Only Tomatoes in the Academic Sense
Would someone please explain to me why, when fresh, local tomatoes are in season and taste amazing any restaurant would use, to quote Garrison Keillor, "those tomatoes they strip mine down in Texas" (see the pitiful white slice, which I removed from a grilled chicken sandwich from Wendy's) rather than a real tomato (see the red slices from one of my garden tomatoes which I used to replace the aforementioned imitation tomato slice)?
I call that very feeble.
The more I learn about commercial tomato processing, the less I want to eat them unless I know their origin. I have become addicted this summer to good, fresh tomatoes that I have grown myself or gotten at the City Market. I know the farm from whence my favorite City Market vendors get their tomatoes, so I know that they have not been trucked in from a hothouse in Florida where they gas unripened tomatoes to look "ripe". Plus, they are so much cheaper than the junk you get at Kroger.