A Fresh Garden Lunch

I'm picking a 2 gallon bucket of tomatoes every afternoon, trying really hard to stay ahead of the miserable stink bugs.  I wish Noah would have stomped on the two stink bugs when they boarded the ark.  When I bring them inside, I place them on platters on the island and let them finish ripening.  When they hit perfection, we eat them.  I'll show some of the other ways we use the tomatoes later this week.  We grow numerous varieties of heirloom tomatoes, so there is a wide assortment of shapes, sizes, and colors.

On Saturday Tricia decided to make BLT's for lunch.  She checked with me to see if it would be okay since for some strange reason, I cannot make myself enjoy eating raw tomatoes.   Each year I try.  She sliced big slabs of tomatoes that resembled steaks and got everything ready.

BLT - Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomatoes

I put a lot of Creole mustard on the bottom slice of bread and began assembling the ingredients to build the perfect sandwich.  A little yellow mustard on the top slice of bread and some salt and pepper to top it off.

I still don't like raw tomatoes by themselves, BUT this sandwich was just doggone good!  So simple and yet so delicious.  We'll eat more of these before the tomato crop comes to an end.

The Poison Apple?

From the Smithsonian magazine article entitled "Why the Tomato was feared in Europe for 200 Years:

In the late 1700s, a large percentage of Europeans feared the tomato.
A nickname for the fruit was the “poison apple” because it was thought that aristocrats got sick and died after eating them, but the truth of the matter was that wealthy Europeans used pewter plates, which were high in lead content. Because tomatoes are so high in acidity, when placed on this particular tableware, the fruit would leach lead from the plate, resulting in many deaths from lead poisoning. No one made this connection between plate and poison at the time; the tomato was picked as the culprit. 

Okay, I don't think tomaotes are poisonous.  We grow a bunch of them.  This year we had a really nice crop of various varieties of heirloom tomatoes.  We made all sorts of stuff with them and have them preserved in several different ways.

But, this year is another year that I tried to eat a raw sliced fresh homegrown tomato with salt and pepper... and I just can't do it.  I don't like raw tomatoes.  I have tried every single year to develop a taste for them, but I can't.  It is a sacrilege, I know.

I can eat them cooked, in pico de gallo, salsa, ketchup, but just now raw tomatoes by themselves.  This past week we made BLTs.  Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato sandwiches with a little homemade herbed chevre (goat cheese) on top.  Wow! Delicious.

But in all fairness, it is not REALLY a raw tomato I'm eating.  It is a raw tomato disguised with flavors of bacon, swiss cheese, lettuce, and goat cheese.

If you notice, I'm not eating off of a pewter plate, so I wasn't poisoned by the tomatoes. Anyway, I'll mark 2017 off the list.  I'll try to eat plain raw tomatoes by themselves in 2018.  Perhaps I will develop a taste for them next year.