SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
Once again, my alma mater will prove herself to be a source of knowledge, wisdom, and tomatoes.
At the end of August, Rutgers University will hold its annual Great Tomato Tasting. The capital letters are there to signify how truly magnificent it is.
Hey, would you look at that? My name has capital letters!
But enough about me. I’m sure readers across the United States are falling over themselves to learn more about the Great Tomato Tasting.
If there wasn’t enough oomph in that sentence, I mean the GREAT TOMATO TASTING.
Whew. That took a lot to type. Give me a second to rest my fingers.
The Rutgers Snyder Research and Extension Farm in Pittstown, New Jersey, hosts the GTT. I’m not going to write it out again. Capitals don’t grow on trees, you know.
Every year, hard-working tomato growers gather at Snyder Farm to show off the fruits—or is it vegetables?—of their efforts.
I’d like a tomato that can do my taxes or drive a car or something. But so far, the biggest names in agricultural research have won renown based on the color and flavor of their cultivars.
To each his own, I suppose. In recent years, they’ve gotten really creative.
If you attend the event, you can try tomato varieties with names like “Green Zebra,” “German Lunchbox,” and… here I would appreciate a drumroll… “Dwarf Golden Tipsy.”
How many of you would like one of those in your sandwich?
I like tomatoes. Not enough to try 50 varieties of them, but maybe enough to take a look around. Gotta eat somewhere.
If you come to sample some, you have good taste. The Rutgers tomato, also known as the Jersey tomato, was the most popular tomato in the world before the advent of mechanized farming.
It went into Campbell’s Soup. It went into Hunt’s sauces. It went into Heinz ketchup. Then it went into the compost heap of history.
Today, some researchers are trying to breed a modern variety like it. I say we should just scrap mechanized farming.
If they wanted to grow something really impressive— like a giant, mutant tomato that plows through New York, ending its rampage in an epic showdown with lots of artillery helicopters and a wave of salsa swamping the Empire State Building— I would be down to help, so long as I got the movie rights.
If you’re still not convinced, the GTT is also a great way to find out what professors at state schools are doing with your tax dollars.
Are they developing the most delicious fruit / vegetable / berry / rampaging monster known to man? No one can say. Not until late August.
If you, like millions of Americans, have nothing to do in the summer but watch crap and eat garbage (or maybe it’s the other way around), consider a trip to Snyder Farm.
While tomatoes are less entertaining than televisions, they possess greater nutritional value. Or so claim our leading agricultural scientists.
Find these eminent researchers and their produce at the… hold on a second. Let me stretch my fingers.
Find them all at the GREAT TOMATO TASTING.
