Philosophy
It is mid-September. Like so many others I have been drowning in tomatoes for the last four weeks. Large, beautiful, tasty, fresh tomatoes. Yet, I go to our dining hall or any restaurant around and want a tomato on my sandwich, it is the same flat, tasteless red thing as always. After the softball game, we took the kids to the Chinese buffet in town and the cantaloupe was awful. Cantaloupe is in season! If there was ever as time when we should all be going, "Oooooh. THAT's a good lope," this is it.
I get the fact that if we insist on having tomatoes and melons in February that we will end up with produce that comes from very far away and is grown for volume rather than flavor. Anyone who wants an end-of-summer tomato in the dead of winter will be disappointed. But why don't we get end-of-summer tomatoes at the end of summer. Or, more pointedly, why do we put up with it? Why don't we have a problem with the fact that, absent sweet and fatty, our foods have no flavor? Is it a matter of acculturation, that we've grown to expect dull? Is it ignorance, have we lost the collective memory of what delicious tastes like? Why do we allow them to even put the word "fruit" on fruit cocktail? Why do we allow them to serve brown flaccid green beans to our children in elementary school cafeterias? Is it that we've lost all connection with production? Why do we let them get away with literally shoving this bland not good for your body, only good for the bottom line corporate food down our throats when local farmers are struggling? Why aren't we having tomato riots?
- Artificial Flavors
TheWife and I worked hard to keep the kids eating real food as long as we can before the larger cultural influences started exerting their unhealthy pressures. The less short of the short people had a class camping trip and on it, she tried soda. Come...
- In Praise Of Mulberries
Last night, after watering the garden, I laid down in the hammock for a few minutes and then wandered down to the mulberry trees for a little dessert. We're in peak mulberry season and we have four trees that produce copiously. One, in particular,...
- Space Food
"Space-age food served up with seeds of success" by Xin Dingding and Jin Zhu September 4th, 2012 SPAVE TRAVEL An eggplant the size of a basketball, and a cucumber half a meter long seem, at first glance, out of this world. They are, literally....
- Ethylene And Tin...serendipity
Remember the tired tomato vines at this time of year. Some tomatoes were the size of golf balls and less and some were near ripening...the size of baseballs. And what was done? The vines were ground up and destined for the compost heap while the salvageable...
- Science And Stove Top Goodies
"At the Stove, a Dash of Science, a Pinch of Folklore" by Kenneth Chang January 6th, 2009 The New York Times My mother, when she still cooked, always added a dash of sugar to the vegetables she stir-fried. She said it preserved the bright green of the...
Philosophy
The Great Tomato Riots
It is mid-September. Like so many others I have been drowning in tomatoes for the last four weeks. Large, beautiful, tasty, fresh tomatoes. Yet, I go to our dining hall or any restaurant around and want a tomato on my sandwich, it is the same flat, tasteless red thing as always. After the softball game, we took the kids to the Chinese buffet in town and the cantaloupe was awful. Cantaloupe is in season! If there was ever as time when we should all be going, "Oooooh. THAT's a good lope," this is it.
I get the fact that if we insist on having tomatoes and melons in February that we will end up with produce that comes from very far away and is grown for volume rather than flavor. Anyone who wants an end-of-summer tomato in the dead of winter will be disappointed. But why don't we get end-of-summer tomatoes at the end of summer. Or, more pointedly, why do we put up with it? Why don't we have a problem with the fact that, absent sweet and fatty, our foods have no flavor? Is it a matter of acculturation, that we've grown to expect dull? Is it ignorance, have we lost the collective memory of what delicious tastes like? Why do we allow them to even put the word "fruit" on fruit cocktail? Why do we allow them to serve brown flaccid green beans to our children in elementary school cafeterias? Is it that we've lost all connection with production? Why do we let them get away with literally shoving this bland not good for your body, only good for the bottom line corporate food down our throats when local farmers are struggling? Why aren't we having tomato riots?
- Artificial Flavors
TheWife and I worked hard to keep the kids eating real food as long as we can before the larger cultural influences started exerting their unhealthy pressures. The less short of the short people had a class camping trip and on it, she tried soda. Come...
- In Praise Of Mulberries
Last night, after watering the garden, I laid down in the hammock for a few minutes and then wandered down to the mulberry trees for a little dessert. We're in peak mulberry season and we have four trees that produce copiously. One, in particular,...
- Space Food
"Space-age food served up with seeds of success" by Xin Dingding and Jin Zhu September 4th, 2012 SPAVE TRAVEL An eggplant the size of a basketball, and a cucumber half a meter long seem, at first glance, out of this world. They are, literally....
- Ethylene And Tin...serendipity
Remember the tired tomato vines at this time of year. Some tomatoes were the size of golf balls and less and some were near ripening...the size of baseballs. And what was done? The vines were ground up and destined for the compost heap while the salvageable...
- Science And Stove Top Goodies
"At the Stove, a Dash of Science, a Pinch of Folklore" by Kenneth Chang January 6th, 2009 The New York Times My mother, when she still cooked, always added a dash of sugar to the vegetables she stir-fried. She said it preserved the bright green of the...