Old-Fashioned Tomatoes
By
Janette Blackwell
Raw vegetables are dangerous
and must be thoroughly fried, Break into bits 2 slices
steamed, and boiled into of stale bread. Add to 4 cups
submission. So thought our canned or fresh tomatoes,
ancestors. The original sin peeled and quartered, with
of a recalcitrant vegetable half an onion, chopped, and
was of course lessened by about 2/3 cup brown sugar.
heat, but the conscientious Salt lightly.
nineteenth-century cook
continued to boil it long Bring the mixture to a
after it had sogged into a boil and simmer gently for 3
jelly-like mass, just in case hours, stirring occasionally.
some evil remained.
My notes say, It does
In the nineteenth century need three hours to cook, even
an hour's cooking barely with the pan lid off most of
sufficed for cabbage and for the time. Perhaps some of the
corn on the cob. They did not thin tomato juices could be
fix broccoli at all, and I poured off at the beginning,
can understand why. I have shortening the cooking time.
tried to imagine broccoli
after an hour of cooking, but
the mind rares back and Tomatoes Maryland is the
refuses even to approach the kind of sweet side dish
sheer horror. American cooks like to serve
with chicken or pork. I was
Which reminds me of an going to say, cooks from
event in the summer of 1956, regions other than the
when my classmate Patsy Northeast. Then I remembered
Sutherland and I lived with applesauce with pork,
Grandpa Hess while we went to cranberry sauce with turkey,
business college in Missoula, mint jelly with lamb, and
Montana. Grandpa was a crusty baked beans with salt pork.
old widower, set in his own Not to mention pancakes and
way of housekeeping, but he syrup with sausages cuddled up
tried to be gracious. In close. And mincemeat pie,
midsummer he bought a whole that ultimate mixture of meat
crate of tomatoes. Luscious, and sweet. And, yes, real
red, ripe tomatoes. They sat mincemeat, as opposed to a
in the cellarway for two days, packaged mix, does contain
and each time Patsy and I meat.
passed them our mouths
watered. Each evening we I will add that some
thought he'd invite us to have people of Grandpa's generation
a tomato or two, but he did eat diced raw garden
didn't. When we arrived home tomatoes for breakfast, just
on the third evening, he said, as one would eat strawberries,
Girls! I fixed the tomatoes with sugar and cream. You
today. Help yourselves! see, it was safe to eat them
raw with sugar and cream,
He had stewed every last because the tomatoes then
one of them. ceased to be a vegetable and
became a fruit.
Some of those old tomato
recipes are good, though. The And actually those old-
originator of Tomatoes time breakfasters were right.
Maryland probably had an old- Fresh vine-ripened tomatoes
fashioned wood stove that are good with sugar and cream.
could gently simmer something Let's face it, most things
all afternoon on a back burner are good with sugar and cream.
or in the oven. Which means And of course tomatoes
this was most likely a fall or really are a fruit.
winter dish rather than a
summer one, as people let the
cookstove fire go out on
summer afternoons.
TOMATOES MARYLAND
About the author:
Go STEAMIN’ DOWN THE TRACKS WITH VIOLA HOCKENBERRY, a storytelling cookbook -- and find Montana country cooking, nostalgic stories, and gift ideas -- at Janette Blackwell’s Food and Fiction, http://foodandfiction.com/Entrance.htmlOr visit her Delightful Food Directory, http://delightfulfood.com/main.html
Circulated by Article Emporium
|