But, truly it is an amazing comment on what the USA, and the world has become. A tasteless and picture perfect version of what it used to be. With no flavor, and no taste. Just filled with watery bile.
The loss of the Jersey Beefsteak tomato is heart breaking. People used to say, correctly, you could eat that tomato on bread and no meat was needed in the sandwich. Absolutely delicious.
They used to raise a bunch of hydroponic ‘maters in my area.
Big, beautiful, uniformly shaped fruit.
With as much taste as bottled water.
You have to buy heirloom tomatoes or ones at the farmers market. Same with broccoli, and other vegetables. Strawberries are often dyed red at the supermarket.
Michael Taylor, former Monsanto Honcho. Look at his efforts as Asst. Sec of Agriculture.
I grow Heirlooms only.
GMO tomatoes, just what we need. /sarc
Heirloom tomatoes are the way to go.
Kumatos, if you can afford them. Weird looking brown tomatoes, but they taste like “real” tomatoes. Amazing that you can buy them in the store and they’re so good.
I wouldn’t know, though I live inside Cincy city limits, I still grow my own.
Look for a farmers market. You can also try growing them.
http://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/tomatoes/
http://www.seedsavers.org/category/tomato
Burpee, Jung, Territorial Seeds, etc.
http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/Category:Tomato_Variety_List
Good hunting, good luck, good growing!
(Then distant thunder is no longer distant! Getting off the computer!)
Many really young people do not like tomatoes. I think it is that they have never had delicious home grown tomatoes.
Last weekend I planted some tomato seeds that my wife’s friend brought back from Italy recently. Hopefully they’re flavorful and juicy. Some of the seeds are of the oblong Roma-type variety and some are the bigger round kind that I’d be tempted to call a beefsteak variety. Time will tell...
Cherokee Purples are flavorful, ugly and highly recommended.
Basically August and September are the tomato months. Grow them in your yard or buy at farm stands.
All our common produce sucks. Apples, pears, peaches. Everything is picked hard and never ripens or gains flavor.
One trip to Europe and their fresh fruit makes you realize how the robber barons here have screwed us over completely and sold us out for maximum profit. Our produce is often tasteless.
I have noticed this with the honeycrisp apple also. I understand it was a hybrid or engineered but they were the most delicious fruit I had ever eaten when I discovered them about six years ago. Fast forward a couple of years and they are now I. The market weighing in at 2 lbs an apple and all the awesome flavor GONE.
I believe a lot of it is indirectly due to the Farm Workers Union as led by Cesar Chavez. He organized California farmworkers into a union to get higher wages and better working conditions for what used to be called ‘stoop labor’. Boycotts of grapes, lettuce and tomatoes were big deals in the late 60s and 70s. And he beat the “greedy farmers” down and won!
But then technology raised its ugly head. Harvesting machines were developed that could basically shake the tomatoes off of the plant and harvest them without the need of more expensive labor. Only problem with that was that the tomatoes were damaged by the machines, tomatoes being thin-skinned and all. So researchers at agricultural universities created tomatoes that could withstand the rough handling. Only problem was they didn’t have much in the way of flavor. But, hey they’re affordable!
So, just like cotton, people doing an unskilled, crappy job demanded more money for their labor, machines were invented to do their jobs, and now they sit back and collect welfare. Perhaps a cautionary tale for fast food workers.
Unfortunately, most of the tomatoes available even in gourmet stores are grown in Mexico, and that even includes the heirloom variety. I will not eat any produce grown in Mexico, so I often have to settle for canned Italian tomatoes.
The best source of tomatoes for me is weekly farmer’s markets. I especially like to buy Japanese tomatoes when they are available. These are not as red as the usual tomatoes—they’re more pink. However, they are very flavorful.
Its grown thousands of miles away from where its sold.
Its often rotten before its ripe.
You want good tomatoes; grow your own.
Most consumers want picture perfect vegetables and fruit. As people who garden can tell you that has nothing to do with taste.
Lemon Boys and Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes. She makes my day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xZeNueckzg