“The tomato hides its griefs. Internal damage is hard to spot.”–Julia Child
I revel in watching the tomatoes grow in my garden pots: cherry tomatoes, sungolds, sauce tomatoes. I delight in sharing them with my friends.
I don’t like tomatoes.
When I offered a bowl of the small beauties to my friend, she accepted them and suggested I might give tomatoes another try.
When we were kids, a trip to MacDonald’s was a big event. A hamburger cost $.25. Getting four kids burgers, fries and Cokes at the drive-through window represented a significant outlay of cash and a special occasion for us.
Even as a kid, I insisted on my burger plain. No condiments. Emphatically no ketchup, mustard or pickles.
Those drive-up window employees were not always on the ball, and there was no circling back to correct any error. Once, I took a bite of my burger and winced. Eeeyew. Ketchup, mustard and pickles. I wailed.
My dad was not interested. “Scrape it off and eat the burger,” he barked from the front seat. No way.
On an airplane flight–back in the day when someone sat next to me and the flight attendants served drinks–if my neighbor, even across the aisle, had a Bloody Mary, my stomach would heave.
My family is evenly split on tomatoes: three of us love them, three do not.
I do like marinara sauce. I like pizza sauce. I can sometimes handle tabouli but not pico de gallo. Go figure.
Over my professional career, I’ve faced plenty of challenges, so I decided I was brave enough to try a tomato again. I picked a beautiful sun-warmed sungold, the sweetest of my options, and popped it in my mouth.
Nope. That’s a hard no. I felt sick and spit out the sweet little tomato before I threw up.
I shared my story with my vegetarian brother who loves tomatoes. He gave me an easy recipe for making tomato sauce from the little beauties. He assures me I will love it.
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