June 2010

As I’m planting my crop of tomatoes this year, I couldn’t help but ponder about how much I’ve benefited from this one item of produce. In her recent Simple Good & Tasty post, Rhena Tantisunthorn described the history of tomatoes, so I reflected on my own history and realized how my love for tomatoes has been a catalyst of growth for me in so many ways. Here are just a few of them:

One spring weekend, during a college semester abroad in Paris, I found myself the houseguest of a large French family at their home on the coast in Brittany. I didn't know them, but my friend Jenny's French aunt, Katherine, did, and she had insisted they would be thrilled to host Jenny and me for a long weekend.

Instead they had no idea who we were when we arrived with only Katherine's phone call as an introduction. Still, they opened their doors and offered us the guest room. Even though I was a couch-surfing, poor college kid, our brazen arrival still managed to embarrass me.

But that was nothing compared to the self-consciousness I felt the next day when the family's traditional Sunday brunch evolved into a five-course gastronomic feast featuring, among other things, oysters. I had never seen an oyster, much less tasted or manhandled one. I felt so provincial.

Last week, I stepped back in time to have lunch in a high school cafeteria. Only this time, it was with Renegade Lunch Lady, Ann Cooper. Ann built a national reputation from her work with the School Lunch Initiative to bring healthy, whole foods into school lunchrooms throughout the Berkeley, California, school district. Now she was in Boulder, Colorado, to do the same thing. As I pulled together research for my visit, I became convinced that California’s loss was Colorado’s coup. You can have Jamie Oliver, West Virginia. We’ll take Ann Cooper.

Here in Minnesota, our farmers markets have been up and running for a few weeks now, and even though we may be behind other parts of the country in terms of what’s available because of our loooooong winters, it is exactly those loooooong winters that cause people like me (and you, I would guess) to get a little breathless and grabby at the sight of a bundle of fresh, green, locally grown anything.

In the absence of more colorful splashy things like berries, tomatoes, and stone fruit, the myriad greens and slightly purple characters we’re seeing now get to take center stage for some well deserved adulation. Baby lettuces, asparagus, rhubarb, ramps, scallions and radishes are all getting to strut their stuff and I, for one, am riveted.