Week 13 Newsletter
Week #13 - Week of August 24th
Well here we are, we have arrived in the magical month of August, where the days are long and action packed, we are perpetually bathed in sweat, and the farm is a true cornucopia of peak summer produce. I await this time of year like a giddy child waits for their birthday. When it finally comes and we get to unwrap silky ears of corn to reveal the sweet golden kernels, or cut in into that perfectly stinky melon that has been maturing on the countertop, I am awash with child-like elation. But as a cook and an Italian there his no fruit or vegetable I look forward to more than the mighty tomato.
Last summer, I was working as a cook at an organic agritourismo in Puglia, Italy, and around this time of year we were drowning in tomatoes. Keeping up with the abundance each day felt like a Sisyphean task for me and the other chef, Anita. It was a dizzying frenzy of early mornings and late nights for us sorting, sun drying, pureeing, slow cooking, fire roasting, and canning thousands of pounds of these fruits. I retired for the night stained red, seeing only tomatoes when I closed my eyes. It also didn’t help that I slept in the cellar where all the tomatoes were stored. Despite my love for them, the whole process began to feel like a curse I couldn’t get away from.
This year, I am back in Seattle splitting my time once again between the kitchen and farm. On my first day at Ecolibrium we were planting tomatoes, which felt like a happy synchronicity. It was through this that I first got to know my fellow farm crew members, a wonderful group of characters with a shared zest for life and reverence for nature. Since then, pruning and trellising tomatoes together has been a meditative flow state, different than the slog it turned into in Italy. Everyone seems to have their own particular relationship with the fruit itself. Interestingly enough, Franklin, our fearless farm manager, doesn’t love the taste of raw tomatoes, while Kay, our resident captain of joy, has been putting them in delicious salsas and rice dishes. There are few foods as beloved and detested across the world as the tomato - they seem to appear in cuisines on almost every continent. In dinner tables all across the world, parents must be convincing their toddler try a raw tomato for the first time and watching closely for a reaction of delight or disgust. But where do they come from? And how did they come to be one of the most consumed vegetables, or fruits rather, in the world?
What we now know as the tomato comes originally from a wild, shrub-like plant in the Andes that was first cultivated by the Incas at around 700 BCE. Although they were eaten, they were outshined by the over 400 varieties of potatoes that comprised the staple Incan diet. The fruits were smaller, less colorful, and far less sweet than they are now. It wasn’t until around 500 CE that tomatoes arrived in northward trade networks to the Aztec people, who started selecting them to be more like they are now. They are responsible for the traits associated with modern tomatoes, such as sweetness, acidity, color and complex flavors, and would use them in sauces often with nuts and spices. Even our word for “tomato” is derived from the Aztec word tomatl. They are historically grown in biodiverse, aquaponic ecosystems called chinampas, that supported large cities like Tenochtitlan, where Mexico City is now. After the conquistadors invaded, Cortez and his colonial botanists brought them back to the old world in the early 1500s. There, the peasant class was confused by these exotic, new-to-them plants. They were afraid to eat them as they looked similar to other members of the nightshade family like the highly poisonous belladonna plant. The nobility started eating them as a status symbol, but reported foaming of the mouth when eating them. As it turns out, the acid in the tomatoes reacted with their pewter plates which often contained lead causing lead poisoning. They were used by apothecaries and herbalists which then spun rumors of them being used in love spells by the witches. For almost 200 years, tomatoes were grown but not eaten across Europe. It wasn’t until the late 1600s that Spanish and Southern Italians started to warm up to the “poison apples”. They showed up in a 1692 cookbook, Lo Scalco all Moderna, where it was cooked into a black tomato paste called conserva nera which was added to seafood stews and pasta dishes. In Spain, you have pan con tomate and the refreshing gazpacho; a cold tomato soup. And quickly, the tomato went from from the poison apple to the pomod’oro, or the golden apple.
Just like our tomato plants here in the month of August, the tomatoes reputation globally seemed to skyrocket over night, headlining in dishes across Asia, Africa and the Levante.
In the post-war 40s and 50s, new technologies for industrial agriculture were invented that allowed for greater yields, tin-canning, and shipment around the world. New varieties were engineered in the US to be picked by machines, stored for longer periods of time, and ripened off the vine. In some of this genetic selection, we have been able to produce surplus amounts of food and ship it around the world. But with that we loose flavor and nutrition, which, according to scientists, do go hand in hand with most vegetables including tomatoes. That is why, although you can get a tomato in the supermarket all year long, it is a whole different animal than what you get in the CSA. Heirloom tomatoes take time and patience, often more than 50 years of continuous cultivation in one place to qualify. These days, many people are catching up to the reality that the industrial food system often prioritizes short term security and yield over our health and the long term health of the planet. But thanks to people like you who support small organic agriculture, we can rally for slow, local food. If there’s anything to learn from the tomato, it is that there are seasons to be slow and seasons to be fast. I hope you are enjoying the peak summer as much as we are!
(For more food history, check out “How Carrots Won the Trojan War: Curious (but True) Stories of Common Vegetables
Book by Rebecca Rupp”)