Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Should We Buy Out of Season?

There is an editorial in the NY Times today about people in the US wanting their tomatoes -- and wanting them even when it's winter.

Have any of you thought about this debate? It's an interesting one. And there are hypocrites everywhere. I'm probably one of them.

I do not buy tomatoes from the grocery in the winter. But I do buy other produce -- I bought strawberries the other day for my girls. But you have to put so much sugar on them, I don't know how beneficial they really are after having to sugar them up.

Peddling through the produce shelves at the grocery, I find myself thinking about this -- silly, huh? But I do. I buy potatoes, lettuce or other greens, some carrots, some bananas, and in December I usually get some oranges. But that's about all the variety we get at home in the winter. And we're not starving.

You all already know this, but you get better taste from a fresher, ripe fruit or vegetable than one that is harvested premature -- so it can withstand the long haul from FL or CA to KY.

Any comments out there?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Actually, I've found that canned tomatoes taste better than hot-house ones. So, I buy sliced or diced tomatoes, drain them in a colander while I am getting(finding..)whatever the rest of the ingredients are that I need for the occasion I save the resulting liquid for sauces, soup, even gravy) & just use them as I would if I chopped or sliced them myself. They look a little limp, but the taste just fine & they ARE red!
Even better, w/all your autumn spare time, you can pick all the little cherry tomatoes you always have just before a frost. Dip them scoop-by-scoop into boiling water. Slip the skins off. Deposit them into 1/2 pint (jelly jars). Fill them w/boiling water & can them in a boiling water bath. Being acid, it is hard to get them wrong if you just follow the directions for time-to-boil. And, voila'!, you'll have whole, ripe tomatoes of your own for your winter needs. (I used to do this when the kids were little & I was stuck at home--that's how I found out about using canned tomatoes in the winter for salads!!)