So around here, in Elbonia, it's still pretty common for people to grow their own stuff in the countryside. My grandmother still grows her own vegetables and st

So around here, in Elbonia, it's still pretty common for people to grow their own stuff in the countryside. My grandmother still grows her own vegetables and still raises chicken. She doesn't use fertilizer, but the conditions are quite ideal for a lot of vegetables, including -- yes -- tomatoes. The difference is astounding. Simply slicing one or two tomatoes is enough to make my whole kitchen smell like tomatoes. My palate is so accustomed to supermarket chicken that I literally cannot eat the ones she raises. I have to drown the meat in spices -- the flavour is so strong (and pretty different from that of "mass-produced" chicken) that it makes me vomit. Fortunately, I don't have that trouble with her tomatoes. The catch is, indeed, that the yield is fairly low. There's no such thing as more than one crop per year, either -- she has tomatoes throughout the summer, but that's it. The only exception are cherry tomatoes, which will sometimes grow another generation of fruit in early autumn, and they ripen pretty fast, but that's it. Also, the ripening process is fairly slow; by mid-autumn or so, there are still enough unripe tomatoes for her to pickle a few jars. (What, you don't pickle tomatoes when they're green in the States? You have no idea what you're missing!) That being said, their color is pretty uniform. I don't have a picture right now, since they're out of season, but they really look OK, most of them are no different, in terms of look, from what you can see in supermarkets. Sometimes they grow in a somewhat weird shape (e.g. some of them get rather bulgy, but maybe that's a distinct cultivar, I don't know; others look perfectly round) but, if you allow them to ripen, they're pretty uniformly red. However, at that stage they're basically impossible to sell in supermarkets or even at farmers' markets, they'll go bad within days of being picked, even if you refrigerate them. People basically pick them right before a meal (worst case scenario, they'll pick a bunch in the morning so that they can chill in the fridge for an hour or two -- summers are pretty hot here, so if you pick them before lunch, you'll be eating really warm tomatoes). Edit: I've seen someone here claiming that plain yogurt is supposed to be plain. Fuck no. Plain yogurt is so thick, soury and flavourful that, unless you've grown up with it, it's an acquired taste. My grandmother never raised cattle -- I first tasted plain, home-made yogurt at one of her relatives in a remote-ish village when I was 14 or so. I hated it, despite having eaten plain yogurt from the supermarket before, and it took me a whole summer to get accustomed to the taste. It's also incredibly filling, you can't eat more than a bowl.