006 - Tomatoes (1 - Brentwood)

The Last Apricot Tree Under the Mountain

You shouldn’t be able to call it a tomato if it wasn’t grown in the summer heat and picked red from the vine. No matter how hard they try, the mad scientist’s attempts to pass off spray painted, gritty, cardboard-smelling Christmas decorations as tomatoes just cannot get it right.

As a result of too much time alone reading science fiction, I have, from time to time, blamed aliens. “Insert new name for fake tomatoes” were probably grown in space pods using humans as fertilizer. Too far-fetched? Maybe the illuminati pick them green and soak them in Hawaiian Punch before putting them on an airplane. We’ll never know for sure.

Here is the recipe for the real deal.

Start in Brentwood in the late summer. Make sure it has been blistering hot for weeks. Go to one of a couple dozen farm stands. They are run by families, even generations of families. Ones that would not lie about a tomato because we know where they live. Look at all that red. Real red. The red that comes from slowly changing colors all the way through only when they are ripe. Pick one up. Do not squeeze! Sniff. It smells only like a real tomato can smell. Nothing else smells like it. If you aren’t blocking another customer, just stay there and keep taking in the aroma. The memory will sustain you through any hard winter you face in your life.

Pick a few varieties or just load up on your favorite. Maybe a cantaloupe and some peppers. Peaches, too, come at that time of year.

Rush home. If you can’t wait, bite one like an apple. Be ready, it will squirt on your shirt leaving a bit of a stain and some seeds. Don’t be ashamed. Everyone will understand.

When you get home, put everything else on the table and get out your cutting board. You can put things away later. You’ll need a sharp knife to get started through the skin. Start slicing. The smell from the farm stand now fills the room. The color does not fade and even deepens, trending toward purple.

What happens next is up to you. Plain? Heck yes. A little salt? Definitely. Pepper too? Sure. Cottage cheese. Potato Salad. Tuna. Balsamic and fresh basil. Cut it up in a salad. Maybe diced on top of an omelet or frittata. If you're my mom, a little mayo and some white bread (gasp!), and you have a tomato sandwich that is worth fighting over.

There are basically two categories of tomatoes. The kind you eat directly and the kind that are sent to the sauce factory. All night long for a month in the late summer the tractors pull the harvesters, which scrape up the ground plants and fruit in one big swipe. I don’t know how many laborers are needed for the sorting now. It is hot and brutal work. Everything culminates with tomatoes flying out of a chute into what seems like thousands of large white tubs the size of a school bus. I have watched them, hypnotized, for hours.

You can confirm the season when most of the road corners are littered with tomatoes from the top of the pile that couldn’t hang on if the driver was a rookie and going too fast on the way to the huge processing plants.

I even love the smell of the rot when the harvest is almost done. New folks to town sometimes complain, but nothing else smells so much like home. I love everything about what makes tomatoes from Brentwood good enough to moon over.

Except. Those. Gosh. Dang. Flies.

Editorial and Advance Reader Contributors: Mark Wallace, Alisha Price, Heather Bergevin of Barrow Editing, Mette Ivie, Bonnie Wach, Francoise Boden, Mark Berg, Mike Hammer and Kathy Toelkes. Special thanks to Bill Davis for a kick in the pants that only a friend from your old stomping grounds can give you. Mt. Diablo and Apricot Tree painting by the talented and local artist, Greg Hart.