In praise of ugly fruit

Why can't you get a decent tomato at a supermarket? People complain that you can't get a decent tomato in January, but I have little sympathy for that. It's january, people! Tomatoes in January have to travel all the way from the antarctic.  What I am talking about is why you can't get a decent tomato in August.

Sure there are those crazy "vine-ripened" tomatoes where they leave little pieces of the vine still attached as some sort of evidence that this thing came from a plant. But do we need to pay those prices?  And even the best "vine-ripened" tomato can't compete with a backyard tomato in august.

This time of year, the supermarkets should be over-brimming with piles of juicy, red, locally grown tomatoes.  But last night, when I ran out of my local tomatoes from Vic's and was forced to send one of my boys to S-way to buy tomatoes, he returned with wooden, pale and completely juice-less fruit.

When I was a boy, my father returned from a trip to africa with a big roll of Guava fruit leather.  Much to the dismay of my family, I think I ate the whole roll. I couldn't get enough of that sweet, almost floral, gauva goodness. Until recently, I had never tasted a fresh guava. On my first trip to Mexico, we stayed at an all inclusive resort. On the buffet everyday they had a wide selection of beautiful fruit, mangoes, papayas, pineapples, melons and little green round fruit.   I asked what these fruit were and was told they were guavas.  I was so excited. Finally, twenty five years after my first guava experience, I was going to try the real thing. "blah". These little green fruit were completely bland. None of those unctuous, floral, tropical fruity flavours I remembered. I was utterly disapointed. Crushed. A precious childhood memory dashed upon the rocks.  It was like discovering that Santa Claus was a lie.

The next year I returned to mexico and stayed in the old part of town. There was a little hole in the wall grocer just down the hill from our condo. Clearly this store catered strictly to locals.  There was a big basket of ugly yellow fruit covered in brown spots. But the aroma grabbed me. It brought back a flood of childhood memories? Are these guava? I asked. "si senor". Is this how you are supposed to eat them? I asked. She had no idea what i was saying. Eventually between my three spanish words and her 3 english words we determined that these guava were perfectly ripe. I bought a big bag, took them back, and ate. All my guava dreams were realised. All those flavours I remembered came flooding back. Joy. Bliss. A revelation came to me in the shape of ugly fruit.

The all-inclusive resort had to appeal to North American sensitivities. The fruit had to be firm, green and blemish-free. That is how we like to buy our produce north of the Mason-Dixon. We don't want mishapen fruit, we reject squishy tomatoes, and we would rather buy green bananas than bananas with brown spots on them. But when buying food, what is more important, the look or the taste?

For decades, through careful breeding, (I am not even talking about GMO stuff) we have been developing produce that meets the requirements of a mass, supermarket audience. Fruits and vegetables are deveoped for colour, consistency of size and shape, and for shelf life. Taste never enters into the equation. As a result, we have bins full of perfect tomatoes with no flavour.

Another problem is that our produce, especially tomatoes and tree fruit, is all picked to early. Fruit is harvested under-ripe and then allowed to ripen in warehouses. Food service distributors don't even talk about ripening, but use the term staging: "ship stage 3 tomatoes".  And the fruit gets put on the supermarket shelves still under ripe. Pears aren't really tasty until they are soft, yellow and starting to go brown. But the produce manager wants to sell them bright green and rock hard.  When his pears go yellow, he throws them out. And because we buy groceries in large carloads to last us a week or more, we want to buy the fruit underipe, so it can sit in our fridges without going bad. 

The solution is to stop shipping tomatoes so far. The stores should be buying them from the closest place they can procure them. Then they can buy them ripe. We the consumer should shop daily, go to small markets instead of doing the big supermarket shop. 

And we should start demanding ugly fruit.

a song by guy clark:

Ain't nothin' in the world that I like better
Than bacon & lettuce & homegrown tomatoes
Up in the mornin' out in the garden

Get you a ripe one don't get a hard one
Plant `em in the spring eat `em in the summer
All winter with out `em's a culinary bummer
I forget all about the sweatin' & diggin'
Everytime I go out & pick me a big one

Homegrown tomatoes homegrown tomatoes
What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can't buy
That's true love & homegrown tomatoes

You can go out to eat & that's for sure
But it's nothin' a homegrown tomato won't cure
Put `em in a salad, put `em in a stew
You can make your very own tomato juice
Eat `em with egss, eat `em with gravy
Eat `em with beans, pinto or navy
Put `em on the site put `em in the middle
Put a homegrown tomato on a hotcake griddle

If I's to change this life I lead
I'd be Johnny Tomato Seed
`Cause I know what this country needs
Homegrown tomatoes in every yard you see
When I die don't bury me
In a box in a cemetary
Out in the garden would be much better

then I could be pushin' up homegrown tomatoes