Welcome Back, Tomatomania!

One of my favorite internet memes reads, “The four seasons are depression, allergies, tomatoes, and spooky.” If you have been to our market recently, you will know that we are well and truly into tomato season. This weekend we will celebrate that juicy bounty by bringing back a beloved Hillsdale event: Tomatomania!

Tomatomania is a community event to help shoppers explore all the different and unique varieties of tomatoes our vendors bring to market in the summer. Find us at the north end of the market where we will be offering free samples of tomatoes grown by every farm at Hillsdale. We’re also making fun tomato tracker scorecards, so you can remember which tomatoes you tried and where to find your new favorites. After a three-year pandemic-related hiatus, we are thrilled to be bringing back this beloved market event.

Tomatoes are in the nightshade family, which include other vegetables like eggplants, peppers, and potatoes. What links these foods is their levels of alkaloids – a naturally occurring organic compound with acidic properties. The acid in tomatoes is part of what makes them so versatile in the kitchen! When raw, that acidity can be used to break down other sharp flavors- like in a salsa fresca. When stewed or cooked, the acidity reduces and produces the mellower taste we find in tomato sauces and soups. In the eighteenth century, some Europeans believed tomatoes to be poisonous precisely due to their acidity. European aristocracy often ate off pewter plates, which contained lead. When tomatoes were served on these plates, their natural acidity caused the lead to leak into the meal, and poisoned the food!

Tomatoes are botanically a berry, so classified because of how they grow and reproduce. A berry is defined as the fleshy fruit (without a stone or bit) produced from a single flower. While we often think of tomatoes as a vegetable, they are technically a fruit!

Tomatoes are native to South and Central America, and the first evidence of their cultivation comes from the Aztecs. The Spanish brought the tomato to Europe, where it spread quickly into French and Italian cuisine.

When considering which tomatoes to take home this weekend, it is best to break your options down into three helpful categories. Slicing tomatoes are often medium to large tomatoes, and their gorgeous color and taste lends them to being eaten raw in salads, on sandwiches, or on their own. Cherry tomatoes are small tomatoes perfect for snacking. They can be juicy or firm and their flavor profiles cover a wide spectrum. Plum or Paste tomatoes are known for their firm flesh and minimal seeds. These attributes make them a great choice for canning, stewing, and making sauces from.

A common buzzword for tomatoes is “heirloom.” But what does that really mean? Heirloom tomatoes are varieties whose seed strain have been preserved intact for fifty years or more. This is distinctive because many varieties are deliberately crossbred, in order to give the plant beneficial traits, like being disease resistant, early ripening, or growing bigger fruit.  These crossbred types are known as hybrid tomatoes. Both heirlooms and hybrids are delicious and nutritious.

The best way to decide which tomatoes to take home are to taste them! Join us this Sunday for Tomatomania and bring your sense of adventure as we dive into the wide range of flavors the tomato has to offer.