Tomatoes: People Love Them Or Hate Them

Plant First Grown In South America

Tomatoes! People either love them or hate them.

Tomatoes are popular with gardeners because they’re easy to grow in almost any soil.

Two or three plants will yield enough tomatoes for a family and some to share with your neighbors.

Tomatoes have quite a history. They were first grown in South America.

In the 1500’s, Spanish explorers took them home to Europe where they became very popular in Spain and Italy. The Italians, in particular, developed many famous tomato sauces.

Can you imagine Italian cooking without tomatoes?

When tomatoes were brought to North America, they were seen as exotic and called “love apples” because they were thought of as an aphrodisiac.

At the very least, they

could cause one to fall in love. They were also said to be poisonous because they are related to the deadly nightshade.

During the 1800’s, an adventurer would advertise that he would eat a tomato on the steps of the town hall in little towns across America.

People would pay as much as $5 a piece to watch this spectacle.

The showman would make a drama of it — peeling the tomato first, then cutting it into pieces and eating each piece slowly to build the suspense.

The crowd would go away disappointed when he simply wiped his mouth with his handkerchief and did not fall down dead before their eyes.

Tomatoes are very nutritious, rich in vitamins A and C and antioxidants which help prevent cancer.

Tomatoes are beautiful, too. It’s a compliment to say that a girl is “some tomato!”

I have been known to make a meal on a nice beefsteak tomato with just a little salt.

People who don’t like tomatoes should try more than one kind. Tomatoes don’t look the same or taste the same.

According to Mike Mcgrath: “There are hundreds — perhaps thousands — of differently named tomatoes out there, thanks to the determined seed-savers who have ensured that we can enjoy the looks (and often superior flavor) of such varieties as Mr. Stripey, as well as colorfully-named creatures like Big Rainbow, Black Krim, Great White, Purple Calabash, Pineapple, Pink Grapefruit, Banana Legs, Garden Peach (yes, the fruit itself has fuzzy skin) and Evergreen (which stays bright green even after it turns dead ripe!). Don’t stop till you’ve tasted them all!”

And that’s the Antioch Mountain.

view

from