Dear Tomato

Dear Tomato,

You sly little food. How coy to call yourself a fruit, when so many think you are a veggie. The arguments do not end there, we also like to debate the way your name is pronounced: You say toe-MAY-toe, I say toe-MAH-toe.

Every June I anxiously await your arrival. I dream of you in deep winter, whilst spooning sauce over noodles--a canned, poor substitute for your tomatoes of summer.

At the market, Sungolds--tiny and sunny orange--announce your arrival. I pop them in my mouth greedily--trying to eat as many as I can before they are gone. Then come the heirlooms with names like: Black Seaman, Bloody Butcher, Hillbilly and Nebraska Wedding. I look for German Johnsons and Brandywines. Purple tomatoes, yellow, green, and cherry red--streaked and solid, tiny and gianormous. I take you all home and slice your smooth flesh. I toss you with olive oil, toasted garlic, fresh chives and soft, watery, mozzarella. I platter you and admire your beauty before diving in, bite after bite, savoring each flavor as it crushes between my teeth and spreads throughout my mouth.

Sadly, your history contains some bumps in the road: Chef Boyardee, Ragu and your unfortunate partnership with McDonalds and the like. And they treat you so bad. They gas you, clone you and make you travel too far for too little a culinary payback.

Tomato, they don't see the real you.

You are BLTs, fried green and Bloody Marys. You are both salsa and ketchup. You are are political: thrown angrily in protest, and thrown in Spain with glee--you are La Tomatina! You are a sunny porch in the South, sprouting from old coffee cans, waiting. Waiting to be canned, pickled, fried and sun dried.

Just as I have been waiting all year. For you. My Beautiful Tomato.