By John Todd | Rio Linda Online
There are certain things you can count on during an August in Rio Linda: triple-digit afternoons, sprinklers running early in the morning, zucchini that somehow grow to the size of baseball bats overnight, and tomatoes.
Lots and lots of tomatoes.
For those of us who grew up around Rio Linda, Elverta and the northern Sacramento Valley, tomatoes aren’t exactly exotic produce. They’re something you grow along the fence, in raised beds, in half-barrels or wherever you can find six or eight hours of Sacramento sunshine. And once they start producing, the problem quickly changes from when are these tomatoes going to ripen? to what in the world am I going to do with all these tomatoes?
Of course, not everybody has a garden. Some of us depend on grocery stores, The Rio Linda Farmers Market, roadside stands, or that neighbor who appears at the front door in August holding a grocery bag and saying, “You want some tomatoes?”
The correct answer is always yes.
But not every tomato is a good tomato.
The Perfect Rio Linda Tomato
A good summer tomato doesn’t need much help.
Slice it thick, sprinkle a little salt on it and eat it over the kitchen sink.
Put it on a hamburger.
Make a BLT.
Or go old-school: white bread, mayonnaise, tomato, salt and pepper. That’s it.
If you’ve never had a tomato sandwich made with a genuinely ripe, still-warm-from-the-garden tomato, you’re missing one of the cheapest luxuries summer has to offer.
The trick is knowing when you’ve got a good one.
A ripe tomato should have a little give when you gently squeeze it. Not mushy, but certainly not hard like an apple. It should also smell like a tomato, particularly around the stem.
Looks aren’t everything, either.
Those perfectly round, perfectly red supermarket tomatoes may photograph well, but some of the best tomatoes you’ll ever eat are ugly—cracked shoulders, odd shapes, ridges and all.
Around here, anyone who has grown tomatoes for more than a season knows that the prettiest tomato on the vine isn’t necessarily the one you want on your sandwich.
Keep Them Out of the Refrigerator
This one may start an argument.
Tomatoes generally belong on the counter, not in the refrigerator—particularly if they still need to ripen.
Cold temperatures can hurt the texture and flavor that make a good fresh tomato worth eating in the first place. If you’ve picked tomatoes from the garden, let them finish ripening indoors at room temperature.
And if you’ve got several ripening at once, that’s not a problem.
That’s a menu.
The softest ones are tonight’s dinner. The firmer ones can wait.
One useful habit is to keep tomatoes stem-side down on a towel on the counter. It can help protect the fruit while you’re waiting for it to reach that perfect stage between firm and “we need to eat this thing today.”
Then There’s the Mealy Tomato
We’ve all had one.
It looks fantastic. You cut into it expecting summer and instead get something with roughly the texture and personality of damp cardboard.
Don’t throw it away.
A disappointing tomato may be terrible for a BLT, but that doesn’t make it useless.
Once you change the texture, you change the game.
Blend those mediocre tomatoes for gazpacho. Puree them with olive oil, vinegar, garlic, onion or herbs for a fresh dressing. Chop them up for salsa, where onions, cilantro, peppers, lime and salt can do some of the heavy lifting.
And if you’ve got several pounds of less-than-perfect tomatoes, turn on the stove.
Sauce Forgives a Lot of Sins
There may be no better rescue operation for an average tomato than a pot of tomato sauce.
Garlic, onion, olive oil, basil, oregano and time can turn tomatoes nobody wanted to slice into something everybody wants over pasta.
Roasting works particularly well, too.
Cut the tomatoes, add a little olive oil and seasoning, and roast them until they begin to collapse and concentrate. The oven drives off some of the water and intensifies what’s left behind.
From there they can become pasta sauce, pizza sauce, soup, salsa or the base for any number of meals.
This is also the answer to the great August gardening dilemma: What do I do when 17 tomatoes become ripe on the same day?
Cook them.
And Don’t Forget Salsa
This is California, after all.
If your tomatoes aren’t quite spectacular enough to stand alone, give them some company.
Onion, jalapeño or serrano peppers, cilantro, garlic, lime and salt can rescue a tomato that isn’t going to win any awards by itself.
There aren’t many strict rules here. That’s part of the beauty of homemade salsa. Taste it. Add something. Taste it again.
Too flat? More salt or lime.
Needs some heat? Another pepper.
Too hot? Add more tomato.
Suddenly that disappointing tomato has become the thing everybody is hovering around with a bag of tortilla chips.
The Backyard-Garden Exchange Rate
There is also another perfectly acceptable use for excess tomatoes in Rio Linda:
Give them away.
Tomatoes are part of the informal economy of neighborhoods like ours. Tomatoes become zucchini. Zucchini becomes peaches. Peaches become eggs. Eggs become lemons.
Nobody keeps particularly careful records.
A bag gets hung on a neighbor’s doorknob. A box appears in the break room. Somebody brings produce to a meeting and announces that nobody is allowed to leave until at least half of it is gone.
That’s what happens when people still grow food in their yards.
Rio Linda and Elverta have changed tremendously over the decades, but there’s still plenty of agricultural DNA left in this community. Chickens, horses, cattle, backyard gardens, fruit trees and summer produce remain part of the landscape here in a way that’s increasingly unusual this close to a major city.
Tomato season is a small reminder of that.
Enjoy Them While They Last
You can buy a tomato in January.
That doesn’t mean it’s an August tomato.
The great summer tomato is temporary, which is probably part of why we appreciate it so much. For a few weeks, they’re everywhere. Then the nights get cooler, the plants slow down and eventually we’re standing in a grocery store looking suspiciously at something pale red and rock-hard.
So eat the good ones now.
Make the BLT.
Put a thick slice on a cheeseburger.
Make salsa.
Cook a giant pot of sauce.
Give a bag to the neighbor.
And when somebody in Rio Linda shows up with more homegrown tomatoes than you could possibly use, take them anyway.
You’ll figure something out.
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