Great green gobs of
greasy grimy gopher guts
mutilated monkey butts
dirty turdy birdy feet
French fried tomatoes rolling down a muddy street
and I forgot my spoon
Oh
Darn!
She picked off the tomatoes and left the vile glop behind, eh? Luxury!
Let me tell you a story about the foul crimson seed-sac, the Osama bin Laden of the al-Qaeda salad network.
So there I was, after a delightful day and evening with my girlfriend. I dropped her off at her place and I was feeling a mite peckish, so I paid a visit to my friend the Burger-King. Now the Burger-King has many palaces, but his nearest castle overlooked the bustling Francis Avenue. I could almost smell the delicious fumes of charbroiled flesh wafting away from the flue, and I knew this was going to be a good meal.
How wrong I was.
I pulled around to the drive through lane, securing my place in line to have speaks with the Squire of Static. One by one, the fellow subjects in front of me drove ahead, until at last I was in front of the blue-and-yellow board bearing the Burger-King’s coat of arms.
“Ahoy, squire!” said I. “Today, if it please His Majesty, I shall have the #2 with cheese, ketchup only, large size, and the soothing elixir of Dr Pepper!”
“Grrbl blx $5.72, please prll fwgrld,” came the reply, in the quaint Statickian dialect reserved for these occasions.
I waited for the cars in front of me to prll fwgrld, and thought about the delicious Hamburg sandwich that awaited me. A warm bun at the bottom, two quarter-pounds of charbroiled ground beef, two layers of melted cheese, a layer of ketchup, and a sesame bun at the top. Combined with a box of crisp salty frenched potatoes and a tankard of Dr Pepper, what could go wrong?
As I pondered that question, the sky grew dark, and an ominous thunderclap sounded from overhead. Nay, I thought, that’s just a superstition. Everything will be fine.
Soon, I was face to face with the Page of Payment. I handed her a few crumpled bills and took my tankard and bag. “Have a nice day,” she said, with an evil gleam in her eye. Should I worry? No! Childish superstition, be gone! Nothing will go wrong, I thought, this is my day.
I pulled away from the Burger-King’s palace, crossed the moat, and entered the street. With one hand on the tiller and the other groping blindly in the bag, I searched for my Hamburg sandwich. Aha! I unravelled the protective foil and lifted it to my mouth.
I took a bite… and in an instant my mouth was filled with an invading horde of seeds, and a deluge of sickening goop. It was true! They had tried to poison me! I rolled down the window in a panic and spat out the offending mouthful, befouling the formerly pure Francis Avenue.
Bystanders fled as they saw the horrible tomato glob careening away from my car, fearing it was headed straight toward them. Mothers covered their children’s eyes. The faint of heart fainted.
I glared back at the corrupt palace, a gray thunderhead still hovering above it. What would the Burger-King think if he knew his underlings had tried to assassinate me, his loyal subject? I shook an angry fist and let out a stream of curses in some primal tongue, long forgotten by humanity, hidden within my consciousness until this day. I vowed never to return.
I hate raw tomatoes.
And people, remember they are like snails and leave a slime trail. Picking them off does not remove the goo.
You people are all insane.
I admit that I will eat anything organic that isn’t moving. If it is moving, I’ll shoot it, gut it, skin it, butcher it, cook it (lightly) and then eat it.
The tomato repulsion mystifies me. My brother-in-law and my girlfried are both suffering the same mental illness as you people are. I have heard excuses ranging from “I don’t like the texture” to “I don’t like the flavor.”
Huh? What’s not to like?
I got my girlfriend eating mushrooms, which she thought she hated until I held her down and forced her to eat one. She loves 'em now. I’ll get her to eat tomatos if it kills me. They’re nature’s perfect food.
There is nothing better in this world than a sun-ripened tomato fresh of the vine.
Mmmm. So warm and juicy.
The texture and the flavor. Duh.
Still, they’re not as bad as mushrooms. Tomatos can be saved by proper preparation. There’s nothing you can do to a mushroom that’ll make it edible.
I have a good recipe for glazed two by fours. It’s best when followed by a nice motor oil pudding. If you like, I’ll e-mail it to you.
Miller, were you and I separated at birth?
It’s so good to know I’m not alone! My whole stinkin’ family likes ‘maters so I’ve felt alone my whole life. Mom was good about not making me eat raw tomatoes, but my grandmother was stubborn. One day, when I was about eight, she had just picked some cherry tomatoes for the salad at lunch. I helped her wash them and mentioned I didn’t like them. Grandma believed that I would like them if I just tasted one and refused to consider that I had tasted a tomato and rejected the little pus balls. How could anybody not like a tomato, right? She insisted I try one and even went so far as to tackle me and hold me down until I chewed and swallowed the cherry tomato she popped in my mouth. Well, I chewed, I sort of swallowed, but then I threw up. Yup, cherry tomato-covered Grandma. Never made me eat another thing I didn’t want to, though I suspect lil’ sis was her favorite after that.
There’s that “cooking them” thing again. My brother-in-law and girlfriend both love marinara, especially when I make it. They’ll even stew the poor innocent things and eat them. This is wrong.
Tomatos are best fresh. The best feeling you can have on earth is to stand naked in a meadow with a sun-warmed tomato. You bite into it, and stretch out so that the life giving Sun can caress every part of your body, and you revel in the feeling of tomato juice rolling down your chin. You fools.
Mushrooms are good too, if not as holy as tomatos. Melt some clarified butter in a cast iron skillet. Carefully distribute your mushrooms and try to hit a sweat/saute compromise. Great with a steak.
Rare, of course.
Well, here’s the problem - it must be lightly toasted white bread. And salted ever so slightly. There is not more perfect treat than such a sandwich.
And Ex, I was in my 20s before I dared try a mushroom. I love them - raw or cooked. I knew you and I connected on a deeply spiritual and fungal level! And you’re absolutely right about the rare steak too!
Oh please, it’s an obscene riot of textures. Far too many. I distantly recall something like a ‘raw spaghetti sauce’ flavor to them. Mushrooms, well, they taste like whatever salad dressing you’re using and not much else. If they are on a steak they taste like steak. There are worse things.
Tomatos sliced thinly and drenched in Italian dressing and lightly sprinkled with McCormick Lemon Pepper seasoning.
Mmmmmm…that’s good eatin’!
I suggest we start a “Tomato Hater’s Anonymous”. We meet regularly–telling our tomato loving friends and relations that we are trying to work through our animosity towards these friendly little givers of health. But in reality, we will be perfecting our plan to rid the world forevermore of the ghastly little things–making sure that future unsuspecting generations can have the joy of really good spaghetti sauce, a spicy salsa, a zesty marinara, or even the bland sweetness that is ketchup, without ever having to face the terror of eating the tomato itself (raw or cooked, a tomato in and of itself, solo, is just plain icky). We can create a world where the tomato is treated as an ingredient, not as a individual food product, a world where tomato slime is unknown except to those brave individual who volunteer to handle the tomato in order to combine it with other stuff to make it edible, a world without pink Wonder bread. It is a brave dream, and one likely to be misunderstood, nay, even ridiculed and mocked, but we can stand together-- Tomato Hater’s Anonymous–and make this dream a reality.
Somebody give me an “Amen”.
I used to despise tomatoes. And I mostly still do. Slimey icky nasty tomatoes. However, I changed my mind on my first trip to Italy 12 years ago. This was also my first trip out of the U.S. There, the tomatoes were plump and juicy and actually bright red. Not slimey and nasty and pale and gross. So I thought maybe I was mistaken, and that tomatoes were not disgusting. When I got back to the U.S. I discovered that I was right to begin with.
It’s a rare occasion that I can get a decent tomato here in the states.
I was just in Italy again about two months ago. Every tomato I had was yummy.
Fuckin’ nasty slimey U.S. hot-house tomatoes.
And for the mushroom haters - I concur. I despise the spongey texture of mushrooms. I don’t mind the actual taste. A filet mignon cooked in mushrooms is good, as long as I don’t have to actually eat the mushrooms.
Almost everything I don’t like to eat, I don’t like because of the texture.
I like egg drop soup, but when a friend told me it was like eating a bowl of snot, I completely understood.
Anyone else find it odd that the best works of literature on the SDMB consistantly come from the Pit?
I, too, hate the little buggers. You get it at a restaurant, you pick 'em off (even those nasty little seeds covered in glop that look like so many tiny red newborn babies), and when you finally think you’ve exorcised them, you find that it’s still there! You search and search, and lo, your food has ben permanently contamined with the offensive sludge, and mocks your futile efforts to destroy it.
They’re a lot like RealPlayer.
He doesn’t like tomatoes or The Band?
That’s it, Sauron…you are officially off my Party List.
To demonstrate the prevalence of the problem, I submit the (partial) lyrics to this Guy Clark song.
*Homegrown Tomatoes
Home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes,
What’d life be without home grown Tomatoes,
There’s only two things that money can’t buy:
That’s true love and home grown tomatoes.
You can go out and eat’em that’s for sure,
But there’s nothin a home grown tomato won’t cure
You can put em in a salad, put em in a stew
You can make your own, your very own tomato juice
You can eat em with eggs, you can eat em with gravy
You can eat em with beans, pinto or navy
Put em on the side, put em on the middle
Home grown tomatoes on a hot cake griddle
…
When I die don’t bury me
In a box in a cemetery
Put me out in the garden would be much better
Hell I could be pushin up a home grown tomatoes.
*
Obviously Mr. Clark is Satanist.
See? FairyChatMom agrees with me completely.
I always knew, in my heart, that engineers were the smartest and most discriminating people on this planet. Now I have confirmation. She only got one thing wrong. Lightly toasted whole wheat bread is the only way to go.
Porcupine’s only problem is that she never grew them for herself, and has been forced to eat the hydroponically-grown, never seen sunlight, picked before they’re ripe and shipped across the country tomatos.
It’s no wonder she prefers the dinky-assed little plums grown by hygenically-challenged old Italians.
Ye Gods, I thought I was the only one! I can’t STAND straight tomatoes! Tomato sauce minus tomato chunks, provided it’s well spiced, is fine. Salsa can be downright yummy, the Evil Tomato or no. I don’t eat ketchup but can stand to be around it, which does NOT go for mustard or mayo, the Condiments of Evil.
However, straight tomato is just WRONG. Ewwwww! And everybody thinks I’M the weird one for not liking them. Especially my grandma, who I swear would, given the chance, eat nothing but straight raw tomatoes.
Once a salad has had tomatos it is toxic, and I will not consume it. Period. Or a sandwich, or a taco, or whatever. NO TOMATOES.
Once, when I was a child, my parents waxed wroth at my revulsion in front of the Apple of Satan, and forced me to eat a slice of tomato.
I spent the subsequent hour in the bathroom retching.
I was no longer compelled to eat tomatoes.
Nevertheless, I share your opinion on salsa and similar processed tomato products, and I will henceforth use the live cow analogy. Thank you.