Tomato Tomah-to

I buy tomatoes at the grocery store nearly every week, when they are on special, which is usually every week.  As can be expected these grocery store specimens are grown elsewhere, picked green, gassed and shipped and arrive at the market pale, anemic, tasteless.

I put them in a bowl on the kitchen counter (never NEVER put a tomato in the fridge - it's a crime on par with removing the tag from a mattress).  After a few days the tomatoes become red but not necessarily flavorful.

A friend has a farm.  Often he posts pictures of the farm, the garden, their chickens, for others to enjoy.  This week he gave me a bag with a cucumber, a bell pepper, and ripe jalapeno pepper and a beautiful red ripe tomato.  I put the tomato in the bowl.  I added the grocery store tomatoes to the bowl.

Did I say they ripened in a few days?  Try a few hours!  I am certain the grocery store tomatoes were so embarrassed and ashamed to be in the company of the genuine farm-grown, vine-ripened tomato that they blushed and turned red right then and there.  My friend says it might be peer pressure.

Quotable quotes; in the category Tomato, Tomah-to, Potato, Potah-to!

"I want to go back to Brazil, get married, have lots of kids, and just be a couch tomato."  Ana Beatriz Barros, Brazilian Model