Buffalo Rising Online

Aug 26th 2007, 1:07pm By Christa Glennie Seychew

Tomato season has fully hit its stride, and fresh, locally grown examples of the fruit can be found everywhere. Two weeks ago, Elena Buscarino, BR’s Editor, told me of her home garden, lush with heirloom tomatoes grown from Richard Price’s Faerie Seeds, purchased earlier in the season from Urban Roots. She gushed about their beauty and variation in color and flavor. As an apartment dweller with a thumb boasting only a tinge of green, I am without such a crop, something I lament by mid-summer every year. Then, last week, dinner at Torches resulted in the consumption of a beautiful caprese prepared with Early Girl tomatoes from the garden of one of Torches’ dedicated guests. It was fantastic, but also a bit of salt in a fresh wound.

“Heirloom”, in terms of seeds and produce, basically means that the seed comes from a variety that is many years old and that has been openly-pollinated, not at all influenced by hybridization. Some people believe that in order to be considered “heirloom”, the variety of plant must be at least 100 years old. Others are a little less stringent and claim 50 years as the appropriate cutoff. Still another group of “seed savers” consider anything that existed before 1945 as “heirloom” because it was only after WWII that industrial agriculture changed what people in America think of as a tomato.

Friday, I stopped at the Co-op for some cheese (surprise, surprise) and there at the front door stood an entire display of heirloom tomatoes. I wish that they had been labeled with their individual varieties as there were at least four, but their rich colors and the deep, earthy smell of them ripening was enough to draw me in. They were only $2.99 per lb., but I went a little overboard with a sack that weighed in at close to $10.

When I was growing up, my parents served the tomatoes from our garden to us with a dollop of mayonnaise on the side. Far from gourmet to say the least, but a really amazing way to enjoy a truly good tomato full of seeds, flavor and texture; unlike those found in our supermarkets, replete with carbon footprints ten times their size. Many heirlooms are good in any application, but the variety currently available at the Co-op is ideal for using in their raw state.

This bounty will soon fade, as it does every year with the onset of fall. Enjoy as many tomatoes this month as you can, soon we’ll all have to resort to the mealy, flavorless version available in the off season.