Knowing Goodness

“A taste for better stuff is cultivated only through experience.”

     -Barbara Kingsolver

“The baguettes don’t take long to bake in the hot stone oven. After about fifteen minutes we take them out and cut them open. The smell is enough to make you give up on cooking a gourmet meal and just eat bread instead.”

     -Camille Kingsolver

These two quotes are much more related than seems at first glance. Okay, maybe first glance is enough. It’s pretty obvious.

I’ve long been perplexed those willing to eat supermarket tomatoes in the winter. I suppose I’ve been one of those people myself at times, but that was less about ignorance and more about desperation, and a futile attempt in denial to have what I wanted when I wanted it. Perhaps it was also a sort of personal food Rumspringa. (I’ve mentioned my upbringing before, our kitchen at times more closely resembling that of an Amish household than its typical American counterpart.) I have a vivid memory of being in the Jewel-Osco (grocery chain in Chicago) on Ashland and Wellington in the winter of 2003-2004 with the ill-fated intention of buying tomatoes. (This probably happened more than once.) I wanted that magical July-August experience. A pesto pasta punctuated by bright, warm bursts of acidic-sweet cherry tomato sublimity. I knew in my heart of hearts that it was an empty pursuit, but like I said, I was in denial. I know I bought romas, brandywines, or whatever the hell variety supermarkets refer to as “vine-ripened tomatoes,” (as though there should be any other kind). “Insipid imports...anemic wedges that taste like slightly sour water with a mealy texture.” That’s actually a rather nice way of putting it. And if these insipid imports are all you know of as “tomatoes,” I can see why your feelings about tomatoes in general would be rather lukewarm at best, or even negative.

One of 2012's prized gems

But if you’ve ever had a fresh garden tomato, if you’ve walked up to a tall, gangly cherry tomato vine stretching its limbs like a yawning cat, unabashedly sunning itself in your backyard, and picked one of those warm, red jewels hanging from its crowned blossoms, popped it into your mouth, bit down with your front teeth, and received an explosion of flavor (and texture) that you forgot or never knew was possible, I don’t know how you would ever trust one of those insipid imports again.

I’ve spent a good portion of my adult life realizing just how bad a lot of the food we eat is, and wondering why so many people are okay with eating it. And I think it’s because they haven’t had enough experiences such as those described above. If a taste for better stuff is cultivated only through experience, does a good experience guarantee a taste for better stuff? I think we know that it doesn’t. The words “only” and “cultivated” in that statement are powerful words, accounting for the people who are mysteriously unaffected by such experiences, as well as for those who don’t have the experiences frequently enough, allowing appreciation and love for quality to grow. What’s the missing link? Surely there is some reason that someone experiences a truly superior tomato, India Pale Ale, or slice of artisanal cheese, but for whatever reason registers no more of a reaction than the “meh” that is normally elicited by the impostor immigrant counterparts.

Homegrown Yugoslavian heirloom variety - 2012

Was it a good enough experience? Walking into a good bakery and eating freshly baked bread is one thing, but when you were in the kitchen when it was in dough form, smelled it baking, cut into it and saw the steam rise from the crack like a volcanic fissure, and bit down on what was the freshest baked bread that any human has ever tasted, is that enough to make the difference? To never want to eat another slice of the double-wrapped, fisher-price resembling, aisle 3 stand-by again? I would think so, but then again, I know of people who have uttered a facial “meh” at such experiences, leaving me to wonder, how could you be so blinded to the truth that just jumped up and smacked you right in the face?

Admittedly, I don’t know many people who have denied such a tastebud affirming experience. Most of the dinner guests at my parent’s house in my youth frequently gasped at the sight of our vegetable garden, uttering laments of you’re so lucky and to eat like this every day...

I’ll just have to go on being like one of those charmingly obnoxious Pink Floyd fans, who upon discovering that you don’t really like Pink Floyd, confidently declare that you just haven’t heard the right album yet. It’s the only way I can reconcile the fact that for you and tomatoes, “‘kinda reddish’ is qualification enough.”

-Br. Thelonious

*Quotes taken from Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Some of our 2012 deck garden's production