When we drove to Roan Mountain State Park last week, Sandy and I each packed some special food items so we could really indulge during our vacation.
But one of the standouts was something we picked up in a roadside stand in North Carolina, near the Tennessee border.
We passed a store with a small sign that said "fresh produce." It didn't look real promising, but we stopped all the same. Inside, there were bins and bags of fruit and vegetables. We got some banana peppers, and a basket of peaches. We were looking at tomatoes, and the owner suggested we look at some different ones. We were skeptical. They were dark, almost brown, and a bit soft, with harder green areas. They looked like they were overripe in parts, and underripe in others. He said no matter, they were special, juicy, delicious tomatoes.
We decided to try a few.
OMG, they were transforming. The best tomatoes ever. We saved them for tomato salad...cooking them would have been a shame, because they really needed nothing. We ate quite a few slices just in making the tomato salad.
The salad was simply sliced tomatoes with finely diced onion sprinkled over the top, salt and pepper, and then a drizzle of olive oil and a drizzle of vinegar. Rather than using the dominant balsamic vinegar, we used some milder sherry vinegar. Normally, I'd have used shallots, and a bit of chopped parsley as well, but we didn't have any at the cabin.
So what makes a tomato an heirloom? That is highly debatable, though it is agreed that they must be open pollinated...that is, the plants must be pollinated by natural means, like bees, wind, bird poop, whatever. Since parentage is more or less random, this increases biodiversity. Other schools of thought say that the seeds must be 50 years old, or 100 years old, or cultivated since World War II.
I don't espouse any particuolar school, but I do know the ones we had at Roan were, arguably, the best tomatoes I have ever eaten. They may have looked tomatoes likely to be last picked for the baseball team, but boy, were they fabulous.
After we got back, Sandy emailed me a site featuring heirlooms. She thought our tomatoes looked like they might be Black Krim, or maybe Black Seaman, or maybe Cherokee Purple or even Paul Robeson. Pictures of all these are at the site. Because there is a Cherokee County in North Carolina, Sandy thinks they are probably Cherokee Purple.
These tomatoes were so good that she is going to get seeds for some of these varieties and attempt to grow them next year. My tomato experience with growing tomatoes is that you spend a lot of time looking for caterpillars and disease, at least it was an issue when Red and I tried to grow some tomatoes a few years back.
I hope it works, I'd love to get some more delicious tomatoes, and if it works out, I might even try growing them again myself the following year.
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