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think positive 
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| Post subject: Re: What can't or won't you eat? |  |
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| Tannin wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | raw tomato I only like in small doses not big pieces |
Funny you should mention that one. I am a huge, huge tomato eater. I love just about anything with tomatoes in it. A lot of the things I cook are essentially a whole lot of tomato with a few other odds and ends as an afterthought. Through the cooler months I practically live on pasta dishes (only I mostly serve them with basmati rice 'coz I like pasta but I love rice, especially basmati).
I'd trade a gourmet night out on your dollar for a great big dish of tomatoes, sliced and lightly cooked, with just a dash of herbs or onions and a slice or two of buttered toast underneath. Anytime.
Last summer I went mad in the vegie garden and grew masses of beautiful fresh tomatoes - and a proper home-grown tomato is to those tasteless supermarket things as your wedding night is to a kiss from your ugly sister. It's not just that they are fresh and chemical free (in fact, tomatoes are one of those fruits which don't need to be eaten fresh off the bush, and generally improve if you keep them for a while - even supermarket ones are half-decejnt if you let them sit a week or two first).
Supermarket tomatoes are hybrids bred to look nice on the shelf, to keep a long time in the warehouse, to fruit all at the same time so that you can pick them by machine, to provide high yields per acre, and above all to travel well. They have very thick, tasteless skins so that they can bounce them around in trucks all the way from Queensland to Adelaide, or Mildura to Brisbane (depending on the season) without bruising. They store and travel, in fact, just as well as dunny paper, and taste nearly as good too.
Real tomatoes - the varieties you can only grow yourself, you never see them in shops - have been bred for hundreds of years to taste good. Not to travel in trucks, not to be machine harvestable, not to look spotless and perfect in Coles, they have been bred to eat. Bred as if quality matters. Bred as if humans had taste buds and could tell good food from bad.
So I went nuts in the garden last year and grew zillions of them. And every day for months on end, I'd think "what do I feel like for brunch?", or "it must be time for a snack, what do I fancy?", or "what am I going to have for dinner tonight?" And practically every time, the answer was a tomato sandwich. Sometimes toasted, mostly with fresh basil, capsicum, and parsley out of the garden, usually with cheese, ham, corned beef or chicken, often with a bit of those beautiful sweet little Egyptian onions I grow, or a few chives, some celeriac, and frequently with a cucumber or a plum to follow - but always with those wonderful tomatoes.
No kidding, I started worrying about my nutrition 'coz I was hardly eating anything else. I mean, we all have passing food fads where you go gonzo on pizza or roasts or something for a week or two before you lose the taste for it and start wanting something different, but I never got tired of them. I only stopped in about May when there were none left. I kept saying that I'd do something different, just for nutritional balance, for the next meal. And then ... damn it! I'll just have one more plate of tomato sandwiches with ... um .... let's have lettuce, olives and tuna on this one, and maybe grate some cheese on top before I pop it under the griller.
I was sitting down to feasts, smorgasbords with Gross Lisse and ham for starters, followed by a Tommy Toe , a deliciously tart Reiseomate to cut through and not be swamped by a tasty cheese and ... why not? ... let's splurge and finish with a wonderful Black Crim.
Anyway, I love tomatoes, cooked, raw, any way you like. (If you've read this far you've probably nearly figured that out by now.)
But the funny thing is - I can't eat raw tomato on its own. A small one is OK, but anything much bigger than an egg and I throw up. Put it with a slice of bread,l a forkful of potato salad, a bit of beetroot or onion or celery, no problem. But raw tomato on its own, nope. Depending on the variety and the ripeness, it tastes somewhere between OK and great ... and then I throw up. Every time.
Tomatos, of course, are a nightshade, botanically speaking. (So are potatoes, capsicums, tobacco, and eggplants.) They are quite closely related to any number of poisonous plants in the same family, the best-known of them is Deadly Nightshade. That can kill you. So can many other nightshades - hell, most parts of the humble potato plant are poisonous - you should never, ever eat green spuds. Very bad for you. So are the fruits.
My theory is that we humans have evolved a defence mechanism against nightshades. Our bodies are quick to reject them. There are between two and three thousand plants in the nightshade family; they grow all over the world, and most of them are poisonous - a bit or a lot, it varies. Most of them also produce enticing-looking fruits. And some of those fruits you can eat. Anyway, I reckon we have, as part of our genetic makeup, an inbuilt propensity to vomit up the nasty nightshades before they kill us. You can imagine how useful that would be to a hunter-gatherer wandering around in the bush looking for a feed. But (like every other genetic factor) it varies a bit from one individual to the next. Some people can't eat tomatoes at all, or (in more extreme cases) any of the solanaceae (nightshade family) at all.
With some people (me, Stui) raw tomato triggers the vomit reflex, other people it doesn't. Cooking obviously disarms whatever the chemical trigger is for it, and mixing the tomato with other food does too.
Did I mention that I like tomato? |
Your tomatoes are pretty good. Almost as good as the apple crumble! Now that's a veggie dish everyone loves!
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Post subject: Re: What can't or won't you eat? | |
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| Tannin wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | raw tomato I only like in small doses not big pieces |
Did I mention that I like tomato? |
I think I picked that message up. 
Speaking of nightshade, i've got some Tomatillo seedlings growing. Can't wait. 
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| Post subject: Re: What can't or won't you eat? | |
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| Tannin wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | raw tomato I only like in small doses not big pieces |
Funny you should mention that one. I am a huge, huge tomato eater. I love just about anything with tomatoes in it. A lot of the things I cook are essentially a whole lot of tomato with a few other odds and ends as an afterthought. Through the cooler months I practically live on pasta dishes (only I mostly serve them with basmati rice 'coz I like pasta but I love rice, especially basmati).
I........
Did I mention that I like tomato? |
We grow a lot of tomatoes but have had trouble with vines. 2 years ago Mrs WPT was given some plants by a crazy older Greek man (one of her hoarding customers - who used to be in the Greek police & was still making bullets at home - a hunter). They produce these humungous and tasty tomatoes don;t know the name.
We are also members of the "Diggers club" & plant a some heirloom varieties. I prefer some over others. While they look good I'm no huge fan of the black Russian varieties.
Poor you that you can't eat raw tomato.
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“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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5150 
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
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Won't do any offal or vital organs.
Can do almost all fruit & veg, cant think of one I hate.
Love most shellfish and fish - cant do any whole fish or with the eye looking back at me.
Made the mistake of ordering sweetbreads once... sounds nice until it arrives.
About the only thing I cant stand the taste or smell of is Southern Comfort. |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| 5150 wrote: | Won't do any offal or vital organs.
Can do almost all fruit & veg, cant think of one I hate.
Love most shellfish and fish - cant do any whole fish or with the eye looking back at me.
Made the mistake of ordering sweetbreads once... sounds nice until it arrives.
About the only thing I cant stand the taste or smell of is Southern Comfort. |
Ugh yeah that stuffs awful!
_________________
You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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partypie
Joined: 01 Oct 2010
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| think positive wrote: | | 5150 wrote: | Won't do any offal or vital organs.
Can do almost all fruit & veg, cant think of one I hate.
Love most shellfish and fish - cant do any whole fish or with the eye looking back at me.
Made the mistake of ordering sweetbreads once... sounds nice until it arrives.
About the only thing I cant stand the taste or smell of is Southern Comfort. |
Ugh yeah that stuffs awful! |
anyone remember the billboard on Flemington Road that bugga up defaced "takes like cum'? |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
I used to love that stuff until I drank a bottle of it one new years eve, neat.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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I'm finding it a bit hard to stomach these election results...
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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Morrigu 
Joined: 11 Aug 2001
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| David wrote: | | I'm finding it a bit hard to stomach these election results... |
Very good David!!!!!
_________________
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” |
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swoop42 
Whatcha gonna do when he comes for you?
Joined: 02 Aug 2008
Location: The 18
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| David wrote: | | I'm finding it a bit hard to stomach these election results... |
Yeah but think of all the tomatoes Tannin will be able to grow from the shite Trump will dribble these next 4 years. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: | | I'm finding it a bit hard to stomach these election results... |
So Fonzie, do you want me to PM you my account details or my address?
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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| stui magpie wrote: | | David wrote: | | I'm finding it a bit hard to stomach these election results... |
So Fonzie, do you want me to PM you my account details or my address? |
On the other hand, I am capable of eating humble pie.
Your bank account details will be fine. 
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| swoop42 wrote: | | David wrote: | | I'm finding it a bit hard to stomach these election results... |
Yeah but think of all the tomatoes Tannin will be able to grow from the shite Trump will dribble these next 4 years. |
_________________
You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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5150
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
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| stui magpie wrote: | ^
I used to love that stuff until I drank a bottle of it one new years eve, neat. |
Are you referring to my post or partypies???
Either way, a bottle of either makes for a crappy NYE... |
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