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The Cupboard

Tomatoes

It’s that time of the year when summer produce is at its peak. I especially love this season because one of my favorite fruits is ripe and ready for picking.

Each year, I plant a variety of heirloom tomatoes for use in salads, sauces and sometimes just to eat fresh from the vine, alone.

While checking out local Farmer’s markets and even some of the super market chains, heirloom tomatoes are becoming quite popular and preferable for their rich and sweet flesh. From traditional reds to deep purples you cannot beat the flavor of this summer favorite.

In this month’s From the Cupboard, I decided you might find the history of this imperfect fruit to be intriguing.

An heirloom tomato (also called heritage tomato in the UK) is an open-pollinated (non-hybrid) heirloom cultivar of tomato. Heirloom tomatoes have become increasingly popular and more readily available in recent years. According to tomato experts Craig LeHoullier and Carolyn Male, heirloom tomatoes can be classified into four categories: family heirlooms, commercial heirlooms, mystery heirlooms, and created heirlooms. They are grown for a variety of reasons, such as historical interest, access to wider varieties, and by people who wish to save seeds from year to year, as well as for their taste, which is widely perceived to be better than modern tomatoes. They do, however, have a shorter shelf life and are less disease resistant than most commercial tomatoes. (Source: Wikipedia)

These tomatoes are known as such primarily due to the heritage of the seeds that are harvested from each year’s crop, which in many cases can be traced back over many decades. This is in contrast to more popular commercial hybrid varieties which have been bred to make the fruit more uniform in color, more appealing in appearance, and more resistant to disease. The down side to the commercial variety is the flavor is more flat and less sweet and the texture is very often grainy.

Whatever your reason for wanting to try out this very special fruit, it is well worth the try.

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