Falling in love with our local fruits and veggies
Just over a month ago, ravenous after a regular workout sessions at the gym, I decided, on a whim, to change what I was going to have for lunch and have a toasted tomato sandwich.
My wife was out playing golf, and a quick scan of the contents of our fridge had shown me that I needed to change my menu choice immediately, since I had forgotten about having already eaten the last of the eggs I had been thinking of having. So I opted for the tomato sandwich. It didn’t take me long to discover that I had made a poor decision, because irrespective of how good it had looked in the fridge‚ and it had‚ the tomato I selected and prepared so carefully was most decidedly lacking in flavour and thrill value, even heavily saltand-peppered.
The texture of tomato, the way it felt in my mouth when I bit into it‚ was somewhere in the range between the root plant the Mexicans call jicama, and the more common one up here that we call potato.
The taste was either non-existent or unrecognizable and the crunch of the central core, which might even have been a bone, was disconcerting. Neither of those elements bore any resemblance to the tomato flavour I had expected to enjoy, and the notion of a tomato with a bone in it was not one on which I wanted to dwell.
When my wife arrived home, I told her about the experience (I remember I was feeling a bit put-upon) and asked her why she would buy such tasteless, featureless garbage and expect anyone to eat it.
The pity-filled look she gave me in response is still in my mind.
Those were Prime Tomatoes, she informed me solemnly. Commercially produced, hothouse-grown and presented still on the vine for freshness, they were splendid looking, firmly fleshed, and utterly tasteless.
She added, for emphasis, that not only were they virtually indigestible, they were completely lacking in character and “tomato-ness‚” and, in the final analysis, they were as good as you’re going to get anywhere, nowadays, when you are expected to settle for the colour and the weight of the things and to ignore, entirely, the absence of everything you used to love about fresh tomatoes.
After that, I accepted that I know next to nothing about shopping for fresh produce, and I deferred to my wife’s superior knowledge of such things. But I still loathe the memory of that awful, tasteless sandwich.
But then, a matter of mere weeks later, summer came along and smiling angels reminded me from all directions of how lucky we are to live right here in the Okanagan.
Our local fruit stands and farm gate suppliers are rich with home-grown produce again, our tomatoes suddenly taste the way they’re supposed to taste, and all’s right with this tomato lover’s personal and particular world.
My own ignorance about such common things prior to the tomato taste upheaval (and I now think of the skills required as the art of finding and buying fine, fresh food) was so profound that, until a mere two years ago, I didn’t know we could buy superbly sweet, locally grown cantaloupe right here in the Valley.
I knew we could grow pumpkins, because I had seen the pumpkin patches everywhere around Halloween.
I knew a bit about the fruit grown here in summer and autumn, but I had no awareness of the range available, or of the wealth and richness of the other fresh vegetables and root crops that we could find simply by taking a short drive and keeping our eyes open for tiny, tucked-away places selling splendid food grown on their own property.
We have some of the sweetest corn grown anywhere; fresh beets and beans and broccoli with enough built-in flavour and texture to require almost no enhancement in cooking; onions of all kinds and garlic and shallots large enough to make you raise your eyebrows in astonishment; and the profusion of other gifts like salad greens and lettuce, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, eggplant, and an entire gamut of peppers and chilis.
And let’s not forget the panoply of tomato choices on offer, ranging from succulent beefsteaks and delicious Romas to tiny, variously coloured cherry tomatoes.
They are all home-grown, all local, and unfortunately, all limited to the summer production season. While they are producing, though, these crops, including the plentiful local fruit crops, are magnificent and incomparable to anything that is imported in the non-growing months from outside.
Next winter, I’ll be buying sun dried tomatoes and using them to add flavour to my sandwiches as I wait for summertime. My days of eating styrofoam veggies are over.