Tomatoes

I love to eat raw tomatoes.  As a child, growing up in Ohio, summer meant long, hot days playing with my friends under the big green trees out back, running through the grass with dirty, bare feet, then coming in to dinner to ice cold milk, and, if I was lucky, fresh picked tomatoes and hot corn on the cob.  Sometimes, that was all we had, and it was plenty, because a hungry child could eat all she wanted.  No one needed anything else to distract from the incredible taste of butter dripping down the chin, the sweet, crisp taste of the corn, and then, as a lovely counterpoint, the icy, salty, tangy tomatoes.

Unfortunately, though we go to the midwest every year, Beloved Spouse's current school calendar insists on us being home by the end of July so he can go back the first week in August.  Those of you from the midwest know that the good, local corn and tomatoes don't show up until (at the earliest) the first week in August.   That leaves us, every year, coming home too early for corn and tommy-toes feasts (as my dad would say!)

Fortunately, this year a farm near Petoskey came to the rescue with locally grown hothouse tomatoes.  They were AMBROSIA.  I am not exaggerating.  I couldn't wait to get back to the cottage and slice one up.  Plus, they looked so pretty in the old pottery bowls in the cottage!  See for yourself:

Doesn't that make your mouth water?  It sure does MINE, though I'm also starving, waiting for Elder Progeny to make homemade spanish rice and pollo asado, from scratch.  She is COOKING this summer.  All the time.  I have the hips and butt to prove it.

I've heard that some of the organic farms around here are now doing heirloom hothouse and garden tomatoes.  I'll keep you posted, though somehow the idea of eating them in February or March isn't quite the same.