Where are all the ugly vegetables?

My seed catalogs describe the Great White Tomato as a "Giant 1lb tropical tasting tomato, with hints of melon, guava and pineapple".  Sounds lovely, right?  I can almost feel the juice dripping down my chin from biting into a fully ripe ghostly pale white tomato...  You know what all my tomatoes at home right now taste like?  Crap.  Yup, crap. Doo doo.  Granted, I know tomatoes are not in season right now.  That being said, all the tomatoes you buy at the grocery store LOOK gorgeous, but, they taste like crap.

"The federal government has sponsored research that has produced a tomato that is perfect in every respect, except that you can't eat it. We should make every effort to make sure this disease, often referred to as 'progress', doesn't spread." --- Andy Rooney 

 

Did you know commercial growers pick tomatoes when they are green?  Then they spray them with a gas that turns them red.  Yup. This is AFTER the tomatoes have been sprayed with herbicides to keep the weeds down. Then they spray fertilizers to grow them big.  Then they spray them with pesticides to kill insects.  Then they spray them with fungicide to keep them from rotting and molding during their long truck ride to the local grocery store.  Then they gas 'em to make 'em pretty!  Then they spray them with food grade wax so they are shiny, glowing red orbs.  They look appetizing.  Then you get it home and slice it open (after washing it thoroughly to get a little of those sprays off I hope) and then it hits you: it tastes like crap! 

 

Why is it that every tomato at Wal-Mart and HyVee and SuperSaver are spotless, perfect, and beautiful ---- and they taste HORRID? 

 

Have you ever grown tomatoes in your garden?  I don't know about you, but my tomatoes are ugly.  They are mutant looking, with worm holes and odd shapes.They are misshapen and homely. They are not winning any beauty contests!   But the taste? Amazing...  NOTHING compares to a fresh picked garden tomato, no matter how alien it looks.  And since when did society come to think that all tomatoes must be red?  I am growing heirloom varieties, which means I have my choice of fun colored tomatoes with different characteristics (minus the toxic gas sprays!)! The tropical tasting Great White slicing tomato, the low-acid orange Amish Paste tomato, the spicy, robust dark purple Cherokee tomato -- these use to be common fair before industrialized agriculture and a perception that tomatoes must be "perfect" and "red" (and tasteless?) to equal "good".  I don't know about you, but I get sad when I start to think about what must have happened to all the ugly veggies that didn't make the grade...  Even if you can't grow your own tomatoes, you can vote with your dollars -- call your local produce manager and tell him that you want delicious tasting UGLY veggies.  Or, just come over to my place around July and you can taste the rainbow!