Middle Aged and Living Well

We picked the first tomato from this year’s crop last Saturday.  It wasn’t an heirloom, but just a Celebrity, but as usual, full of tomato flavor that you cannot get from any mass produced tomato from a supermarket. It even had a big blemish on the bottom.  Now I am old enough to remember when even major supermarkets had tomatoes and other fruit and vegetables with great taste.  But during the years from then to now, there have been many great genetic improvements over the years, but I think the main genetic change has been to toughen the fruits up so they can be shipped from a central location to all point of the country.  The big agriculture companies also want a fruit that consistently looks the same with no blemishes.  This helped big agriculture sell lots of fruit, but it had unfortunate consequences.

What happened was we lost flavor in our mass produced fruits and vegetables.  This didn’t happen overnight, the flavor disappeared so slowly that many of us didn’t notice.  We became so consumed with what the fruit looked like and enjoyed the convenience that we barely noticed the flavor had been bio-engineered away through years of manually controlled genetic mutations.  Now these tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries and other easily bruised fruit can travel thousands of miles without bruising but arrives totally tasteless and adds nothing but structure to any recipe.

Here are 5 ways to bring flavor back to your favorite ingredients for all of your best recipes.

1. Grow your own – This is the only way to guarantee flavor, but it does take some work, relaxing, rewarding work.
2. Buy local – Hit the local farmer’s market, but make sure the sellers are truly local.  Most farmer’s market are certified, but I found talking to the vendors, you get a better idea of their local and their growing methods.
3. Support heirlooms – Even most grocery stores are now selling many varieties of tomatoes, and other fruits that are genetic equivalents of fruits of many years ago that had lots of flavor.
4. Forgo out of season fruits – If you really need tomatoes in winter, try canned.  Do you really need strawberries in December?  One friend on Facebook commented to me that she used to look forward to strawberry season.  Lets return to the fun and excitement of seasonal anticipation.
5. Try new fruits and vegetables – We all get into a rut with our favorite fruits and veggies.  But when your favorite vegetables are out of season, try new and locally grown alternatives.  For me in the OC, I have added chayote squash and napole cactus.  Each of these add to my southwestern cooking.