Red Ripe Tomato Season

It’s been a busy week for canning tomatoes, which reminds me of a story that my Aunt Diana told me:

It was Christmas Eve, sometime in the 1970s, and Diana and Terry decided that they were not going to join the rest of the family in attending the Christmas Eve service at church.  Instead, they were going to go to Belvidere, to the newly opened restaurant Mama Rosa’s, and try Italian food for the very first time.  In what was some sort of a religious experience, Terry ate a piece of pizza and then had a seizure, resulting in a call to the paramedics and a resolution by the two of them to never not go to Christmas Eve service with their family. 

Was it really a message from God?  Perhaps, but Diana said that the seizure could have been caused by the shock of eating Italian food for the first time.   

I asked my dad about this, and he responded in a skeptical manner,  “…and it certainly wasn’t the first time they had Italian!  We had Italian food all the time.”

Each year, when we can tomatoes, my dad likes to expand on how great canned tomatoes really are.  Usually he talks about chili bases and salsas, but recently he provided some insight and clarity into this story of Christmas miracles:

“And if you wanted tomato soup, you could just go down to the basement and get a jar of canned tomatoes.  Heat it up, and put some crackers in it, and you had tomato soup!”  (No, those are just hot tomatoes.)  “Or if you wanted spaghetti, you could just go down to the basement and get a jar of canned tomatoes.  Heat it up, and pour it over some noodles, and you had spaghetti!” 

It seems very likely that the shock resulting from the addition of basil or oregano would possibly kill you. 

I told Linda this story, and she assured me that this is in keeping with traditional Norwegian behavior.  When she was a youth, visiting her cousins in Norway, they were thrilled to inform her that Italian food had come to the land of the fjords and Vikings.  There, they passed around a plate of spaghetti: a heap of noodles covered in ketchup. 

I can’t say which is better: canned tomatoes don’t require refrigeration, but ketchup comes in a squeezable form.  But no matter which you choose to indulge in, be sure to avoid herbs and spices on the holidays.