I’m not here to judge; I understand. Fish (and most seafood) doesn’t taste like food to me, much to my unending dismay.
Our daughter can’t stand raw tomatoes, but absolutely delights in just about anything made from them: Italian food, salsas, chili, soup, bbq sauce, whatever. I looked this up, and it’s actually reasonably common. Food scientists theorize that it’s because raw tomatoes have far higher levels of glutamate than other vegetables. Also, 9% of Europeans actually have an allergic reaction to tomatoes.
On the other hand, in another survey tomatoes are overwhelmingly the favorite vegetable of 89% of the respondents, closely followed by carrots, onions, and green beans (it was a ranked and weighted survey). Tomatoes are certainly my favorite vegetable. In fact, there are very few vegetables that I don’t like. I don’t go out of my way for a lot of the root vegetables, even though I like them. I don’t like radishes. I used to like them, but the last few times I bought some I wondered why I did that.
In mid summer, I usually eat five tomatoes a week. I do buy smaller ones, though, smaller than a tennis ball but larger than a golf ball, because my rule is that once you cut a tomato, you have to eat all of it. I take a couple-three-four slices out of the middle, and eat the heel and around the stem as a “chef’s treat” while making my omelet, sandwich, burger, salad, whatever else I’m making.
By this time of year I start getting tired of them, which is fine. This is when the fresh tomato supply starts to wane, here in the Northeast and Mid Atlantic. We’ll continue to get vine ripened until the third week of the month, then the windowsill ripened through October, and then it’s cherry tomatoes until next May. My experience is that grape tomatoes (not cherry) suck. Winter heirloom tomatoes suck, usually. Grocery store Roma tomatoes suck. Grocery store tomatoes on the vine are generally marginal, but sometimes they are actually okay, and other times they suck. The best winter tomatoes are the cherry tomatoes with “sugar” and “flavor” on the packaging: sugar bombs, sugar rush, flavor bombs, etc. Oh, and Camparis are pretty reliable. And a big shout out for Kumato tomatoes, the small brown tomatoes that come in a cardboard sleeve. We don’t get those here any more. But they kick ass.
Our daughter can’t stand raw tomatoes, but absolutely delights in just about anything made from them: Italian food, salsas, chili, soup, bbq sauce, whatever. I looked this up, and it’s actually reasonably common. Food scientists theorize that it’s because raw tomatoes have far higher levels of glutamate than other vegetables. Also, 9% of Europeans actually have an allergic reaction to tomatoes.
On the other hand, in another survey tomatoes are overwhelmingly the favorite vegetable of 89% of the respondents, closely followed by carrots, onions, and green beans (it was a ranked and weighted survey). Tomatoes are certainly my favorite vegetable. In fact, there are very few vegetables that I don’t like. I don’t go out of my way for a lot of the root vegetables, even though I like them. I don’t like radishes. I used to like them, but the last few times I bought some I wondered why I did that.
In mid summer, I usually eat five tomatoes a week. I do buy smaller ones, though, smaller than a tennis ball but larger than a golf ball, because my rule is that once you cut a tomato, you have to eat all of it. I take a couple-three-four slices out of the middle, and eat the heel and around the stem as a “chef’s treat” while making my omelet, sandwich, burger, salad, whatever else I’m making.
By this time of year I start getting tired of them, which is fine. This is when the fresh tomato supply starts to wane, here in the Northeast and Mid Atlantic. We’ll continue to get vine ripened until the third week of the month, then the windowsill ripened through October, and then it’s cherry tomatoes until next May. My experience is that grape tomatoes (not cherry) suck. Winter heirloom tomatoes suck, usually. Grocery store Roma tomatoes suck. Grocery store tomatoes on the vine are generally marginal, but sometimes they are actually okay, and other times they suck. The best winter tomatoes are the cherry tomatoes with “sugar” and “flavor” on the packaging: sugar bombs, sugar rush, flavor bombs, etc. Oh, and Camparis are pretty reliable. And a big shout out for Kumato tomatoes, the small brown tomatoes that come in a cardboard sleeve. We don’t get those here any more. But they kick ass.








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