How To Pick The Perfect Tomato

feat. Edie Tolbert

When my grandmother passed away a few years ago, my deepest regret was that I didn’t ask her more questions.

Why did she use crisco as her fat of choice in cooking and baking? How did she know when a watermelon was ripe? Where did she get her recipe for her famous chicken and noodles?

Every summer my mother would load my sister and I up into the car and head to a small fruit and veggie stand on the edge of town. She would pick her tomatoes, brown bags full of red, ripe goodness, head back home and slice them and eat them with salt. A summer memory I will never forget.

But, what makes a tomato good? How do you know they’re ripe? It honestly never occurred to me to ask. It’s the small things like these, memories of my mother and her love of tomatoes, that I want to pass on to my own children one day.

So, off the to the farm stand we went! We checked out all kinds of tomatoes… Beefsteak tomatoes, which are great for BLTs, Roma (plum) tomatoes used for soups, stews and pizza sauce and Cherry/Grape tomatoes, which are perfect for salads. She told me the story of how she learned to grow her own tomatoes. How my grandfather and aunt helped her till the soil, sow the seeds at the right time and how to know when to pick them.

Here’s what she learned:

notice the Different Size rings

We had the most fun collaborating on this project together and I anticipate many more to come!

Stay tuned for how I used all the yummy tomatoes we picked in my Garden Fresh Bruschetta!