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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

#61

Post by MichaelRo »

rini17 wrote: post #59
jowdones wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's depressing. My mother has a fairly large garden (some 1500 sqare meters) and takes quite some amount of labor to tend to it. So you work all spring and early summer only to see the crops wither away... makes you go on depression pills or just abandon the whole darn thing and buy Duch imported plastic vegetables. A bit unrelated, nowadays my mother was telling me a memory from her teenage years in the 60s. I…

1500sqm is absolutely not needed for occasional nutritional enrichment. That's why I mentioned pot on balcony. But yes, being forced as kid to help tending big garden does leave some scars.

>> being forced as kid to help tending big garden does leave some scars

Heh, brings back trauma memories :) But I guess it's countryside vs city life. I see my city-boy kid and his friends, bored, staring at screens whenever they can and generally having a hard time figuring out what to do with their free time. Having grown in the countryside, the answer to that was easy "tend to the crops". It's not backbreaking work but can take huge chunks of your time and it's not exactly enjoyable, I mean I'd definitely have done something else, even staring at a wall but that wasn't an option. And it wasn't just me of course, everyone I knew was doing that. I recall with some amusement a friend of mine, in the context of summer vacation (hence lots of crop tending to do), exclaiming at some point "man, I can't wait for the school to start so I can get some relaxation".

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#62

Post by chongli »

ein0p wrote: post #25
chongli wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letting a tomato go fully ripe on the plant is an easy way to attract birds and lose a substantial amount of the crop. There’s no reason for it either. Once the tomato reaches the breaker stage (starting to change colour) it is internally cut off from the mother plant and will not be adversely affected by being harvested.

If we’re talking the peak flavor tomato that “capitalism” purportedly can’t produce, that is only available when you pick it from the vine, already ripe. It is true that tomatoes will ripen if picked “brown”, but they’re less flavorful than vine ripened. Source: picked a few tons of tomatoes every summer as a kid.

No I’m talking the flavour of the tomatoes from my back yard, some of which I picked brown and others I picked fully red. They tasted identical once ripened indoors. But you don’t need to take my word for it. Google tomato breaker stage.

The difference between store bought tomatoes and home grown is the cultivar. Mine are heirloom tomatoes. They’re much uglier and softer than store bought beefsteak tomatoes, but way tastier. There’s no way these would ever ship because they turn ripe for a few days and then turn to mush. They also bruise incredibly easily.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#63

Post by HarryHirsch »

317070 wrote: post #4
rini17 wrote: post #2

Oh my. Everyone who cares about tomatoes grows their own, supermarkets are for the rest. They are not demanding and will grow anywhere there's sun, including in pot on balcony.

Why is capitalism failing us here? Why do we need to grow our own?

Because market forces, of course, and they look like this: https://newsroom.nmsu.edu/news/nmsu-developing-perfect-green...

A chile pepper optimized for mechanical harvest, because right now the fruit needs to be cut from the stem, but if you can shake it off you can spare yourself the farmworker.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#64

Post by HarryHirsch »

loa_in_ wrote: post #44
nickpp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like all free market failures, the culprit is regulation. Regulated food, local and weekend markets reduced competition by discouraging and removing small retailers until large supermarket chains remained de facto monopolies. Those chains must serve very large number of customers so they must focus on produce that is easy to pick, store and sell. Looks good and survives (even gets ripe during) transit. Taste is often…

I don't understand what is regulated here, so that it prevents small sellers from being competitive. Is it packaging?

He is complaining about grading of fruit, so that the buyer doesn't have to inspect every single delivery but can instead order X fruit, grade Y, and it will conform to standard.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#66

Post by Animats »

schoen wrote: post #49
Animats wrote: post #18

Romanian giant tomato. Buy seeds for US$3.99.[1] This would be a good project for the Open Source Farming Robot. Assuming you actually want a kilogram sized tomato. [1] https://www.davesseed.com/product/romanian-giant-tomato/

Looks like that particular supplier is in Tasmania and only ships to Australia!

It's a variety of beefsteak tomato, and those are widely available. At WalMart, even.[1] They're unusual, but not rare.

[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Beefsteak-Tomato-Plants-Two-Live-...

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#67

Post by WillPostForFood »

317070 wrote: post #4
rini17 wrote: post #2

Oh my. Everyone who cares about tomatoes grows their own, supermarkets are for the rest. They are not demanding and will grow anywhere there's sun, including in pot on balcony.

Why is capitalism failing us here? Why do we need to grow our own?

Do you not have a farmer's market near you? Good tomatoes are available if you want them, and they are in season.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#68

Post by SoftTalker »

specproc wrote: post #40

For those in the audience that have only ever eaten supermarket tomatoes, I'm sorry to say you've probably never really eaten a tomato. I live in a small, agricultural country and the article resonated. Over the last 10 years supermarkets and imported vegetables have become a much more important part of our national diet. It's such an important staple food. Historically very cheap (because widely grown) wildly divers…

It's not really the tomatoes, it's that they are harvested green and then artificially ripened when they are ready to be sold. This allows much longer shelf life but the texture of the flesh and the flavors never fully develop.

Of course different varieties have different flavors but even a standard supermarket "beefsteak" will taste so much better picked ripe off the vine than bought at the store where it has been in a cooler for two months.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#69

Post by SoftTalker »

pnut wrote: post #55
em500 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't comment on the tomatoes, but as far as eggs are concerned, I'm skeptical that any claims about people being able to taste any diffence would hold up in a proper blind taste test. Conclusion from Serious Eats when they attempted to do that: It was pretty clear evidence that as far as eggs go, the mindset of the taster has far more bearing on the flavor of the egg than the egg itself. https://www.seriouseats.co…

I boil six eggs every Sunday and eat one every morning. Same pan, same cooking element, same timing, ice bath with the same volume of water and cube quantity, everything identical from one week to the next. Have been doing it for at least seven years straight. I want my yolks to be crystalline in texture, at the transition point between runny and chalky. Not precious about yolk colouring. Must be easy to peel. There…

I've always thought a lot had to do with the age of the eggs. Very fresh eggs are usually harder to peel. I usually let eggs sit at least a week or two after purchase before I use them (this is in the USA where eggs are sold refrigerated).

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#70

Post by pteraspidomorph »

moltar wrote: post #65

If anyone here is into these kinds of tomatoes, and is around the region - there’ll be a tomatoe fest and a tasting competition in the north of Portugal. https://www.facebook.com/TomateDouro

I live near Lisbon and the tasty tomatoes from my childhood are now completely gone. Anything you can buy in any supermarket is absolute garbage, so much so that I only ever use prepackaged chopped tomatoes these days (those still taste decent).

One of these days I should get in my car and drive all the way to the Douro just to fetch a bunch of tomatoes, I guess.

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