We need to add some Yin to the Yang of the poor misguided souls who are posting in the thread about how they don’t like tomatoes.
I’m pretty sure that since the local groceries have sections in produce with several different varieties as well as about a quarter of an isle with different canned varieties, and pasta sauces, etc. that the people who don’t like tomatoes are in the minority.
I grew up in the Midwest and if I was granted one last thing to eat before I died it would be a big beefsteak tomato fresh off of the vine from my back yard.
Cherry or Grape in my salad, or just as a treat are wonderful. On any sandwich it makes it better without exception. Which brings me to the T in a BLT which is the best sandwich ever. Just raw and with a sprinkle of salt makes me smile just thinking about it. Sauces, Stews, Chili, and pretty much anything I can think of would not be the same without them.
Help me out here folks… I don’t want the aliens who come here after the apocalypse to think that the hate for tomatoes is normal.
I absolutely love tomatoes and don’t get comments in that other thread: Acidic? Texture? Pulp?
Nah, tomatoes are an absolute staple for me. They go on sandwiches, in pasta sauce, on pizza, in grilled cheese, in curries, fried with breakfast, and just plain good to eat on their own (with a little salt and pepper and hot sauce!). Et fucking cetera!
I like every kind of tomatoes except the fresh ones.
Before you tell me I need to try one from your garden, been there and done that, with every conceivable variety, freshness date, and multiple soil types. I’ve tried so hard to like the taste of fresh tomatoes, because I love them every other way.
But fresh just has an off-putting taste.
I’ll celebrate consuming them sun-dried, roasted, juiced, marinated in vinegar or citrus juice, stewed, as a paste, sauce, steamed, turned into jam or jelly, grilled, fried, as a salsa (as long as it’s had time to blend with the other ingredients), etc. etc. etc.
I like 'em. Just not the cherry variety. And ketchup isn’t really my bag.
I prefer anything fresh to processed actually. When we make homemade pizza, I forgo the jarred sauce for my own creation of a diced tomato soaked in olive oil, salt and spices.
Love 'em! And, while garden fresh 'mates are the best, I’m not particular. I’ll happily nosh supermarket toms. They’re all good. I adore cherry tomatoes as a dessert!
Love them, and when people give me tomatoes from the vine, especially cherry tomatoes from their gardens, I eat them like the fruit they are. But even the ones from the store that are hydroponically grown and don’t have such a strong, full, sweet taste, I like for sandwiches. I also love them in sauces. I love Italian and Indian food that uses tomatoes in the sauces.
About the only thing I don’t like them in is soup, because I like root vegetables in soup, and tomatoes tend to overpower them. I make a great matzah ball soup (and it’s that time of the year, and I shouldn’t be on the computer, but I had to see if SDMB was up).
Every year I wait for dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes to come into season. I like most tomatoes, but I really love dry-farmed Early Girls. The flavor is intense, both sweet and tart, with a strong tomato taste. I use them for salads, and also for recipes where tomatoes are center-stage. I have a recipe for spaghetti with raw tomatoes and basil - it’s one of the first things I make when the Early Girls show up at my local produce market.
I have tomatoes 4-5 times a week in some form, but mostly the mediocre supermarket kind. I guess that what makes it such a treat when I have an “real” tomato from a farmer’s market or roadside produce stand.
A freshly plucked vine-ripened tomato is a revelation. Unfortunately it’s extremely difficult to grow tomatoes in the tropics (the plants do fine but won’t fruit) and I don’t have any garden space at the moment, so I don’t have any tomato plants. But I look forward to growing my own the minute I’m settled back in my own house in the US.
Grocery stores here don’t have particularly great tomatoes, but they’re okay for sandwiches and the like. And I think about half of the foods I cook have tomatoes, sauce, salsa, and/or paste in them - chili, lasagna, enchiladas, and more.
Tomatoes are one of the fine delights of the garden, in all their varieties and the various forms of preservation and preparation. A sliced tomato with the slightest sprinkling of oil and salt is an ode to the virtues of simplicity.
(and plenty of tomatos grow in my tropical hometown, but of course they are raised by professional farmers who know what they’re doing)
I never knew what the big deal was with a BLT until I had one with a garden tomato. I had to stop talking, stop thinking, close my eyes. I shuddered obscenely, maybe moaned a little.
I, like the OP, am from the midwest but I live in south Georgia. I love fresh tomatoes. Sadly, good ones are hard to obtain down here. I have had some luck growing my own, but I really travel too much to tend a garden. I have bought some from veggie stands that sell locally grown ones, and they really aren’t up to snuff. The ones in the grocery stores are as lousy as grocery store maters usually are or worse. They just don’t ripen right when the nights are so warm.
There are few things I look forward to more than tomato sandwiches in late summer when the garden tomatoes are ripe and ready to eat. Grocery store tomatoes are generally worthless. Even the “on the vine” ones aren’t even close to what tomatoes are supposed to taste like. Strawberries are similar in what you get at the supermarket is an insipid simulacrum of what you can grow in your garden.
