloom tomatoes, those whose seeds have been saved and unaltered over the years. These are the current darlings of fine restaurants chefs everywhere, including Vivian Howard who owns Chef and the Farmer Restaurant in Kinston, featured in that compelling PBS series The Life of a Chef. (Ms. Howard by the way refuses to serve any tomato out of season because she wont eat one herself!) People here are also growing those little cherry tomatoes by the zillion now. This is relatively new, because in the past people here stuck with the tried and true old varieties, even if they werent the heirloom varieties. Sometimes, you just cant improve on perfection, and there is nothing more perfect than a vine-ripened luscious red tomato just plucked and eaten. And that is why we take such care to guard them until we get that first one and we are anxious to get all the other 6 or 700 hundred that follow. After that, not so much. Right now, the tomato frenzy is slowly ebbing and now we are beginning to embark on another craze--peaches. The Peach Festival was held last weekend in Candor, and that opened the door to peaches for this year. They are somewhat finicky to grow and they are not grown here in abundance, so it is off to West End and the Auman Peach Farm for many of us. Others still insist upon buying peaches from South Carolina because those from McBee are a day or two ahead of ours ripening here. Who can wait? We all miss the Autry peaches from the Arabia/Dundarrach area, just miles away from here. And we all surely miss the great ice cream they made there. So we have to make our own, and we certanly have the peaches to cut up in the ice cream. Boxes of them, bags of them. Little peck sacks of them. Bushel baskets of them. Peaches are everywhere, threatening to take over the world, but they dont last so we are forced to eat them. And we do. At least I do! I love them, and yes, I take the time to peel them. No peach fuzz for me. Peaches are the new tomatoes around here, and I intend to enjoy them while they are ripe and delicious, while still saving some space and time for the tomatoes that we all so love. All too soon, both crops will be diminishing and then disappearing altogether. Then it will be back to dreaming and waiting.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 15:59:37 +0000
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