There’s something about homegrown vegetables that brings out the tastebuds. It doesn’t matter if its corn, tomatoes, or dozens of other vegetables we have in the summer, homegrown tastes better.
Homegrown tomatoes are still my favorite. For years, we lived next to my grandparents. My grandmother planted a lot of tomatoes. She had to. She made tomato juice, spaghetti sauce, and numerous other dishes that required tomatoes.
If I close my eyes, I can still see Grandma stirring a large pot of tomatoes on her stove. Some of them she canned whole, the rest she ground up and put in jars. It was my job to turn the handle on the grinder. Later, we would sit on the back porch and listen for the jars to pop as they sealed.
Around the end of July, Grandpa would sit by the root cellar and tell me to go get us a tomato. He liked them as much as I did. We would eat tomatoes until juice ran down our chins.
One of the things I missed in the Air Force was homegrown vegetables. We had access to numerous vegetables, even in the winter, but they lacked the taste of homegrown. Then, to top things off, my aunts would send me pictures of big ripe tomatoes in Grandma’s garden. They must have felt guilty, since there were a few bucks in the letters.
There were a few times each summer when I caught a hop on a courier flight from Newfoundland to Lockbourne Air Force Base in Columbus. Usually, we flew down on Friday and back on Monday. We had several crews on the plane, all from Ohio, imagine that. On our return trip, I had a duffle bag packed full of carefully wrapped tomatoes, green peppers, and a few watermelons.
Today, I imagine they have access to fresh vegetables just like we do. They have a Walmart, so they have fresh vegetables. But, back then, watermelon in Newfoundland was practically unheard of. It went over big at a cookout, a real treat for the local girls. I just wished they had burgers and steaks instead of cod and flounder.
The Link LonkOctober 25, 2020 at 04:15PM
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