The Most Delicious Fruit. Ever.
Heirloom Tomatoes aren’t your typical botanical beast. Here’s Why.
Possibly the greatest reason to thank our neighbors to the south would be for the delectable fruit called the tomato. But then I’m pretty biased to the wonderful fruits we call heirloom tomatoes.
Originated in Mexico, or Peru, depending on who you ask, and spread throughout the world due to the Spanish colonization of that area, the tomato plant is grown on every continent, every American state, and under an amazing array of conditions.
Here’s a few things you may not have known about tomatoes. A few reasons why you should give tomatoes more attention. And a few reasons why you should try our heirloom tomatoes.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans consume between 22 — 24 pounds of tomatoes per year. Not bad… could be more. Unfortunately, over half of that is ketchup and processed tomato sauces. Boo.
In fact, American’s eat more than 3/4 of their tomatoes in processed form.
93% of all American gardens have tomatoes. (And fresh market tomatoes are grown in all 50 states). This, my friends, is a good thing.
When the tomato was introduced to Europe in the 1500s, the French called it the “apple of love.” The Germans called it the “apple of paradise.” I tend to agree with both.
To fru-fru for you? Want something a little more… say… bad-ass? The scientific term for the common tomato, Solanum lycopersicum,is wolf peach. A peach with characteristics of a wolf. I’ll leave that to your intepretation. But that’s bad-ass.
And my next Halloween costume.
Halloween costumes may be tougher than botany and ecology. How do I cross this…
With this…
Cuttings probably won’t work. Maybe a lesser known method of grafting. Hmmm… good thing I have a year to figure out the wolf peach.
And if you didn’t get my wonderful attempt at including a Super Mario reference, I feel bad for you. But I digress.
Disney’s Epcot Center holds the Guinness Book of World Record’s record for largest tomato tree in the world… it produces a ridiculous 32,000 tomatoes each year.
Now Dana Oliver of the Huffington Post decided she needed to look more into the lovely fruit called the tomato. And she found quite a few things that she loved about the tomato.
She found tomatoes cleanse and tone skin, shrink large pores, treat acne and remove blackheads, get rid of oily skin, remedy sunburns, add shine to a dull complexion, and condition dry hair and relieve and itchy scalp.
Oliver says it pretty succently, “It turns out that tomatoes contain vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that work wonders when you slice them open and put them on your hair or face. Lycopene, the carotenoid that gives the tomato its red color, is key in reversing signs of aging such as fine lines and wrinkles. Vitamin A also helps to heal and repair damaged skin cells.”
How Tomatoes are Getting to you in the Store
Here’s the problem y’all.
96% of all mass produced tomatoes come from California these days. And depending on where you live, that means they were picked likely more than a week ago. To get to you without being overripe, to allow some storage time before getting to the store shelf, and to prevent bruising to be more “sellable” in the store, they keep them unripe in the shipping process.
It IS a science. When they get to the store,they are ripened with the gas called ethylene. Have you ever used a banana peel to induce ripening of a fruit? Yah… ethylene. Got it?
Now, ethylene is not necessarily a bad thing… though it’s kind of a weird gas that I’m not really cool with ingesting large amounts… after all, it is a class 3 carcinogen.
But the real sad thing about this ripening process for tomatoes, rather than letting them ripen on the vine, is that tomatoes lose their flavor, get mealy and starchy, and aren’t the right color. Frankly, tomatoes ripened in this way have very few characteristics of good tomatoes. They are flavorless and they suck.
But American consumers have gotten used to tomatoes that are unbruised, pure in color, and uncracked. They need to be a single shade of red, orange or yellow. And frankly people, you’re missing out.
Heirloom Tomatoes
I’ll be telling you more about our heirloom tomatoes in these articles, but here I simply want to give you some of the benefits of these amazing fruits.
It’s been fun to not only collect heirloom tomato seeds from Iowa’s Seed Saver Exchange, but the continuing insights they provide have proven invaluable for our heirloom tomato endeavors in Hill Country, Texas.
You may recognize the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) logo — most of the heirloom plants sold in nurseries around Hill Country are from the Exchange, like The Natural Gardener in South Austin, and Shoal Creek Nursery in Central Austin.
My good friend Jennie Smith, the proprietor at Butcher Crick Farms, sent me off with a dozen heirloom tomato plants to begin our work in Texas. Her dedication to heirloom tomato production and the education of Central Iowa consumers on the benefits of buying heirlooms has been nothing less than inspiring.
It is important to note, I’m an Iowa boy. I didn’t realize how excited I was to get my hands dirty in the happy black soil of Iowa. Until I started getting my hands dirty in the angry bitey soil of Hill Country. Nothing that a pair of gloves won’t handle. Just not used to the fire ants, the scorpions, and the tarantulas.
I encourage you to give those gnarly looking multi-colored fruits a try… they are showing up more and more on boutique restaurant menus as well as grocery store shelves and farmer’s markets. They may be cracked. Have weird skin. And crazy colors. And wild shapes. They’re not your large-scale grocery store’s tomatoes. But why is it worth your time to seek these fruits out, and to pay a little more money for them?
Julie Daniluk gives us 5 reasons to seek out Heirlooms here, but I’ll give you a real brief overview.
A rich source of Vitamin C (how about 40% of your recommended daily intake in 1 medium sized tomato).
Potassium and folate = greater cardiovascular health.
Lycopene = cancer prevention.
Vitamin K = strong bones.
Huge amounts of flavor but amazingly few calories. 1 cup of heirloom tomatoes = 27 calories.
Now, I’m not a nutritionist. But I’m an ecologist. And I could bore you to death the ecological benefits of heirloom tomatoes. I’d rather get you to eat them.
Because if you eat them, you may decide to get them from us. And if you get them from us, it will give us reason to produce more. Which is an ecological, and nutritional fantastic thing.
Do yourself, and your family a favor. Seek out some heirloom tomatoes.
And if you need some more nutritional information on heirlooms, just contact me or our resident Sicola nutritionist, Sarah. We have a pretty good time with private dining events and catering. And yes, we use heirloom tomatoes every chance we get. Resident executive chef Stephen Sicola will even teach you how to use these babies in a private class or small group class setting.
Lastly, look for us to announce classes on growing heirloom tomatoes, square foot gardening, cooking with tomatoes (make your own red sauce in less than 20 minutes with heirloom tomatoes), and healthy soil habits for Central Texas vegetable production.
