Don’t even try to argue with me on this – there’s no reason to eat anything but locally grown tomatoes for the entire month of August. Grocery stores, farmers’ markets and roadside stands abound with plum tomatoes for sauces, cherry tomatoes for snacking and huge tomatoes for slicing
and stuffing.
Maybe it’s compensation for our blazingly hot summers. Heat seeps right through the thin skin and into the tender heart of this lush fruit. I like mine red, ripe and juicy. I enjoy a Cherokee Purple, German Pink or Green Zebra tomato just as much as the next food freak, but the taste of a homegrown beefsteak tomato transports me to my grandmother’s garden. She and I picked buckets full but always chose one to eat warm from the vine with just a little salt from a shaker Grandmother carried in her pocket. Update the ritual with Fleur de Sel if you must, but try this treat.
Speaking of rituals, you could travel to Buñol, Spain, for La Tomatina. Billed as a festival, it’s really the world’s largest tomato fight. If getting pelted with 125,000 kilos of squished tomatoes in eastern Spain isn’t your thing, consider attending Iron Barley’s first-ever Tomatofest on Aug. 14 from 1 to 6 p.m.
Gen Coghill, co-owner of Iron Barley, got the idea from regulars who once hosted a party inspired by a huge bag of homegrown tomatoes. Mussels with tomatoes, BLT sandwiches and tomato surprises will be on the menu. Coghill chose special wines to complement the flavor of tomatoes, as well as brews from O’Fallon Brewery and New Belgium Brewery. Additionally, Jackie Jones will make her signature Bloody Marys and Tomato Martinis using freshly juiced tomatoes.
Coghill has planned three contests for customers willing to share homegrown tomato goodness. The categories are: most unusual tomato, judges’ choice of a decorative item made with real tomatoes and best tomato recipe, evaluated from a covered dish contestants bring to the restaurant ready for the judges to taste. First, second and third prizes will be awarded in each category.
Clayton Farmers’ Market’s annual Heirloom Tomato Fest will take place on Aug. 13, and feature amateur cooking and biggest and sweetest tomato contests. Well-known St. Louis chefs will serve samples of tomato dishes to the hungry attendees. Another friendly competition happening this month is at Bayer’s Garden Shops, Inc. Sylvia Bayer said customers can bring oversize tomatoes to Bayer’s on Wednesdays for a chance to win bragging rights and prizes at both locations in St. Louis on Hampton Avenue and in Imperial on Old State Road.
At Bayer’s, tomato plants outsell other vegetable plants combined by ratios of more than four to one. “Most of our customers choose more than one variety, from the little grape tomatoes to patio tomatoes the size of a dinner roll to the bigger ones like Beefsteaks,” Bayer said. “Our customers have become very knowledgeable about tomatoes. We offer plums, yellows and pinks in addition to the reds, but the Better Boy family, including Big Boys and Better Girls, outsells them all.” Bayer noted more nurseries now carry heirloom varieties of tomatoes as plants for the adventurous gardener.
The fabled tomato, a New World plant transported from Central America to Europe in the 16th century, has fairly dominated the vegetable scene ever since, in everything from salsas to spaghetti sauce. By botanical definition, tomatoes are fruits – as are pea pods, squash, cucumbers, peppers and even corn kernels – but in our food culture, we consider them vegetables. In fact, in 1893 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that tomatoes are vegetables. Tax money, rather than botanical purity, was at the heart of the court case.
Fascinating as history and politics and food fights can be, let’s put all that aside to enjoy locally grown tomatoes in friendly camaraderie this August.
This article appears in Aug 1-31, 2005.