Grateful for Privilege of Participating in its Arrival

I can't account for it. If you had asked me a few years ago what I thought about tomatoes I would have told you I didn't think much. It isn't that I didn't like them; they just never commanded much attention. They were merely those slices on burgers or those confetti-like dices strewn on salads or secreted between the folds of a taco shell. Pretty, and pretty tasteless. What else is there to think?

I vaguely remember the boycott of Taco Bell several years ago, and perhaps even more vaguely knew that it had something to do with tomatoes; and while as a rule I am supportive of social justice concerns, let's face it: it's hard to keep up with all the myriad initiatives. While I tried, at the time, to welcome in through my car window fast food from alternative venues, I confess that I didn't bother to learn too much about the issue. That, of course, has since changed as my culinary interests intersected with my justice concerns. The plight of tomato pickers is one of those travesties against the human family that ought to keep all of us awake at night praying for forgiveness -- along, I'll admit, with too many other atrocities to count. But that is another story.

Independently, quite apart from concern for those workers in the field, I actually tasted a tomato. Not one of those "tomato shaped objects" picked green, gassed into redness while in transit and sold in the grocery store that maximizes color and uniform shape at the total expense of flavor. No, an actual tomato. And it was an awakening. I don't know if it is the acid or the sugar or mysterious alchemy of all the elusive traits intrinsic to the species. All I know is that that taste represented a corner I unwittingly but irrevocably turned.

It turns out there are farmers and gardeners around who actually grow the real things -- usually ugly, contorted looking orbs that, if consumed blindfolded, one might confuse with sun-drenched droplets of divinity. Who knew that's what a tomato tastes like? It didn't take very long to become a tomato bigot, eschewing any of those store bought unreasonable facsimiles in favor of those real ones burdening farmers market tables and weighting sacks handed me as gifts from gardening friends.

Somewhere, sometime, somehow I knew that growing such gifts would need be in my future. Indeed, homegrown tomatoes have become something of the symbol and theme song of this farming adventure. Other things are growing back there -- treasures whose harvest I eagerly await -- but the sheer idea of growing my own tomatoes took on an almost "Holy Grail" significance. Ever since poking those tiny seeds into cups during the winter and tending their greenhoused sprouts; ever since transplanting them into the garden and watching blossom ever-so-slowly become ripening fruit I have leaned forward apprehensively toward the day one would fall, fully ripened into my hand and shortly thereafter onto our plates.

As it happened, the two did not occur in tandem. Yesterday was the day I screwed up my courage to approach the vine of the first ripened one of my inaugural season with a snipper in my hand.

This early arrival is a "Costoluto Genovese" tomato, a fluted, old Italian varietal that has been around at least for a couple hundred years. Popular in Italy for both fresh eating and preserving, its advertisements promise intense flavor and deep red flesh. I started to say "I couldn't wait to bite into it," but of course when it came down to it I did, indeed, wait.

Almost 24 hours later it still ornamentally bedecks the hutch beside the kitchen -- a trophy, perhaps, or better, an icon. It felt like sacrilege to summarily dispatch a dream, and so we opted to savor the presence of it before the flavor of it.

That won't go on for long. It would be greater sacrilege to wait too long, allowing it to sag into a gelatinous, rotted mush. Tonight, then, I anticipate will be the night. We will find fitting ways to honor it...

...with a little fresh mozzarella, perhaps, to honor its heritage; some fresh basil from the deck, and perhaps the slightest splash of balsamic vinegar -- on a bed of the lettuce that grew alongside it...

with a prayerful breath of gratitude for the privilege of participating in its long-awaited arrival.