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A Tomato's Autobiography - My Long Journey to America
I didn’t know how good I had it. I was born in the beautiful Andes mountains of South America and spent the better part of my early carefree years traveling north with my friends - Maize and Chile Pepper. I got my first big break when me and Chile starred in the original version of a dish called Salsa. It was just a two man show back then. Of course, Chile was always trying to upstage me with his spiciness, but I forgave him because I know it’s just his nature. Salsa has endured as one of the longer continuous running shows in culinary history. Nowadays a lot more ingredients are added but me and Chile still play the starring role. Maize was kind of the third wheel in our trio, always off doing his own thing morphing into tortillas and tamales and whatnot. But we always reunited in the final dish. That’s why the three of us stuck together for so long. During our run of about 3000 years, we established quite a wide-spread fan club between the Incas, Aztecs and Maya. I had it good. I was loved unconditionally and I should’ve kept happy with that. But one can only travel in the same direction for so long and after hearing about the bearded white visitors from far away lands, I trembled with excitement at the thought of adventure.
I ended up on a boat destined for a place called Italy. I didn’t know what kind of soil was I getting into. You see the Italians proved to be quite a different species than the Aztecs. They were cautious and suspicious of me. During a thorough background check at customs, they discovered my deep dark secret. I come from a very shady family. So shady, in fact, that the word “shade” is in their name….the Nightshades. Notorious for being mean and poisonous and doing nasty things to people, my family is a highly feared group. Even my first cousin Tobacco showed up on the report. Guilt by association is a hard complex to shake, especially when you’re a stranger in a strange land. So I went into what I call my ornamental phase, just decorating people’s gardens for a while and trying to stay positive. After showing my sweet side for a couple hundred years the Italians really started to warm up to me. They called me Golden Apple (Pomodoro in Italian - I was yellowish in those days). I finally got my next big break around the advent of pizza, thanks to a wonderful man named Rafaele Esposito. He was summoned by Queen Margherita to cook her the new food craze that everyone on the street was eating. Of course the queen couldn’t be seen indulging in this common people’s food, so Rafaele had to go to the palace. He had the great idea of naming a new version after the beloved queen, made with ingredients of patriotic colors - me (my red version this time), green basil and white buffalo mozzarella. I thought it was funny that me and Buff, both immigrants (Buff came over from India), were used in this patriotic dish, but of course I kept my mouth shut. A lot of people accuse me of riding pizza’s coat tails to fame in Europe. But hey, like my Italian friend Prosciutto always said…. Ya gotta do whatcha gotta do, capisce? That’s pretty good advice coming from a guy who hangs around a dark cellar for six months covered in salt.
After conquering Italy I decided to travel north again. I guess traveling north is in my genes. I ended up in Spain where they called me Moor’s Apple and France where they called me Love Apple. My apple-inspired stage names were getting old, after all I am a tomato. I was happy when the well-traveled Spaniards invoked my humble beginnings by calling me tomate, their take on my maiden Aztec name tomatl. It’s hard to shake a stage name once people get used to it (now I know how J-Lo feels), so the Italians still call me Pomodoro. I eventually made it over to England where I was met with the same cautious suspicion as in other European nations, but I won them over, too. The English used me in soups and broths and sometimes as a garnish, but more importantly to me, they had connections to North America. After such a long and tumultuous stint in Europe, I decided to make like an English rock star and set out to conquer the U.S. I guess you can say that I took the long road from Mexico to The United States, crossing the Atlantic twice with a 200 year pit stop in Europe to get there! That makes waiting two hours at the Tijuana border crossing seem like nothing.
When I got to the U.S. I was greeted with yet another wave of suspicion. Ben Franklin spoke out publicly against me, exposing my family ties to the Nightshades. But my great American hero, Thomas Jefferson, a progressive southern farmer at the time, spoke out in my favor. Tom was a well-traveled stately man who had actually met me in Paris years earlier. Even though Ben and the majority of the common folk maintained that an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Thomas worked hard to promote me as an up and coming star. Talk about having a powerful marketing agent! Even with Thomas Jefferson doing my P.R., my fame in the U.S. didn’t spread too quickly. It took another 25 years until the northerners accepted me.
Nowadays, I find myself performing in one way or another at practically every food venue in the world! I still battle my share of negative press. There are even websites dedicated to my demise. But don’t be fooled by all of that. I may come from a shady family, but if you catch me at the right moment I’m as sweet as can be.
Tomato Timeline
prehistory - Tomatos migrate from South to Central America with the migration of indigenous people
1521 - Cortez conquers Mexico
1522 - Tomato arrives in Italy
1554 - Tomato arrives in England
1710 - Tomato arrives in U.S.
1750 - Tomato starts being used as food in Italy
1781 - Thomas Jefferson grows tomatoes in Virginia
1812 - Tomatoes used as food in New Orleans and traded on the stock market
1889 - Pizza Margherita invented, solidifying tomato’s place in Italian cuisine
Tomato Guide
Heirloom Tomatoes - non genetically modified, usually non-hybrid and organic, seeds passed down through generations - variety of shapes, meaty textures, intense flavors
Organic Tomatoes - Grown without the use of pesticides
Supermarket Tomatoes - often genetically modified, sometimes irradiated - consistent round shape, mealy texture, usually void of flavor
Hydroponic (Hothouse) - beautiful color and shape, very watery in texture, grassy flavor
Vineripe - left to ripen on the vine - sweeter and more flavorful than supermarket tomatos,
Irradiation - Exposing foods to radiation to extend shelf life
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