Why are Grocery Store Tomatoes so Inferior?
- Thread starter Richmond B. Funkenhouser
- Start date
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Cut the tomato in strips about 1/4 inch wide. Then sautée in molasses with a pinch of Latakia. Delish!
You can either eat the strips as snacks, or smoke them. Extra delish.
You can either eat the strips as snacks, or smoke them. Extra delish.
I guess with some varieties that may be true. With others the flavor seems increase with a little drying time.
Those tomatoes would not sell as eaters in a modern grocery store. They taste great but don’t look perfect.
They’d be made into catsup.
My wife claims that over half of the fresh fruits and vegetables that are destined for the grocery stores are tossed away as not cosmetically perfect.
And let’s not even think about the conditions of the workers who pick and sort them for market.
My Grandmother taught all her grandchildren to sing Deportees, and also the meaning of every line.
Such as “The oranges are packed in their creosote dumps”. (To boost the price of oranges).
The cost of cheap fruits and vegetables is high, you know?
It always has been.
(If I’m not a good man, I sure can’t blame my parents for trying)
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You sayin my tomatoes are ugly?
I believe the term for their condition is undocumented.
This variety of tomato is called Cherokee Purple. It's an heirloom type that my dad always grew. They have higly acidic flavor, which is what I'm looking for, But some are almost too ugly to eat.
Here's a really ugly specimen:
Here's a really ugly specimen:
My Grandmother used to take the prime part in teaching her seven grandchildren not only the words but each little nuance and allegory and meaning of Deportees.
Xxx
Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
Xxx
No soul ever harbored more hatred against that Damned Old Roosevelt than she did, but mainly it was for legalizing 3.2 beer so children could buy it, and somehow causing the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor, although she thought Roosevelt a hundred per cent to blame.
But, she had a soft spot for the least of these, our brethren a mile wide.
Xxx
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"
Xxxx
She died in 1980 and still has an aging fan base plus an occasional graduate student of Ozarks literature, and as her literary executor I’m still asked was she a closet progressive or did she really hate Roosevelt as much as she let on?
My answer is if she didn’t hate Roosevelt it was a really good scheme to keep the owners of the newspaper publishing her column every week for over fifty years, you know?
Xxx
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?
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We quit buying those bad tomatoes, here's what we buy, wonderful flavor.Did you mention Woody Guthrie as the author of "Deportees"?
I don't believe you did.....
Also the author of This Land is Your Land.
Xxxx
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
This land was made for you and me.
Xxxx
What a contradiction she was, my grandmother.
She had the owner of the newspaper come to her home (she refused to learn to drive a car) and the middle aged man who inherited the paper from his father, who hired my grandmother in the flower of her youth, was simply agog that her weekly columns made The Index the largest circulation single press newspaper in America if not the world.
And I don’t think he ever understood why, they had subscribers all over the world.
My mother enjoyed the fame of being the character Saydee in the series, but would accuse her of making all her neighbors appear to be ignorant, bigoted, superstitious, slow witted hillbillies.
Grandma would just say they oughter not act that away then, should they?
When I lived in latvia, I ate seasonally. Made most fruits and vegetables taste better. We don't do that in the USA and it shows.
I think most folks who home-grow fruits and vegetables are naturally biased that their harvest tastes better, otherwise, efforts in planting, cultivating, watering, fertilizing, and harvesting were wasted. IME the objective difference is pretty small, not enough to cause me to spend limited time growing my own.
Well, some do.
Side note: I remember when frozen vegetables were introduced! Parents were ecstatic. (This in Illinois ca. 1950.)
You're correct. I shouldn't have used the absolute as my sister's friend is a seasonal eater in the US. She is from Germany but still an American citizen.
As you wish...
There's plenty more of both the tomatillos and tomatoes to be harvested, but this was my most abundant gathering session yet. I hope the heirlooms finish before it gets too cold; it's already hitting low 40s on most nights.
While I'm at it, here was the first of the eight useful watermelons we got:
Lots of seeds, but considerably sweeter than anything I could've picked up at any grocery store. For a first-time go at it, I feel rather accomplished!
Nice crop
The trend towards "taste less" seedless watermelons is a huge step backwards.
Besides who hasn't had fun with watermelon seed spitting contests as kids
Along with the aforementioned reasons Some species are too low-yield to bother with commercially
like this
like this