For two months now, I have been craving a tomato. I’m not talking about just any tomato, I’m talking about one that’s so big, just one slice covers an entire slice of bread. And I want it to be so red and juicy, it looks as if it’s bleeding.
To me, nothing tastes better than toasted bread with either mayo or melted butter on it, topped with a thick slice of fresh-from-the-garden tomato, sprinkled with just a smidge of salt and pepper.
Simple? Yes. Delicious? Yesssss!
Ironically, when I was younger, my skin always would break out the day after I ate tomatoes. My mom told me it was because of the acid content in them, so for the sake of my complexion, I kept my distance from tomatoes for quite a few years.
But now that I’m old and my skin is as tough as leather (and you rarely see zits on a cow), I can eat a bushel of tomatoes and not break out.
However, my quest to find the perfect tomato thus far has been…well, nothing short of frustrating.
I’ve learned that those tomatoes still on the vine in the supermarket's produce department are deceiving. On the outside, they are bright red and perfectly shaped. On the inside, they are pale and hard with crunchy white centers.
And those orange-colored California-grown tomatoes make me wonder if the poor Californians ever have tasted a really great tomato. The last one I tried had seeds so big inside, I thought I’d mistakenly bought a miniature watermelon.
I still remember the summer back when my neighbor, who faithfully planted a vegetable garden every year, asked me if I wanted some tomatoes. I nearly pole-vaulted over his fence, I was so excited.
“I'm not sure why, but this year has been a bad year for them,” he explained. “I usually have more tomatoes than I know what to do with, but there are only a few really good ones that came up this season. Still, help yourself to them.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I walked through the rows in his garden and carefully selected two tomatoes – the biggest, ripest ones I could find. I also spotted a few other contenders, but not wanting to appear greedy, I left them there.
That night, I eagerly sliced into one of the tomatoes and made a tomato sandwich. One bite and I was in heaven.
“I haven’t heard you ‘mmmm’ that much since the night you went off your low-carb diet and ate an entire strawberry-cheesecake,” my husband, a confirmed tomato-hater (unless the tomato has been transformed into pizza sauce), said.
“These tomatoes are just so amazing!” My words sounded muffled because I’d stuffed an additional tomato slice into my mouth. “I’m now regretting I didn’t take a few more.”
“Well,” my husband joked, “it’s dark out now, so you could always sneak over there and pick some. He'll probably think it was just some hungry animal that took them.”
I laughed, but deep inside I seriously was considering the idea. The only problem was I wouldn’t be able to see the mesh-wire fence around the garden in the dark, and using a flashlight might blow my cover because I was pretty sure hungry animals weren't in the habit of carrying flashlights when foraging. Visions of my neighbor finding me impaled on one of his metal fenceposts in the morning finally, although reluctantly, forced me to nix the idea.
The next day, thanks to my neighbor, I craved more tomatoes...to the point of distraction. So I drove to an open-air market, where I thought I’d finally struck gold. Not only were the tomatoes there bright red, they were huge, like small cantaloupes. In fact, they were so huge, the two of them I bought cost me the equivalent of a nice lunch at a restaurant.
I didn’t care about the price, though. I figured they were worth 10 times that amount if either one of them turned out to be my dream tomato.
But when I got home and sliced them, I was crushed to discover they were distinctly un-juicy inside with a strange kind of pale, sinewy, road-map-like appearance.
So I finally gave up.
A year later, however, there seemed to be a glimmer of hope. I was out in the yard when my neighbor came over to once again ask me if I wanted some tomatoes from his garden.
My heartbeat quickened and my mouth began to water as I thought back to those two tomatoes he'd allowed me to pick the year before. I silently prayed he’d grown a much larger crop of them this time so maybe I could have four, or even five. And even better, they were free!
I just about knocked him over as I made a beeline for his tomato patch, when he suddenly added, “Yeah, I have a nice batch of cherry tomatoes this year – more than I can ever use. So take all you want.”
I stopped dead. Cherry tomatoes? Those tiny, marble-sized tomatoes that would take about 125 to make a decent sandwich?
“Don’t you have any of those yummy big ones like you gave me last year?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nah. I didn’t even bother after last year’s disappointing crop. Even the cucumbers back then came out looking like golf balls. It was weird. So I cut way back this year, to give the soil some rest, thinking I might have depleted it of nutrients or something.”
“Thanks for the offer,” I said, sighing, my disappointment obvious. “But cherry tomatoes just aren’t big enough for me.”
Unfortunately I'll never know if he succeeded in growing another crop of the delicious big tomatoes after that because we moved away.
When I recently told one of my friends about my current quest for the perfect tomato, he suggested I grow my own. I laughed. I have such a black thumb, I can’t even grow mold on stale bread. All I have to do is stare at a plant and it shrivels up in terror and drops dead. I’d be all but guaranteed to grow a crop of tomatoes that look like raisins…not that the plants ever would get that far anyway. One inch tall is a record for me, no matter what I've tried to grow.
But I’m not giving up. I will find a big, red, juicy native-grown tomato before the season is over, even if I have to rent a deer costume and sneak into people’s gardens.
So if you look out of your window and happen to see a strange-looking deer standing upright in your garden and holding an armload of tomatoes…don’t shoot.
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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
