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Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

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Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#131

Post by avereveard »

imp0cat wrote: post #128
foobarian wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of quality perhaps. But two things I noticed about Croatia (and maybe wider Europe) food: 1) They don't know coffee. There is no equivalent of the American half&half creamer. 2) I find that there is not that much in the way of vegetables when eating out. I wonder if perhaps it's a cultural thing where you give your guest the best, i.e. most caloric/tasty food possible. The tavern/grill places are espec…

This! You can have vegetables with your steak/cevapi/pljeskavica/whatever, but they will be drenched in oil and fried. ;)

Just get fiber trough ajvar, problem solved

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#132

Post by jve »

wafflemaker wrote: post #14

I'm Polish expat living in Norway. There are no tomatoes to be had in Norway... Just kidding. I'm actually kind of alright with the small ones (pearl tomatoes), any other don't taste like tomatoes. I believe, that the Norwegian people are so used to blandly tasting vegetables, that the worst and least ripe product parties are send to Norway. But my wife and her family are tomato people. Every time we visit Poland or…

I worked for a few years at egg manufacturing plant. I was entitled to quite some eggs per month. I also had access / relatives who would give us some home chicken eggs. Personally, I don't taste any difference. Yeah, the yolk is different color, but I don't bother.

But I'm a point in statistics where I'm not someone who can do taste tests as I cannot discern slight changes in recipe.

I live in a baltic state and as for tomatoes, I always enjoy when someone gives home-grown ones. When it is season they are OK in supermarket too. But nothing beats homegrown ones. However when there is no season, I don't like market tomatoes - "tastes as rubber".

> Norway is not part of the EU and can have it's own, more strict rules.

EU doesn't prevent having more strict rules than baseline they set.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#133

Post by paranoidrobot »

mastazi wrote: post #119
paranoidrobot wrote: post #118

I have very similar memories as a child, and also find it very difficult to get good tomatoes. There's great looking tomatoes, but they don't smell or taste right, and they are either too hard or floury mealy things. When I can get good tomatoes - my favourite thing is to have them on toast. Just slice the tomato, put it on some toast with butter, (or olive oil). Breakfast, lunch, dinner... it's simple but delicious.…

I also grew up eating traditional tomatoes, my favourite thing to do is toasting a slice of sourdough bread then cutting a tomato in half and smashing the two halves on the bread (it's a similar process to making smashed avo on toast - it won't work with supermarket tomatoes because they're too hard and not juicy enough); I add olive oil, a pinch of salt and sometimes oregano. If you have a Harris Farm Markets near y…

The smashed-tomato thing seems... inappropriate to do to a nice tomato. I'm sure it tastes great.

I'm no longer in NSW, but Coles recently had some "Heirloom Tomatoes" which looked like the ones from the article. Smelled great, but were all floury in the middle. Transport and cold storage seems to do bad things to them.

There's another fruit & veg shop nearby that sometimes has good tomatoes, but even at their best nothing like the Anna Bay tomatoes.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#134

Post by [deleted] »

apavlinovic wrote: post #30

I am Croatian, and I know exactly what the article is referring to. So much that we decided to grow our own tomatoes this year. The imported junk we get from Netherlands is abysmal compared to anything grown locally, and the reality is that we want the good stuff for ourselves, not the tourists. We were very lucky to have a great harvest of cherry, monte carlo, and plum tomatoes this year, all of which serve a differ…

[deleted]

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#135

Post by INTPenis »

I lived further inland, in the rural areas west of Osijek. My family still to this day grow their own vegetables. And they share vegetables among the villagers. So if you have too much paprika, you give to others, they have too much cabbage, they give to you. It's amazing for a city dweller like me to re-visit that world.

And my family near the coast grows olives. Every summer in Croatia there is this constant bartering of olive oil, rakija, vegetables, wine, back and forth between your visits with various family members. You can't leave one place without having some in your car's boot.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#136

Post by brna »

So, there is this guy in Croatia who specializes in collecting, cataloging, and sharing tomato seeds for free. He also creates his own varieties.

https://www.volim-rajcice.com/popis-rajcica.html https://www.facebook.com/groups/carstvo.rajcica/

A big kudos to Dražen from volim-rajčice (<3 tomatoes)

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#137

Post by throwaway48540 »

jve wrote: post #132
wafflemaker wrote: post #14

I'm Polish expat living in Norway. There are no tomatoes to be had in Norway... Just kidding. I'm actually kind of alright with the small ones (pearl tomatoes), any other don't taste like tomatoes. I believe, that the Norwegian people are so used to blandly tasting vegetables, that the worst and least ripe product parties are send to Norway. But my wife and her family are tomato people. Every time we visit Poland or…

I worked for a few years at egg manufacturing plant. I was entitled to quite some eggs per month. I also had access / relatives who would give us some home chicken eggs. Personally, I don't taste any difference. Yeah, the yolk is different color, but I don't bother. But I'm a point in statistics where I'm not someone who can do taste tests as I cannot discern slight changes in recipe. I live in a baltic state and as…

EU does prevent stricter rules. If a product meeting regulations can't be sold somewhere in the single market area, it's grounds for EU court case. That's why all the food producing states like Austria, France, Italy go around it with tax breaks and "product of X" stamps.

Note that while a state can have stricter rules for production, they can't prevent import and sale of products from less strict states of the single market area.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#138

Post by stiray »

A word of warning.

Personally I am not touching the "homegrown stuff" vegetables from the home growers I don't personally know as: a few years back, it was uncovered (not Croatians only, this was wide spread in Adriatic region) smuggling EU forbidden pesticides from non EU countries into EU and selling them as they did improve harvest a lot. You can imagine this practice is impossible to control effectively and this is a huge issue, but also a huge potential for earnings.

It was also shown, that the home growers have mostly no education about pesticides usage and are using them by "over the thumb" rule, where the levels in vegetables can quickly go over the allowed levels (from before the pesticide was forbidden) and as such can be far more harmful than controlled vegetables from store chains/distributors that have their own laboratories to check for the toxic content - they are responsible and fined for what they distribute.

You can imagine, the nearest countries to Schengen borders were most affected. At that time Croatia wasn't in EU and it was source of pesticides for nearby EU countries, now they are probably coming from Serbia and Bosnia, while homegrown vegetables are not controlled and just sold on markets.

Same goes for homegrown vegetables in Hungary, Slovenia and Italy. If you personally know the seller, go for it, their vegetables are surely better by taste then hydroponically grown in greenhouses, but I wouldn't take risks by random seller.

Now for the "Adriatic islands" (and coastal region overall) vegetables, they have very poor soil, not a lot of it and also the rain is scarce, so any improvements for larger harvest are very welcomed to the locals (that are barely able to supply themself, not million tourists flocking to the country each year) and I would imagine the risk is even higher there.

I don't want to say, that this is a general behavior, but without any effective control, there is just no way to know.

Europol as source, not some tourist influencers or fake news site:

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/hit-...

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/2-04...

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#139

Post by rdtsc »

stiray wrote: post #138

A word of warning. Personally I am not touching the "homegrown stuff" vegetables from the home growers I don't personally know as: a few years back, it was uncovered (not Croatians only, this was wide spread in Adriatic region) smuggling EU forbidden pesticides from non EU countries into EU and selling them as they did improve harvest a lot. You can imagine this practice is impossible to control effectively and this…

Absolutely, I know someone, who knows someone doing exactly what you described. EU has been eating a lot of “locally grown” garlic actually grown in China and other similar things.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#140

Post by stiray »

rdtsc wrote: post #139
stiray wrote: post #138

A word of warning. Personally I am not touching the "homegrown stuff" vegetables from the home growers I don't personally know as: a few years back, it was uncovered (not Croatians only, this was wide spread in Adriatic region) smuggling EU forbidden pesticides from non EU countries into EU and selling them as they did improve harvest a lot. You can imagine this practice is impossible to control effectively and this…

Absolutely, I know someone, who knows someone doing exactly what you described. EU has been eating a lot of “locally grown” garlic actually grown in China and other similar things.

This is something else (faking country of origin, basically a very common scam) and actually not an issue in regards to toxicity as you cant import the china garlic into EU without checking it for forbidden chemicals. It is not locally grown, but it is not harmful as you couldn't import it in this case.

Similar scam is getting a fish or squid in local Adriatic coast restaurants, where in most cases you are getting frozen fish/squid from Asia. There is barely any restaurant serving local fish (and they will lie about origin and mask the taste with excessive amounts of garlic), as most of local fish harvest is being sold immediately in the morning to fish markets internally, to Zagreb and Ljubljana. Barely any fish stays in coastal region as capital cities users are able to pay much more for it. While you will pay dearly for restaurants that are actually able to get a grasp on fresh local Adriatic fish, you can forget about 20 euros bills, and rather add another 0.

Or "home made" virgin olive oil mixed with olive oil from cheaper countries or even ordinary oil. Most of tourists will never be able to figure it out. Another thing that shouldn't be bought from someone you dont know personally.

The warning I have posted is about poisoning the locally grown and uncontrolled vegetables with forbidden pesticides bought on black market.

Btw, it is a rarely known fact that the cacao was really bad regarding the pesticide content before the EU took a hit on cacao producers and they needed to adapt to be able to sell on EU market. Now the whole world is eating much more healthy chocolate. :)

And it is continuing, no deforestation etc.: https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/cocoa/buyer-requiremen...

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