RIVER CITY JOURNAL: O GLORIOUS PASSION FRUIT, THY NAME IS TOMATO

OK. That's a bit much. But the tomato deserves a bit of laudatory prose, and maybe a poem to call its own as well.

The noble tomato.

If I had any sense, I would stop right there.

There are two things that I try to write about every year, because neither of them get their due. In fact, both the tomato and the Christmas fruitcake are the most maligned edibles I know about. Okra is high on the list, but it is only bad-mouthed by folks who either have never tasted it or have eaten badly prepared okra.

But this isn't about okra. Or fruitcakes.

This is about the luscious, red fruit of the vine known as the tomato.

Most of us lump tomatoes into the vegetable category, as in "Eat those stewed tomatoes, Joey; you need your vegetables." Parents are right about pushing vegetables, but they aren't botanists.

A tomato is a fruit -- a berry, in fact. Go figure.

I have always liked tomatoes. Once upon a time as a child, my entire diet at a restaurant consisted of tomato soup or a hamburger. That's it. Ask my mother. When my appetite led me to explore other foods, I quickly discovered the raw tomato and its various cooked forms other than soup.

We had a garden on the farm where I grew up in the Ozark hills west of here. Nothing unusual about that. Nor was there anything unusual about the 60 tomato plants we put out every spring.

Have you noticed how people who grow tomatoes never grow just enough to feed the family?

I know for a fact that 60 tomato plants will feed a family plus most of China and still have plenty left over to put in the slop for the hogs.

This is the peak of tomato season, which is why I am writing about tomatoes. But it is also when most folks who have anything to do with the tomato crop are growing weary.

I remember tomato season on the farm. Canning tomatoes. Canning tomato juice. I remember the smell of the kitchen on those hot summer days. I remember dipping tomatoes into boiling water so they would be easy to peel. Yeah, right. My wife remembers too. She remembers she wouldn't put a tomato in her mouth when she was youngster, because the smells of tomato-canning season left her nauseous. Now she likes tomatoes as much as I do. Maybe that's because we never can them.

We pretty much limit our tomato consumption to tomato season. We are particular about the tomatoes we eat. They must be home-grown AND vine-ripened. We have learned to beware of signs that say one or the other but not both.

I don't care what anyone says, a tomato produced any time other than July, August or September is a freak. It is unnatural. It does not taste the way a tomato is supposed to taste.

Over the years we've learned to cultivate our tomato suppliers, much the same way I suppose drug addicts find pushers. You would think with the overabundance of tomatoes, once they start producing, that it would be easy to maintain a steady supply. Not so. Quite frankly, you have no idea how many tomatoes my wife and I can consume. Or how picky we are about the ones we eat.

Take Tuesday of this week, for example. We got a fresh supply, and I had two good-sized tomatoes for lunch. Juicy, red slices topped with table salt. A feast. We had tomatoes for supper too. I'd eat them for breakfast if I didn't think my body needed a little variety. Tomatoes don't last long at our house.

When the early explorers discovered tomatoes in the New World, the red fruit was considered poisonous. Imagine that. Then tomatoes were touted as aphrodisiacs. Imagine that. Well, don't spend too much time on that one.

Once the many uses of tomatoes were accepted, they spread all over the world. Just think of spaghetti without tomatoes. Or pizza.

If you want to get depressed really fast, just think of a world without tomatoes. Period.

I think tomatoes should have their own poem. Probably the main reason there are no laudatory verses is this: The most obvious word that rhymes with tomato is potato. What would be the point?

But here's one quick couplet:

(ital)Give me a tomato in September, August or July,

And I will be happy until the day I die.(endital)

Look, I said I liked tomatoes, not poetry.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.