La Pomme D'Amour

There is way too much fear and loathing going on in our nation and the world. Actually, any fear and loathing is too much, but the Oracle is going to take the day off from politics, damn Republicans, war, damn Republicans, idiots in the Florida Legislature, damn Republicans - whoops, I think I created a redundancy there. Oh, well.

La Pomme D'Amour (The Love Apple), the name the French adoringly gave the tomato in the 16th century has been making the news a bit lately, and that's where I will direct my attention today.

People have picketed local Publix stores over the low pay and poor working conditions of the farm laborers who pick the fruit for which Publix charges an arm and a leg.  Stories about women who gave birth to severely deformed children after being exposed to pesticides and chemicals in the tomato fields have been making the rounds, too.

For all of the hardships endured by the farm laborers and their families, not to mention the super high prices being charged for those love apples, what are we consumers getting for our money? Not much more than a hard, tasteless red ball. The reasons for this are fairly simple. The commercial growers pick the fruit before it has a chance to ripen naturally - while it is still green and hard. Also, cold can degrade tomato flavor, so tomatoes should be stored on your kitchen counter, where the temperatures are above 50° F (10° C), instead of in your refrigerator's crisper.

As far as cold storage is concerned, by the time you buy the tomato, it probably is too late. I was shopping at Publix the other day as the produce department was shelving a new batch of "vine ripe" tomatoes. Those tomatoes were already refrigerator cold. There was a double whammy of lost flavor - picking while green and refrigerating. This isn't even including all of the chemicals used to force the color change from green to red. If you were wondering why store-bought tomatoes and those served in most restaurants are so tasteless - well, now you know.

Just before sitting down at the keyboard I went out to the Oracle's garden and picked the first three of the fall crop of home grown tomatoes. For a couple of months now Publix can do as they please with their baseball-hard red globes. We will be enjoying our sweet, juicy, home-grown tomatoes along with our sincere apologies to the migrant farm workers we are putting out of work. I don't feel too bad about this as Rick the Prick Scott, the Florida goobernator, has 700,000 jobs waiting for them. Most any day now.

Is there a point to my ramblings here? No, not really. I think I am just gloating over being able to save some money on the family grocery bill while enjoying tasty home grown veggies. There is one thing of which I am jealous - those commercial growers about ten miles from here across the bay. They grow their tomatoes in the ground.

I unwillingly grow nematodes in the soil here in SOG City. Nematodes, for the uninformed, are those little wormy sons-a-bitches that attack and destroy (among other crops) tomato vines. To avoid the problem, I grow our tomatoes in pots with sterilized potting soil.

Which brings to mind - if you'd like to try a home grown tomato of your own: fill a three or so gallon pot with soil, plant a tomato seedling from the garden store, place the pot in a sunny location, sit in a comfy chair with a brewski in hand, and watch it grow. In no time at all your new drinking buddy should be pooping love apples.