31 ms·

Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

186 points by gascoigne 2y ago

rini17 2y ago
Oh my. Everyone who cares about tomatoes grows their own, supermarkets are for the rest. They are not demanding and will grow anywhere there's sun, including in pot on balcony.
- 317070 2y ago
  Why is capitalism failing us here? Why do we need to grow our own?
  - lifestyleguru 2y ago
    Capitalism gives you perfectly uniform porno-tomatoes and watered ketchupy tomato sauce. No surprise, capitalism extract profits on all ends - production, storage, and distribution and it doesn't result with tasty aromatic tomatoes.
    - gameman144 2y ago
      Capitalism would absolutely love to give you delicious and peak-quality tomatoes. If consumers were willing to pay the additional cost needed to harvest and handle more heirloom-variety tomatoes, there would be a huge incentive to provide them. If people aren't willing to pay the premium needed, then the revealed preference is for the easily harvestable varieties. Farmers markets and local producers that sell to fewer people who will pay that premium are likewise capitalism's answer to this problem (i.e. saying "Industrial agriculture can't meet the consumers' needs, but local farmers can.") Capitalism need not be industrial-scale, it just needs to fill consumer demand somehow (which is why small business are so crucial)
    - dagw 2y ago
      Capitalism gives me options. I can get expensive tasty locally grown tomatoes when in season, if I want, while still being able to get really cheap tomatoes at any time of the year.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - gostsamo 2y ago
    Because it is capitalism. Really good tomatoes are at their best for a few days only which makes them hell to transport. That's why modern tomatoes are bred for color ans size, but inside they are actually green with very hard core and very little natural sugar.
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      Why can I buy fresh fish and seafood, but not fresh tomatoes?
      - rini17 2y ago
        Fish and seafood can be refrigerated. Tomatoes can't, they completely lose their aroma.
        carlosjobim 2y ago
        That explains it, thanks!
  - ein0p 2y ago
    Simple: quality tomatoes are hard to transport and they don’t last when on the shelf. The closest thing to a “real” farm tomato you can buy at a reasonable price is “Kumato” from Trader Joe’s. It’s a pale imitation of a real tomato picked off the plant when it’s ripe, but at least it reminds me of it, whereas a “regular” store bought tomato doesn’t taste anything like the real thing.
    - chongli 2y ago
      Letting a tomato go fully ripe on the plant is an easy way to attract birds and lose a substantial amount of the crop. There’s no reason for it either. Once the tomato reaches the breaker stage (starting to change colour) it is internally cut off from the mother plant and will not be adversely affected by being harvested.
      - ein0p 2y ago
        If we’re talking the peak flavor tomato that “capitalism” purportedly can’t produce, that is only available when you pick it from the vine, already ripe. It is true that tomatoes will ripen if picked “brown”, but they’re less flavorful than vine ripened. Source: picked a few tons of tomatoes every summer as a kid.
        the_gipsy 2y ago
        Source: anecdotal
        ein0p 2y ago
        Anecdotal is when someone else told you something and you used that data without verifying. The correct term in this case is “empirical”.
        NikkiA 2y ago
        No, that would be hearsay. Anecdotal is when an anecdote is used.
  - nickpp 2y ago
    Like all free market failures, the culprit is regulation. Regulated food, local and weekend markets reduced competition by discouraging and removing small retailers until large supermarket chains remained de facto monopolies. Those chains must serve very large number of customers so they must focus on produce that is easy to pick, store and sell. Looks good and survives (even gets ripe during) transit. Taste is often secondary. You wanna fight that? Fight all regulations for small and local producers, even if it sounds like it’s well intended (hygiene, quality standards, subventions). Talk to your representative about it too. Finally, buy local and from smallest producer you can find.
    - the_gipsy 2y ago
      You seriously think that small shops would be competitive if there were no subsidies? No hygiene I could maybe buy, but it goes hand in hand with quality, and there is practically no regulation for that: it's self imposed by the consumer picking pretty produce.
      - nickpp 2y ago
        The consumer learns very quickly what they like. Eat a good tomato, you’ll look for one next time. The local fruit shop was even a joke in Seinfeld, I believe. The closing of the small grocery store and producer can be mostly attributed to regulation.
        the_gipsy 2y ago
        No. They can be attributed to not being able to compete against big chains despite heavy regulation in favor of small businesses. Big chains can offer what the average consumer wants in greater variety and cheaper, at more places and longer hours. They can gauge prices, do better marketing, have better stock, and wage price wars. They have more power, and what's the purpose of that if not abusing it? Less regulation would just mean even worse food and less small shops.
        nickpp 2y ago
  - rini17 2y ago
    Because economy alone can't solve all our problems? Someone probably promised you it will, but that's scam.
  - HarryHirsch 2y ago
    Because market forces, of course, and they look like this: https://newsroom.nmsu.edu/news/nmsu-developing-perfect-green-chile-pepper-for-mechanical-harvest/s/14d70f7a-b2ef-4be4-a3a0-d0bcb10e6c1b https://newsroom.nmsu.edu/news/nmsu-developing-perfect-green... A chile pepper optimized for mechanical harvest, because right now the fruit needs to be cut from the stem, but if you can shake it off you can spare yourself the farmworker.
  - WillPostForFood 2y ago
    Do you not have a farmer's market near you? Good tomatoes are available if you want them, and they are in season.
  - drewcoo 2y ago
    Capitalism has given us the most "efficient" tomato for the market. If you want to optimize for something else, you're trying to solve a different problem.
  - misja111 2y ago
    It's not, at least not where I live, in Switzerland. There are many different varieties to choose from in the supermarket nowadays, from cheap and tasteless to more expensive and tasty. It's the same in the Netherlands by the way. The problem is not capitalism, it is the preference of the consumers in your area.
  - shusaku 2y ago
    One thing to look for are local farms that have subscription services. Some give you a box of seasonal veggies each month, which will be very fresh.
  - bradleyjg 2y ago
    I’ve not been myself but I’ve heard that in Japan it’s common to give fruit as a gift and that as a result there’s very high end fruit available for purchase. You can go into a store and spend the equivalent of $50 on the best looking and tasting melon you’ve ever had.
  - lm28469 2y ago
    > Why is capitalism failing us here? It can't even bring housing and healthcare for all, tasty tomatoes is way down the list lmao
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      Capitalism isn't the reason your housing costs so much; that's because of crappy government regulations (i.e. Euclidean zoning) and NIMBYs. Remove the regulations and let landowners do what they want with land and it'll be fixed; that's how it works here in Japan. Conversely, the reason American healthcare is such a disaster is because of really bad regulation. Developed nations have shown that good healthcare systems require strong regulation, but not shitty regulation like the US has.
      - lm28469 2y ago
        The world isn't the USA, yet the housing problem is impacting most of the west It definitely is more than partially brought by capitalism and what comes with it: greed, speculation, &c. The flat I'm renting right now in Germany is owned by a company who owns 200k flats, the main shareholder in this company is Black Rock. Now explain to me why my german salary paying a german rent benefits private shareholders in NYC ? Rent doubled in ten years...
        shiroiushi 2y ago
        >Now explain to me why my german salary paying a german rent benefits private shareholders in NYC ? Rent doubled in ten years... It's simple supply and demand. Your city doesn't allow building many more units even though demand is high and growing; this greatly increases property values, and creates a potential for big profits for investors. A company of private shareholders in NYC sees this investment opportunity and buys properties up so they can reap the profits. You probably also have some relatively weak tenant legal protections, making it easy to raise rents. If you don't like it, your city should allow more construction. But western cities don't want to do that, because of NIMBYs, "neighborhood character", shitty zoning laws, etc., so we get what we're seeing here.
- vinnyvichy 2y ago
  Oh man ... next up is growing your own pizza, fugget about it (>the supermarket)! Even with no sun! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060621 >Why the Wisconsin pizza farm movement is an idea whose time has come (UPDATE: sorry to the Croatians being overrun by tourists.. guys .. Croatian food is so-so ;) tomatoes, olive oil, cheese, it's nice to be reminded that Croatians (and their Yugoslav brothers, secretly,) gave the middle finger to Stalin et al https://www.quora.com/Did-pizza-exist-in-the-Soviet-Union https://www.quora.com/Did-pizza-exist-in-the-Soviet-Union
  - lifestyleguru 2y ago
    TBH as I age and have eaten a fair share of pizza, I prefer no pizza than bad pizza.
  - barrenko 2y ago
    Reminder that it's still not quite known why the Soviet Union stopped the quite planned invasion of Yugoslavia.
- gniv 2y ago
  I think I want to finally do this. I _can_ find excellent tomatoes around here (France), but they are 27 euro/kg, more than beef.
  - inciampati 2y ago
    Buy a cheap flight to south Italy and gorge yourself.
- MichaelRo 2y ago
  >> They are not demanding I have to disagree on this one. They are prone to a myriad of diseases, mainly fungus: Phytophthora infenstans, Fulvia fulva, Botrytis cinerea, Mosaic Virus, Stolbur disease, and if you don't spray them with the right substances you'll lose a substantial part if not the whole crop, oftentimes lose it even if you spray them. Other than that I agree that home grown tomatoes are better. Of course you mustn't be stupid and buy some supermarket seeds, those are awful. Use local varieties, several of them as there are subtle differences in taste and flavor. Like "oxheart" for instance: https://gomagcdn.ro/domains2/planteieftine.ro/files/product/large/rosii-oxheart-inima-de-bou-tomate-oxheart-inima-de-bou-0-5g-seminte-870017.gif https://gomagcdn.ro/domains2/planteieftine.ro/files/product/... Although I can buy local varieties from the grocery market and I do, they might not be just as good as a fresh one from the garden. Part of the reason is the difficulty in storing them, if you stack them one over another they will get crushed and you won't sell crushed tomatoes to the customers. So farmers tend to pick them when they aren't fully ripe and I freaking hate unripe tomatoes. Still they tend to be way better than supermarket "plastic tomatoes" offering. One tip, pick the smaller tomatoes, they tend to be sweeter. Or at least that's what I noticed.
  - rini17 2y ago
    I lost some crops myself but tomatoes still fared better than other vegetables. It's not like some enormous investment? Having homegrown tomatoes every other year is better than nothing. If you have kids, it's a good lesson about difficulty of obtaining food from nature. I had success with mycorrhizal "good" fungi (brand Symbivit), they were keeping bad fungi away with visible difference between treated and untreated plants.
    - jowdones 2y ago
      Well it's depressing. My mother has a fairly large garden (some 1500 sqare meters) and takes quite some amount of labor to tend to it. So you work all spring and early summer only to see the crops wither away... makes you go on depression pills or just abandon the whole darn thing and buy Duch imported plastic vegetables. A bit unrelated, nowadays my mother was telling me a memory from her teenage years in the 60s. In early summer she'd come home for the weekend from boarding school in the city and her mother (my grandma) would greet her with lunch and a salad made from fresh cucumber and onion (add salt, oil and vinegar). It would be too early for tomatoes but she still remembers the taste of that early salad.
317070 2y ago
It's been a long lasting peeve of mine. I Live in London, where you can easily satisfy every kink, even the most exotic fruits and spices are found in every corner of the city. Yet, for the love of me, I cannot find any tasty tomato. Even if money is no issue, it just doesn't seem to exist? A giant void in a huge market? At this point, I'd pay 10x prices without blinking. It's fair that I cannot find them in winter, but even now, the heart of summer when they are the best, I cannot find any remotely resembling the ones found in big quantities in random Balkan supermarkets. How is it not a thing? Did Isle of Wight crush the market? Is it just me and there is no market?
- deleted 2y ago
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- mirsadm 2y ago
  I find pretty much all fruit and vegetables to be rubbish in Scotland. The only exception is the couple of things grown here. Which is baffling given if you fly for couple of hours you can get fantastic produce everywhere.
- inciampati 2y ago
  You need sun and local intensive agriculture to grow them well. They taste better the more hot and stressed they are. It's just not something available in the UK?
- randunel 2y ago
  Most Polish and Romanian shops sell tomatoes, but their prices are not capped at £2/kg like Sainsbury's do.
Const-me 2y ago
Here in Montenegro I go to a nearby green market, “zelena pijaca” in our language, and similar stuff is usually available. Often more expensive than the ones from Netherlands but still, commercially available without black market. However, availability of the good stuff depends heavily on the time of the year.
wafflemaker 2y ago
I'm Polish expat living in Norway. There are no tomatoes to be had in Norway... Just kidding. I'm actually kind of alright with the small ones (pearl tomatoes), any other don't taste like tomatoes. I believe, that the Norwegian people are so used to blandly tasting vegetables, that the worst and least ripe product parties are send to Norway. But my wife and her family are tomato people. Every time we visit Poland or anybody from Poland visits us, they need to bring some malinowy (raspberry) tomatoes. Premium price, color slightly pinkish rather than true red, shape is a little bulbous, like a pumpkin, rather than perfect round like regular tomatoes. You can actually get them (or other good tomatoes) even in many supermarkets, tho it's best to go to a local produce market. And ofc best ones can be had from people growing their own. Same really goes for eggs - there is another dimension to taste and you get more sated eating less, if you can buy eggs from someone feeding the chicks properly. Though, if I had a car and knew a good source, I could probably buy better eggs here in Norway. However, supermarket eggs (and meat too) are much better in Norway. Most likely due to more stringent rules for animal farming, as Norway is not part of the EU and can have it's own, more strict rules. For example, Norwegian bacon doesn't smell like men's locker room after a football game (compared to swedish) and doesn't have a ton of water leave it when frying.
- em500 2y ago
  I won't comment on the tomatoes, but as far as eggs are concerned, I'm skeptical that any claims about people being able to taste any diffence would hold up in a proper blind taste test. Conclusion from Serious Eats when they attempted to do that: It was pretty clear evidence that as far as eggs go, the mindset of the taster has far more bearing on the flavor of the egg than the egg itself. https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs
  - pnut 2y ago
    I boil six eggs every Sunday and eat one every morning. Same pan, same cooking element, same timing, ice bath with the same volume of water and cube quantity, everything identical from one week to the next. Have been doing it for at least seven years straight. I want my yolks to be crystalline in texture, at the transition point between runny and chalky. Not precious about yolk colouring. Must be easy to peel. There are absolutely differences in egg quality when it comes to boiling them.... Specific brands (some of the expensive/omega/free range etc ones too) reliably come out gelatinous and fiddly to peel. Some come out rubbery. Some just taste wrong and bland, even when I sprinkle with Maldon salt flakes. Not one egg, the entire batch. Over years of trial and error, I found a brand where I can guarantee a consistent textural outcome from my process, and every morning I exclaim "THAT is a good boiled egg" after finishing it.
Animats 2y ago
Romanian giant tomato. Buy seeds for US$3.99.[1] This would be a good project for the Open Source Farming Robot. Assuming you actually want a kilogram sized tomato. [1] https://www.davesseed.com/product/romanian-giant-tomato/ https://www.davesseed.com/product/romanian-giant-tomato/
- schoen 2y ago
  Looks like that particular supplier is in Tasmania and only ships to Australia!
  - Animats 2y ago
    It's a variety of beefsteak tomato, and those are widely available. At WalMart, even.[1] They're unusual, but not rare. [1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Beefsteak-Tomato-Plants-Two-Live-Garden-Plants-Non-GMO-Large-Fruit-Crack-Resistant/3389865580 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Beefsteak-Tomato-Plants-Two-Live-...
lovegrenoble 2y ago
just grows your own
- Scoundreller 2y ago
  get high off your own supply
trte9343r4 2y ago
Croatia has horrible food, locals can not afford quality food. This country was overrun by tourists, and is now more expensive than Italy. Recent adoption of Euro was the last nail in a coffin. Go to Greece, if you want "authentic local tomato from street-market".
- urbandw311er 2y ago
  Just had a week on various Croatian islands. It’s true that we were shocked by the cost of the food (€18 for a pizza in a restaurant) although put it down to the cost of importing the various ingredients. I wouldn’t say any of the food was “horrible” though. We had a tremendous “meat plate” of grilled marinated chicken, pork and steak with potatoes.
  - senko 2y ago
    (Croat lounging on the Croatian coast right now) No, prices are high because they've been jacked up as high as the market will bear. As an example, an cup of coffee at a beach bar in a random coastal village (€2.5) is about the same as in the (touristy) center of London (£2). The effects will probably be seen the next year. As other commenters noted, Croatia has historically been mass budget tourism location, largely undiscovered by comparatively wealthier western tourists (aside from Germans). Ultra-low taxes for "mom and pop" short-term rentals exacerbated the mass low-quality buildout. Now it's at a point where prices went up fast (due to euro, overall inflation and the tourist demographics changes), but the quality didn't catch up yet (generalizing a lot here). There's also been more vocal "anti tourist" sentiment (echoing protests in Barcelona, but just people complaining on blogs and in news) that will for sure get more momentum in the next few years.
    - jq-r 2y ago
      While I agree that the prices (of everything) went up, it wasn't due to adoption of euro. The grocery prices dramatically rised in the year before euro adoption due to inflation and then continued to rise after that. Also I do find it kind of funny when tourists are complaining about prices of food in touristy places. I've eaten a hamburger in Chicago which was $15 and food prices (restaurants etc) are comparatively much higher then in Croatia. At the same time, the prices in the grocery stores are completely out of control due to high taxes and makes living on the coast or islands as a local miserable and very expensive. Needless to say that housing is also totally out of wack, Croatia is not going in a good direction for it's own citizens.
apavlinovic 2y ago
I am Croatian, and I know exactly what the article is referring to. So much that we decided to grow our own tomatoes this year. The imported junk we get from Netherlands is abysmal compared to anything grown locally, and the reality is that we want the good stuff for ourselves, not the tourists. We were very lucky to have a great harvest of cherry, monte carlo, and plum tomatoes this year, all of which serve a different purpose: - Cherry for salads and side dish - Monte Carlo for cooking - Plum tomatoes for everything in between Croatia has incredible food, especially the local, homegrown stuff, and it is well worth the effort to get it. Here's an image of some of our crop: https://imgur.com/5FfdvG6 https://imgur.com/5FfdvG6
- defrost 2y ago
  > Croatia has incredible food .. and a great 80's power pop surf band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZCuCg-UM-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZCuCg-UM-U ( even if they were ex-pat croatians )
- dsego 2y ago
  Another croatian chiming in, I get most of my vegetables from my mother's garden, I think that's true for a lot of croats who live in the cities but have parents in the countryside.
  - imp0cat 2y ago
    So, where in Makarska region should one go to get some? ;) Are those "local" sellers near the beach really local? Or do they just resell stuff from Kaufland/Lidl to naive tourists for inflated prices?
    - dsego 2y ago
      I don't know, the green market (pazar) should be local farmers (OPG), but a common story is that some of them buy at supermarkets and resell at higher prices.
    - dayjah 2y ago
      Not a Croatian, but I visit the Zadar / Ugljan area every couple of years. Last time a Bosnian friend visited from Banja Luka and she brought some tomatoes with her. They were phenomenal <3
sethammons 2y ago
My brother's mom talks about how tomatoes are not tomatoes anymore. They used to be soft and much tastier but it was bad for shipping. Old cartoons would show tomatoes splattering when thrown. The tomatoes I grew up with bounce.
specproc 2y ago
For those in the audience that have only ever eaten supermarket tomatoes, I'm sorry to say you've probably never really eaten a tomato. I live in a small, agricultural country and the article resonated. Over the last 10 years supermarkets and imported vegetables have become a much more important part of our national diet. It's such an important staple food. Historically very cheap (because widely grown) wildly diverse, and rich in flavour and nutrients. I love our _real_ tomatoes. Traditionally served in a simple salad with cucumber, salt and herbs, but so good you can just cut them up, leave them in the sun for an hour, and devour. Supermarket tomatoes are a blight upon humanity: much higher in cost (where I live), devoid of taste, and available in only a handful of varieties. I dread the slow march of progress through our table.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  It's not really the tomatoes, it's that they are harvested green and then artificially ripened when they are ready to be sold. This allows much longer shelf life but the texture of the flesh and the flavors never fully develop. Of course different varieties have different flavors but even a standard supermarket "beefsteak" will taste so much better picked ripe off the vine than bought at the store where it has been in a cooler for two months.
  - telesilla 2y ago
    As far as I understand, greenhouse tomatoes, such as those from the Netherlands, lack flavour which the sun gives. Best tomatoes I ever had were In Cádiz in south of Spain, they were from the nearby town of Conil and had so much fullness and deliciousness, the plate was offered only as tomatoes and olive oil and we were satisfied. If you're in the area, ask for these tomatoes by name and you'll not be disappointed. In Mexico I've seen hectares and hectares of tomatoes left to rot on the vine because the price fell so low it wasn't worth to pick them. I'm still mourning all that unmade pizza sauce.
  - koolba 2y ago
    It’s also the tomato itself which is bred to resist bruising so that it looks pretty on the super market display. Unfortunately those cultivars also taste like meh. Tastier tomatoes with thinner skins bruise more easily. They also require more labor intensive picking by hand vs bulk via machine. Lookup the Rutgers tomato. Its a delicious one that at one point was the most popular tomato in all of the USA. It was bred for flavor, not shelf life! It fell out of favor when factory farming took over as it cannot be harvested by machine without bruising.
elorant 2y ago
I live in Greece. While a lot of what the article says resonates with me, there’s a small detail that changes everything. Climate change. The last two years I haven’t eaten a decent tomato during summer. We had excessive heat waves the last two years, especially this year the whole summer is with temperatures above 35 which is unprecedented. This wrecks havoc in crops. It doesn’t affect tomatoes only, fruits also aren’t as delicious as they used to be, cucumbers seem tasteless and the list goes on.
Eduard 2y ago
ah, the tomato supremacy chauvinism prevalent in Europe. Deeply rooted in all countries south the Alps. It is one of the last bastions standing hindering true unification. I have faced it so many times. It goes like this: - be from north of Alps, e.g. Germany - be on visit in south of Alps, e.g. country bordering Mediterranean Sea such as Spain - order dish containing tomato - unasked, get lectured by local acquaintance how "your" country's produce tastes trash and that you don't know how heavenly "their's" is.
- schoen 2y ago
  Since the tomato (though not our modern varieties) first evolved in Mexico, isn't there some sense in the idea that it would grow better in hotter countries? (I'm sure that's not the only factor to which the "our tomatoes are best" advocates would attribute their tomatoes' quality.)
  - swiftcoder 2y ago
    Yeah, tomatoes need a shit ton of sun to really grow well. Although greenhouses help a lot (which is how the Dutch do so well in this market). Tomatoes also need a bunch of water, of course, which makes them a delicate balancing act in the more southerly (and steadily more drought stricken) regions of Europe
moltar 2y ago
If anyone here is into these kinds of tomatoes, and is around the region - there’ll be a tomatoe fest and a tasting competition in the north of Portugal. https://www.facebook.com/TomateDouro https://www.facebook.com/TomateDouro
- pteraspidomorph 2y ago
  I live near Lisbon and the tasty tomatoes from my childhood are now completely gone. Anything you can buy in any supermarket is absolute garbage, so much so that I only ever use prepackaged chopped tomatoes these days (those still taste decent). One of these days I should get in my car and drive all the way to the Douro just to fetch a bunch of tomatoes, I guess.
  - moltar 2y ago
    Send me your address. I’ll ship you some. I see these tomatoes at normal fruterias quite often as well.
29athrowaway 2y ago
I remember the real tomatoes, they were larger and juicier, but lasted much less.
j7ake 2y ago
If Dutch tomato’s are all you can buy fresh, then try canned tomatos from Italy (eg San Marzano) to get actual flavor.
GOONIMMUNE 2y ago
My understanding is that this has less to do with the specific location the tomatoes are grown, and more to do with the distance from the point of consumption they are grown. If the tomatoes have to travel a long distance, they will be picked before ripe so that they are more hardy during transit. Unfortunately this significantly alters the taste for the worse. I don't really live in the U.S. anymore, but I used to pay extra for "tomatoes still on the vine" which would be a small step up. The best of course were those grown in your own garden.
- chasil 2y ago
  A coworker regularly emptied his fish tank onto his backyard tomato patch. He would bring the results and leave them in the kitchenette, with instructions to wash them thoroughly. They are the best that I have ever tasted.
  - resource_waste 2y ago
    We also use old fishtank water to fertilize our plants. Nitrogen! You could also pee in a jug and dilute it with water. I think the most important thing is the time between the tomato turns red and when you consume it. On a similar note, I find myself picking them when they are red or orange red, and waiting for them to turn red. I wonder if commercial farms pick them red and can them instantly, which is why canned tomato sauce tastes better than my tomato sauce.
- haspok 2y ago
  Your understanding is not wrong, but it is not what this article is really about. There are lots of kinds of tomatoes, and there is at least one type that grows in the Mediterranean, that the author describes. If you are not familiar with this kind of tomato, you would simply reject it if you saw it: it doesn't look good, it is too large, too mushy, doesn't seem ripe. But then if you accidentally taste it, you realize that looks are not everything... I eat this kind of stuff when I'm in Greece, I'm guessing the Croatian variety is a bit different, but you can get these tomatoes in Italy or Spain as well. I presume they are not easy to transport, hence what you usually get in your average European supermarket is a produce of the Netherlands...
Reason077 2y ago
The thing about tomatoes is they always taste and smell a lot better when fresh off the vine than they do when they've been picked when under-ripe in order to spend a few weeks in storage and transport before they got to you. I think this applies, more or less, wherever you are in the world and no matter what variety of tomato. One of the reasons why they're such a popular thing to grow in your own home garden.
throwaway290232 2y ago
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presentation 2y ago
I am American, but living in Japan - the tomatoes here are nothing like the ones pictured but they taste so much better than anything I ever had growing up, enough that chilled tomatoes with salt on the side is a common appetizer in many izakayas. I didn't realize that tomatoes could be so tasty on their own until I left.
hilbert42 2y ago
Oh how I emphasize with this story, it too reminds me of my childhood. When I was a child my grandmother grew tomatoes that were truly delicious. She used to pick them just at the right time when they were ripe-red and lusciously sweet on the outside but just retained a hint of green on the inside. This gave them a slightly acidic edge that one just doesn't get with over-ripe tomatoes or ones that are ripened slowly. I'd add that the ideal ripening also requires good sunshine. Her tomatoes just spoiled me forever, I've never been satisfied with tomatoes purchased in shops, whilst some are just OK most commercial tomatoes are tasteless compared with ones that are freshly picked at their optimal ripeness. It seems to me there's no ideal solution when it comes to commercially distributed tomatoes, they have to be picked before they're at optimal ripeness for efficient transport and distribution and it's just fact that tomatoes just don't ripen off the vine to give them that luscious taste of vine-ripened ones. Frankly, I find some canned tomatoes better than ones that one buys in shops, they definitely can have more flavor. Canned tomatoes like those from Italian canning companies such as Mutti retain flavor because they are picked at just the right time then canned immediately. That this is noticeable even after the canning process shows just how critical it is to pick tomatoes at their optimal ripeness. These days I get most of my tomatoes in the form of small cherry tomatoes, they at least retain some of their flavor after the distribution process.
more_corn 2y ago
It’s not just Croatia. Local food is fresh from the sun and ground. Go to your farmers’ market. Meet your farmer. Sign up for a farm box and get it every week. You’ll eat better, live healthier, connect with your community. Oh and it’s cheaper and your money goes directly to the people who deserve it.
paranoidrobot 2y ago
I have very similar memories as a child, and also find it very difficult to get good tomatoes. There's great looking tomatoes, but they don't smell or taste right, and they are either too hard or floury mealy things. When I can get good tomatoes - my favourite thing is to have them on toast. Just slice the tomato, put it on some toast with butter, (or olive oil). Breakfast, lunch, dinner... it's simple but delicious. Anna Bay, just north of Newcastle in NSW, Australia used to have fantastic tomatoes. It was renowned in the region for it's fantastic tomatoes. The area had a huge flood of Italian immigrants just post WW2, and they brought the tomatoes with them. You'd see a few little road-side stalls on the road to Nelson Bay. The supermarkets took over and those little stalls disappeared. Then some opportunistic folks set up stalls using commercially grown tomatoes from others selling them as Anna Bay tomatoes, but they're not the same. Unfortunately this tactic seems to be becoming more common. We found someone selling Peaches and Nectarines by the side of the road. They offered us a sample, it was amazing. We bought two boxes at a reasonable price, they were almost all awful. Had the same thing with Cherries.
- mastazi 2y ago
  I also grew up eating traditional tomatoes, my favourite thing to do is toasting a slice of sourdough bread then cutting a tomato in half and smashing the two halves on the bread (it's a similar process to making smashed avo on toast - it won't work with supermarket tomatoes because they're too hard and not juicy enough); I add olive oil, a pinch of salt and sometimes oregano. If you have a Harris Farm Markets near you (I think there is one in Newcastle which is not too far from Anna Bay), look for the "heirloom tomatoes" - they are usually placed in a basket as a mix of different heirloom varieties and you can pick the ones you like, they are traditional tomatoes, not the ones you usually see in supermarkets.
  - paranoidrobot 2y ago
    The smashed-tomato thing seems... inappropriate to do to a nice tomato. I'm sure it tastes great. I'm no longer in NSW, but Coles recently had some "Heirloom Tomatoes" which looked like the ones from the article. Smelled great, but were all floury in the middle. Transport and cold storage seems to do bad things to them. There's another fruit & veg shop nearby that sometimes has good tomatoes, but even at their best nothing like the Anna Bay tomatoes.
happyopossum 2y ago
FTA: “ I will not make salsa because it is a sin to cook them” Errr, umm, what? Yes, there is a category of cooked salsas, but 99% of the salsa I’ve ever had that didn’t come from a jar wasn’t cooked. I don’t recall ever getting a cooked tomato salsa in a Mexican, Mexi-Cali, or any other southwest restaurant. Do Europeans really cook all their salsa??? Also, salsa is one of the 3 greatest destinies a delicious tomato could aspire to.
INTPenis 2y ago
I lived further inland, in the rural areas west of Osijek. My family still to this day grow their own vegetables. And they share vegetables among the villagers. So if you have too much paprika, you give to others, they have too much cabbage, they give to you. It's amazing for a city dweller like me to re-visit that world. And my family near the coast grows olives. Every summer in Croatia there is this constant bartering of olive oil, rakija, vegetables, wine, back and forth between your visits with various family members. You can't leave one place without having some in your car's boot.
brna 2y ago
So, there is this guy in Croatia who specializes in collecting, cataloging, and sharing tomato seeds for free. He also creates his own varieties. https://www.volim-rajcice.com/popis-rajcica.html https://www.volim-rajcice.com/popis-rajcica.html https://www.facebook.com/groups/carstvo.rajcica/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/carstvo.rajcica/ A big kudos to Dražen from volim-rajčice (<3 tomatoes)
stiray 2y ago
A word of warning. Personally I am not touching the "homegrown stuff" vegetables from the home growers I don't personally know as: a few years back, it was uncovered (not Croatians only, this was wide spread in Adriatic region) smuggling EU forbidden pesticides from non EU countries into EU and selling them as they did improve harvest a lot. You can imagine this practice is impossible to control effectively and this is a huge issue, but also a huge potential for earnings. It was also shown, that the home growers have mostly no education about pesticides usage and are using them by "over the thumb" rule, where the levels in vegetables can quickly go over the allowed levels (from before the pesticide was forbidden) and as such can be far more harmful than controlled vegetables from store chains/distributors that have their own laboratories to check for the toxic content - they are responsible and fined for what they distribute. You can imagine, the nearest countries to Schengen borders were most affected. At that time Croatia wasn't in EU and it was source of pesticides for nearby EU countries, now they are probably coming from Serbia and Bosnia, while homegrown vegetables are not controlled and just sold on markets. Same goes for homegrown vegetables in Hungary, Slovenia and Italy. If you personally know the seller, go for it, their vegetables are surely better by taste then hydroponically grown in greenhouses, but I wouldn't take risks by random seller. Now for the "Adriatic islands" (and coastal region overall) vegetables, they have very poor soil, not a lot of it and also the rain is scarce, so any improvements for larger harvest are very welcomed to the locals (that are barely able to supply themself, not million tourists flocking to the country each year) and I would imagine the risk is even higher there. I don't want to say, that this is a general behavior, but without any effective control, there is just no way to know. Europol as source, not some tourist influencers or fake news site: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/hit-against-fake-pesticides-across-south-eastern-europe https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/hit-... https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/2-040-tonnes-of-illegal-pesticides-seized-and-21-suspects-arrested-in-global-operation https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/2-04...
- rdtsc 2y ago
  Absolutely, I know someone, who knows someone doing exactly what you described. EU has been eating a lot of “locally grown” garlic actually grown in China and other similar things.
culebron21 2y ago
This spring (2 months before strawberry season), I bought a pack of strawberries in a supermarket. They had a good strawberry smell, some liquid (I thought it was condensate), but when I tried them at home, were like rubber inside -- absolutely tasteless. Seems these rubber strawberries were poured with strawberry syrup!!!! I let my wife try them, to feel the absurdity, and threw the rest in the trash bin. I'm lucky to have a big marketplace in walkable distance. My friend lived in Saint Petersburg, then moved to Yerevan (Armenia) and then to Prague (Czech rep). In Yerevan, in contrast to the other two cities, there are vegetable markets, and they have a taste. In SPb and Prague, they're like made of rubber.
sourcecodeplz 2y ago
If you would make me eat only one vegetable all my life, it would be the tomato.
- romanovcode 2y ago
  Tomato is a fruit
- defrost 2y ago
  Vegetables don't exist: https://doodlewash.com/vegetables-dont-exist/ https://doodlewash.com/vegetables-dont-exist/
TheAlchemist 2y ago
Almost bring tears to my eyes ! It probably would, if I haven't started to grow my own tomatoes in the last 2 years. I wonder how many young people never tasted real tomatoes ? What you can buy in the supermarket has pretty much no taste. And that's in Europe. In US, you have absolutely 0 taste at all. No wonder you guys put sugar and artificial flavors in everything. I know it's hard to believe for somebody who never tasted 'the real stuff', but few things can beat a good bread, still a bit warm, with butter, salt and fresh tomatoes from a garden.
peepee1982 2y ago
When I was a teen I had a tomatoe at a friend's house on the island of Krk. I was having breakfast with his family and his mother served giant, ripe tomatoes from their garden. Those were the best tomatoes I have ever had, by a giant margin.
cainxinth 2y ago
I live in a suburb that used to be all farms. By some miracle, a single one survived and still operates, so I get fresh corn, tomatoes, and a few other things all summer long that is grown a mile away. If it ever goes, I’ll be beside myself. It’s an invaluable, irreplaceable resource.
jihadjihad 2y ago
It's hard to describe how drastic the difference is between a store-bought tomato and one that is homegrown. It's something you immediately miss once the season is gone and the tomato plants are composted, and you're hoping you saved enough jars to make it until next summer. But one thing that surprised me after a little while gardening is that there is a similarly stark difference for homegrown carrots. Everybody knows what a carrot tastes like from the store, but I had never tasted a carrot that stopped me in my tracks until I took up gardening. It's just like with tomatoes: a richer, sweeter flavor that is virtually nonexistent in the supermarket. If you love growing your own tomatoes, I can't recommend growing your own carrots highly enough.
- enraged_camel 2y ago
  As a fellow gardener, this probably has to do with the type of tomato/carrot that you grow. For example, the carrots in your garden are probably of the sweeter variety than store-bought carrots.
  - _a_a_a_ 2y ago
    Was going to say the same. Tomatoes vary hugely in many aspects; you can't really talk about a 'tomato', they're so different. (anyone tasted a potato fruit? Toxic and like little green tomatoes, but I wonder at their taste)
- resource_waste 2y ago
  FYI, it seems canned tomatoes don't have this problem. When I try to do a side by side with canned tomato sauce and my own tomato sauce(unflavored, just mashed tomatoes), I lose every time.
- vitaflo 2y ago
  If you haven’t you should try growing celery. The flavor difference is simply incredible.
  - jihadjihad 2y ago
leobg 2y ago
Joe Cocker spent the final years of his life growing heirloom tomatoes. https://www.denverpost.com/2015/02/24/joe-cockers-crawford-estate-on-the-market-for-7-million/ https://www.denverpost.com/2015/02/24/joe-cockers-crawford-e...
SergeAx 2y ago
I live in Serbia, which shares some history and traditions with Croatia, including great local food. I buy my fruits and veggies at the local market and in a couple of specialized shops and can't get enough every time, especially for raspberries and blackberries. We also have large pink tomatoes, which are just marvelous.

186 points by gascoigne 2y ago

Oh my. Everyone who cares about tomatoes grows their own, supermarkets are for the rest. They are not demanding and will grow anywhere there's sun, including in pot on balcony.

317070 2y ago
Why is capitalism failing us here? Why do we need to grow our own?
- lifestyleguru 2y ago
  Capitalism gives you perfectly uniform porno-tomatoes and watered ketchupy tomato sauce. No surprise, capitalism extract profits on all ends - production, storage, and distribution and it doesn't result with tasty aromatic tomatoes.
  - gameman144 2y ago
    Capitalism would absolutely love to give you delicious and peak-quality tomatoes. If consumers were willing to pay the additional cost needed to harvest and handle more heirloom-variety tomatoes, there would be a huge incentive to provide them. If people aren't willing to pay the premium needed, then the revealed preference is for the easily harvestable varieties. Farmers markets and local producers that sell to fewer people who will pay that premium are likewise capitalism's answer to this problem (i.e. saying "Industrial agriculture can't meet the consumers' needs, but local farmers can.") Capitalism need not be industrial-scale, it just needs to fill consumer demand somehow (which is why small business are so crucial)
  - dagw 2y ago
    Capitalism gives me options. I can get expensive tasty locally grown tomatoes when in season, if I want, while still being able to get really cheap tomatoes at any time of the year.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- gostsamo 2y ago
  Because it is capitalism. Really good tomatoes are at their best for a few days only which makes them hell to transport. That's why modern tomatoes are bred for color ans size, but inside they are actually green with very hard core and very little natural sugar.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    Why can I buy fresh fish and seafood, but not fresh tomatoes?
    - rini17 2y ago
      Fish and seafood can be refrigerated. Tomatoes can't, they completely lose their aroma.
      - carlosjobim 2y ago
        That explains it, thanks!
- ein0p 2y ago
  Simple: quality tomatoes are hard to transport and they don’t last when on the shelf. The closest thing to a “real” farm tomato you can buy at a reasonable price is “Kumato” from Trader Joe’s. It’s a pale imitation of a real tomato picked off the plant when it’s ripe, but at least it reminds me of it, whereas a “regular” store bought tomato doesn’t taste anything like the real thing.
  - chongli 2y ago
    Letting a tomato go fully ripe on the plant is an easy way to attract birds and lose a substantial amount of the crop. There’s no reason for it either. Once the tomato reaches the breaker stage (starting to change colour) it is internally cut off from the mother plant and will not be adversely affected by being harvested.
    - ein0p 2y ago
      If we’re talking the peak flavor tomato that “capitalism” purportedly can’t produce, that is only available when you pick it from the vine, already ripe. It is true that tomatoes will ripen if picked “brown”, but they’re less flavorful than vine ripened. Source: picked a few tons of tomatoes every summer as a kid.
      - the_gipsy 2y ago
        Source: anecdotal
        ein0p 2y ago
        Anecdotal is when someone else told you something and you used that data without verifying. The correct term in this case is “empirical”.
        NikkiA 2y ago
        No, that would be hearsay. Anecdotal is when an anecdote is used.
- nickpp 2y ago
  Like all free market failures, the culprit is regulation. Regulated food, local and weekend markets reduced competition by discouraging and removing small retailers until large supermarket chains remained de facto monopolies. Those chains must serve very large number of customers so they must focus on produce that is easy to pick, store and sell. Looks good and survives (even gets ripe during) transit. Taste is often secondary. You wanna fight that? Fight all regulations for small and local producers, even if it sounds like it’s well intended (hygiene, quality standards, subventions). Talk to your representative about it too. Finally, buy local and from smallest producer you can find.
  - the_gipsy 2y ago
    You seriously think that small shops would be competitive if there were no subsidies? No hygiene I could maybe buy, but it goes hand in hand with quality, and there is practically no regulation for that: it's self imposed by the consumer picking pretty produce.
    - nickpp 2y ago
      The consumer learns very quickly what they like. Eat a good tomato, you’ll look for one next time. The local fruit shop was even a joke in Seinfeld, I believe. The closing of the small grocery store and producer can be mostly attributed to regulation.
      - the_gipsy 2y ago
        No. They can be attributed to not being able to compete against big chains despite heavy regulation in favor of small businesses. Big chains can offer what the average consumer wants in greater variety and cheaper, at more places and longer hours. They can gauge prices, do better marketing, have better stock, and wage price wars. They have more power, and what's the purpose of that if not abusing it? Less regulation would just mean even worse food and less small shops.
        nickpp 2y ago
- rini17 2y ago
  Because economy alone can't solve all our problems? Someone probably promised you it will, but that's scam.
- HarryHirsch 2y ago
  Because market forces, of course, and they look like this: https://newsroom.nmsu.edu/news/nmsu-developing-perfect-green-chile-pepper-for-mechanical-harvest/s/14d70f7a-b2ef-4be4-a3a0-d0bcb10e6c1b https://newsroom.nmsu.edu/news/nmsu-developing-perfect-green... A chile pepper optimized for mechanical harvest, because right now the fruit needs to be cut from the stem, but if you can shake it off you can spare yourself the farmworker.
- WillPostForFood 2y ago
  Do you not have a farmer's market near you? Good tomatoes are available if you want them, and they are in season.
- drewcoo 2y ago
  Capitalism has given us the most "efficient" tomato for the market. If you want to optimize for something else, you're trying to solve a different problem.
- misja111 2y ago
  It's not, at least not where I live, in Switzerland. There are many different varieties to choose from in the supermarket nowadays, from cheap and tasteless to more expensive and tasty. It's the same in the Netherlands by the way. The problem is not capitalism, it is the preference of the consumers in your area.
- shusaku 2y ago
  One thing to look for are local farms that have subscription services. Some give you a box of seasonal veggies each month, which will be very fresh.
- bradleyjg 2y ago
  I’ve not been myself but I’ve heard that in Japan it’s common to give fruit as a gift and that as a result there’s very high end fruit available for purchase. You can go into a store and spend the equivalent of $50 on the best looking and tasting melon you’ve ever had.
- lm28469 2y ago
  > Why is capitalism failing us here? It can't even bring housing and healthcare for all, tasty tomatoes is way down the list lmao
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Capitalism isn't the reason your housing costs so much; that's because of crappy government regulations (i.e. Euclidean zoning) and NIMBYs. Remove the regulations and let landowners do what they want with land and it'll be fixed; that's how it works here in Japan. Conversely, the reason American healthcare is such a disaster is because of really bad regulation. Developed nations have shown that good healthcare systems require strong regulation, but not shitty regulation like the US has.
    - lm28469 2y ago
      The world isn't the USA, yet the housing problem is impacting most of the west It definitely is more than partially brought by capitalism and what comes with it: greed, speculation, &c. The flat I'm renting right now in Germany is owned by a company who owns 200k flats, the main shareholder in this company is Black Rock. Now explain to me why my german salary paying a german rent benefits private shareholders in NYC ? Rent doubled in ten years...
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        >Now explain to me why my german salary paying a german rent benefits private shareholders in NYC ? Rent doubled in ten years... It's simple supply and demand. Your city doesn't allow building many more units even though demand is high and growing; this greatly increases property values, and creates a potential for big profits for investors. A company of private shareholders in NYC sees this investment opportunity and buys properties up so they can reap the profits. You probably also have some relatively weak tenant legal protections, making it easy to raise rents. If you don't like it, your city should allow more construction. But western cities don't want to do that, because of NIMBYs, "neighborhood character", shitty zoning laws, etc., so we get what we're seeing here.
vinnyvichy 2y ago
Oh man ... next up is growing your own pizza, fugget about it (>the supermarket)! Even with no sun! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060621 >Why the Wisconsin pizza farm movement is an idea whose time has come (UPDATE: sorry to the Croatians being overrun by tourists.. guys .. Croatian food is so-so ;) tomatoes, olive oil, cheese, it's nice to be reminded that Croatians (and their Yugoslav brothers, secretly,) gave the middle finger to Stalin et al https://www.quora.com/Did-pizza-exist-in-the-Soviet-Union https://www.quora.com/Did-pizza-exist-in-the-Soviet-Union
- lifestyleguru 2y ago
  TBH as I age and have eaten a fair share of pizza, I prefer no pizza than bad pizza.
- barrenko 2y ago
  Reminder that it's still not quite known why the Soviet Union stopped the quite planned invasion of Yugoslavia.
gniv 2y ago
I think I want to finally do this. I _can_ find excellent tomatoes around here (France), but they are 27 euro/kg, more than beef.
- inciampati 2y ago
  Buy a cheap flight to south Italy and gorge yourself.
MichaelRo 2y ago
>> They are not demanding I have to disagree on this one. They are prone to a myriad of diseases, mainly fungus: Phytophthora infenstans, Fulvia fulva, Botrytis cinerea, Mosaic Virus, Stolbur disease, and if you don't spray them with the right substances you'll lose a substantial part if not the whole crop, oftentimes lose it even if you spray them. Other than that I agree that home grown tomatoes are better. Of course you mustn't be stupid and buy some supermarket seeds, those are awful. Use local varieties, several of them as there are subtle differences in taste and flavor. Like "oxheart" for instance: https://gomagcdn.ro/domains2/planteieftine.ro/files/product/large/rosii-oxheart-inima-de-bou-tomate-oxheart-inima-de-bou-0-5g-seminte-870017.gif https://gomagcdn.ro/domains2/planteieftine.ro/files/product/... Although I can buy local varieties from the grocery market and I do, they might not be just as good as a fresh one from the garden. Part of the reason is the difficulty in storing them, if you stack them one over another they will get crushed and you won't sell crushed tomatoes to the customers. So farmers tend to pick them when they aren't fully ripe and I freaking hate unripe tomatoes. Still they tend to be way better than supermarket "plastic tomatoes" offering. One tip, pick the smaller tomatoes, they tend to be sweeter. Or at least that's what I noticed.
- rini17 2y ago
  I lost some crops myself but tomatoes still fared better than other vegetables. It's not like some enormous investment? Having homegrown tomatoes every other year is better than nothing. If you have kids, it's a good lesson about difficulty of obtaining food from nature. I had success with mycorrhizal "good" fungi (brand Symbivit), they were keeping bad fungi away with visible difference between treated and untreated plants.
  - jowdones 2y ago
    Well it's depressing. My mother has a fairly large garden (some 1500 sqare meters) and takes quite some amount of labor to tend to it. So you work all spring and early summer only to see the crops wither away... makes you go on depression pills or just abandon the whole darn thing and buy Duch imported plastic vegetables. A bit unrelated, nowadays my mother was telling me a memory from her teenage years in the 60s. In early summer she'd come home for the weekend from boarding school in the city and her mother (my grandma) would greet her with lunch and a salad made from fresh cucumber and onion (add salt, oil and vinegar). It would be too early for tomatoes but she still remembers the taste of that early salad.

317070 2y ago

It's been a long lasting peeve of mine. I Live in London, where you can easily satisfy every kink, even the most exotic fruits and spices are found in every corner of the city. Yet, for the love of me, I cannot find any tasty tomato. Even if money is no issue, it just doesn't seem to exist? A giant void in a huge market? At this point, I'd pay 10x prices without blinking. It's fair that I cannot find them in winter, but even now, the heart of summer when they are the best, I cannot find any remotely resembling the ones found in big quantities in random Balkan supermarkets. How is it not a thing? Did Isle of Wight crush the market? Is it just me and there is no market?

deleted 2y ago
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mirsadm 2y ago
I find pretty much all fruit and vegetables to be rubbish in Scotland. The only exception is the couple of things grown here. Which is baffling given if you fly for couple of hours you can get fantastic produce everywhere.
inciampati 2y ago
You need sun and local intensive agriculture to grow them well. They taste better the more hot and stressed they are. It's just not something available in the UK?
randunel 2y ago
Most Polish and Romanian shops sell tomatoes, but their prices are not capped at £2/kg like Sainsbury's do.

Const-me 2y ago

Here in Montenegro I go to a nearby green market, “zelena pijaca” in our language, and similar stuff is usually available. Often more expensive than the ones from Netherlands but still, commercially available without black market. However, availability of the good stuff depends heavily on the time of the year.

wafflemaker 2y ago

I'm Polish expat living in Norway. There are no tomatoes to be had in Norway... Just kidding. I'm actually kind of alright with the small ones (pearl tomatoes), any other don't taste like tomatoes. I believe, that the Norwegian people are so used to blandly tasting vegetables, that the worst and least ripe product parties are send to Norway. But my wife and her family are tomato people. Every time we visit Poland or anybody from Poland visits us, they need to bring some malinowy (raspberry) tomatoes. Premium price, color slightly pinkish rather than true red, shape is a little bulbous, like a pumpkin, rather than perfect round like regular tomatoes. You can actually get them (or other good tomatoes) even in many supermarkets, tho it's best to go to a local produce market. And ofc best ones can be had from people growing their own. Same really goes for eggs - there is another dimension to taste and you get more sated eating less, if you can buy eggs from someone feeding the chicks properly. Though, if I had a car and knew a good source, I could probably buy better eggs here in Norway. However, supermarket eggs (and meat too) are much better in Norway. Most likely due to more stringent rules for animal farming, as Norway is not part of the EU and can have it's own, more strict rules. For example, Norwegian bacon doesn't smell like men's locker room after a football game (compared to swedish) and doesn't have a ton of water leave it when frying.

em500 2y ago
I won't comment on the tomatoes, but as far as eggs are concerned, I'm skeptical that any claims about people being able to taste any diffence would hold up in a proper blind taste test. Conclusion from Serious Eats when they attempted to do that: It was pretty clear evidence that as far as eggs go, the mindset of the taster has far more bearing on the flavor of the egg than the egg itself. https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs
- pnut 2y ago
  I boil six eggs every Sunday and eat one every morning. Same pan, same cooking element, same timing, ice bath with the same volume of water and cube quantity, everything identical from one week to the next. Have been doing it for at least seven years straight. I want my yolks to be crystalline in texture, at the transition point between runny and chalky. Not precious about yolk colouring. Must be easy to peel. There are absolutely differences in egg quality when it comes to boiling them.... Specific brands (some of the expensive/omega/free range etc ones too) reliably come out gelatinous and fiddly to peel. Some come out rubbery. Some just taste wrong and bland, even when I sprinkle with Maldon salt flakes. Not one egg, the entire batch. Over years of trial and error, I found a brand where I can guarantee a consistent textural outcome from my process, and every morning I exclaim "THAT is a good boiled egg" after finishing it.

Animats 2y ago

Romanian giant tomato. Buy seeds for US$3.99.[1] This would be a good project for the Open Source Farming Robot. Assuming you actually want a kilogram sized tomato. [1] https://www.davesseed.com/product/romanian-giant-tomato/ https://www.davesseed.com/product/romanian-giant-tomato/

schoen 2y ago
Looks like that particular supplier is in Tasmania and only ships to Australia!
- Animats 2y ago
  It's a variety of beefsteak tomato, and those are widely available. At WalMart, even.[1] They're unusual, but not rare. [1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Beefsteak-Tomato-Plants-Two-Live-Garden-Plants-Non-GMO-Large-Fruit-Crack-Resistant/3389865580 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Beefsteak-Tomato-Plants-Two-Live-...

lovegrenoble 2y ago

just grows your own

Scoundreller 2y ago
get high off your own supply

trte9343r4 2y ago

Croatia has horrible food, locals can not afford quality food. This country was overrun by tourists, and is now more expensive than Italy. Recent adoption of Euro was the last nail in a coffin. Go to Greece, if you want "authentic local tomato from street-market".

urbandw311er 2y ago
Just had a week on various Croatian islands. It’s true that we were shocked by the cost of the food (€18 for a pizza in a restaurant) although put it down to the cost of importing the various ingredients. I wouldn’t say any of the food was “horrible” though. We had a tremendous “meat plate” of grilled marinated chicken, pork and steak with potatoes.
- senko 2y ago
  (Croat lounging on the Croatian coast right now) No, prices are high because they've been jacked up as high as the market will bear. As an example, an cup of coffee at a beach bar in a random coastal village (€2.5) is about the same as in the (touristy) center of London (£2). The effects will probably be seen the next year. As other commenters noted, Croatia has historically been mass budget tourism location, largely undiscovered by comparatively wealthier western tourists (aside from Germans). Ultra-low taxes for "mom and pop" short-term rentals exacerbated the mass low-quality buildout. Now it's at a point where prices went up fast (due to euro, overall inflation and the tourist demographics changes), but the quality didn't catch up yet (generalizing a lot here). There's also been more vocal "anti tourist" sentiment (echoing protests in Barcelona, but just people complaining on blogs and in news) that will for sure get more momentum in the next few years.
  - jq-r 2y ago
    While I agree that the prices (of everything) went up, it wasn't due to adoption of euro. The grocery prices dramatically rised in the year before euro adoption due to inflation and then continued to rise after that. Also I do find it kind of funny when tourists are complaining about prices of food in touristy places. I've eaten a hamburger in Chicago which was $15 and food prices (restaurants etc) are comparatively much higher then in Croatia. At the same time, the prices in the grocery stores are completely out of control due to high taxes and makes living on the coast or islands as a local miserable and very expensive. Needless to say that housing is also totally out of wack, Croatia is not going in a good direction for it's own citizens.

apavlinovic 2y ago

I am Croatian, and I know exactly what the article is referring to. So much that we decided to grow our own tomatoes this year. The imported junk we get from Netherlands is abysmal compared to anything grown locally, and the reality is that we want the good stuff for ourselves, not the tourists. We were very lucky to have a great harvest of cherry, monte carlo, and plum tomatoes this year, all of which serve a different purpose: - Cherry for salads and side dish - Monte Carlo for cooking - Plum tomatoes for everything in between Croatia has incredible food, especially the local, homegrown stuff, and it is well worth the effort to get it. Here's an image of some of our crop: https://imgur.com/5FfdvG6 https://imgur.com/5FfdvG6

defrost 2y ago
> Croatia has incredible food .. and a great 80's power pop surf band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZCuCg-UM-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZCuCg-UM-U ( even if they were ex-pat croatians )
dsego 2y ago
Another croatian chiming in, I get most of my vegetables from my mother's garden, I think that's true for a lot of croats who live in the cities but have parents in the countryside.
- imp0cat 2y ago
  So, where in Makarska region should one go to get some? ;) Are those "local" sellers near the beach really local? Or do they just resell stuff from Kaufland/Lidl to naive tourists for inflated prices?
  - dsego 2y ago
    I don't know, the green market (pazar) should be local farmers (OPG), but a common story is that some of them buy at supermarkets and resell at higher prices.
  - dayjah 2y ago
    Not a Croatian, but I visit the Zadar / Ugljan area every couple of years. Last time a Bosnian friend visited from Banja Luka and she brought some tomatoes with her. They were phenomenal <3

sethammons 2y ago

My brother's mom talks about how tomatoes are not tomatoes anymore. They used to be soft and much tastier but it was bad for shipping. Old cartoons would show tomatoes splattering when thrown. The tomatoes I grew up with bounce.

specproc 2y ago

For those in the audience that have only ever eaten supermarket tomatoes, I'm sorry to say you've probably never really eaten a tomato. I live in a small, agricultural country and the article resonated. Over the last 10 years supermarkets and imported vegetables have become a much more important part of our national diet. It's such an important staple food. Historically very cheap (because widely grown) wildly diverse, and rich in flavour and nutrients. I love our _real_ tomatoes. Traditionally served in a simple salad with cucumber, salt and herbs, but so good you can just cut them up, leave them in the sun for an hour, and devour. Supermarket tomatoes are a blight upon humanity: much higher in cost (where I live), devoid of taste, and available in only a handful of varieties. I dread the slow march of progress through our table.

SoftTalker 2y ago
It's not really the tomatoes, it's that they are harvested green and then artificially ripened when they are ready to be sold. This allows much longer shelf life but the texture of the flesh and the flavors never fully develop. Of course different varieties have different flavors but even a standard supermarket "beefsteak" will taste so much better picked ripe off the vine than bought at the store where it has been in a cooler for two months.
- telesilla 2y ago
  As far as I understand, greenhouse tomatoes, such as those from the Netherlands, lack flavour which the sun gives. Best tomatoes I ever had were In Cádiz in south of Spain, they were from the nearby town of Conil and had so much fullness and deliciousness, the plate was offered only as tomatoes and olive oil and we were satisfied. If you're in the area, ask for these tomatoes by name and you'll not be disappointed. In Mexico I've seen hectares and hectares of tomatoes left to rot on the vine because the price fell so low it wasn't worth to pick them. I'm still mourning all that unmade pizza sauce.
- koolba 2y ago
  It’s also the tomato itself which is bred to resist bruising so that it looks pretty on the super market display. Unfortunately those cultivars also taste like meh. Tastier tomatoes with thinner skins bruise more easily. They also require more labor intensive picking by hand vs bulk via machine. Lookup the Rutgers tomato. Its a delicious one that at one point was the most popular tomato in all of the USA. It was bred for flavor, not shelf life! It fell out of favor when factory farming took over as it cannot be harvested by machine without bruising.

elorant 2y ago

I live in Greece. While a lot of what the article says resonates with me, there’s a small detail that changes everything. Climate change. The last two years I haven’t eaten a decent tomato during summer. We had excessive heat waves the last two years, especially this year the whole summer is with temperatures above 35 which is unprecedented. This wrecks havoc in crops. It doesn’t affect tomatoes only, fruits also aren’t as delicious as they used to be, cucumbers seem tasteless and the list goes on.

Eduard 2y ago

ah, the tomato supremacy chauvinism prevalent in Europe. Deeply rooted in all countries south the Alps. It is one of the last bastions standing hindering true unification. I have faced it so many times. It goes like this: - be from north of Alps, e.g. Germany - be on visit in south of Alps, e.g. country bordering Mediterranean Sea such as Spain - order dish containing tomato - unasked, get lectured by local acquaintance how "your" country's produce tastes trash and that you don't know how heavenly "their's" is.

schoen 2y ago
Since the tomato (though not our modern varieties) first evolved in Mexico, isn't there some sense in the idea that it would grow better in hotter countries? (I'm sure that's not the only factor to which the "our tomatoes are best" advocates would attribute their tomatoes' quality.)
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  Yeah, tomatoes need a shit ton of sun to really grow well. Although greenhouses help a lot (which is how the Dutch do so well in this market). Tomatoes also need a bunch of water, of course, which makes them a delicate balancing act in the more southerly (and steadily more drought stricken) regions of Europe

moltar 2y ago

If anyone here is into these kinds of tomatoes, and is around the region - there’ll be a tomatoe fest and a tasting competition in the north of Portugal. https://www.facebook.com/TomateDouro https://www.facebook.com/TomateDouro

pteraspidomorph 2y ago
I live near Lisbon and the tasty tomatoes from my childhood are now completely gone. Anything you can buy in any supermarket is absolute garbage, so much so that I only ever use prepackaged chopped tomatoes these days (those still taste decent). One of these days I should get in my car and drive all the way to the Douro just to fetch a bunch of tomatoes, I guess.
- moltar 2y ago
  Send me your address. I’ll ship you some. I see these tomatoes at normal fruterias quite often as well.

29athrowaway 2y ago

I remember the real tomatoes, they were larger and juicier, but lasted much less.

j7ake 2y ago

If Dutch tomato’s are all you can buy fresh, then try canned tomatos from Italy (eg San Marzano) to get actual flavor.

GOONIMMUNE 2y ago

My understanding is that this has less to do with the specific location the tomatoes are grown, and more to do with the distance from the point of consumption they are grown. If the tomatoes have to travel a long distance, they will be picked before ripe so that they are more hardy during transit. Unfortunately this significantly alters the taste for the worse. I don't really live in the U.S. anymore, but I used to pay extra for "tomatoes still on the vine" which would be a small step up. The best of course were those grown in your own garden.

chasil 2y ago
A coworker regularly emptied his fish tank onto his backyard tomato patch. He would bring the results and leave them in the kitchenette, with instructions to wash them thoroughly. They are the best that I have ever tasted.
- resource_waste 2y ago
  We also use old fishtank water to fertilize our plants. Nitrogen! You could also pee in a jug and dilute it with water. I think the most important thing is the time between the tomato turns red and when you consume it. On a similar note, I find myself picking them when they are red or orange red, and waiting for them to turn red. I wonder if commercial farms pick them red and can them instantly, which is why canned tomato sauce tastes better than my tomato sauce.
haspok 2y ago
Your understanding is not wrong, but it is not what this article is really about. There are lots of kinds of tomatoes, and there is at least one type that grows in the Mediterranean, that the author describes. If you are not familiar with this kind of tomato, you would simply reject it if you saw it: it doesn't look good, it is too large, too mushy, doesn't seem ripe. But then if you accidentally taste it, you realize that looks are not everything... I eat this kind of stuff when I'm in Greece, I'm guessing the Croatian variety is a bit different, but you can get these tomatoes in Italy or Spain as well. I presume they are not easy to transport, hence what you usually get in your average European supermarket is a produce of the Netherlands...

Reason077 2y ago

The thing about tomatoes is they always taste and smell a lot better when fresh off the vine than they do when they've been picked when under-ripe in order to spend a few weeks in storage and transport before they got to you. I think this applies, more or less, wherever you are in the world and no matter what variety of tomato. One of the reasons why they're such a popular thing to grow in your own home garden.

throwaway290232 2y ago

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presentation 2y ago

I am American, but living in Japan - the tomatoes here are nothing like the ones pictured but they taste so much better than anything I ever had growing up, enough that chilled tomatoes with salt on the side is a common appetizer in many izakayas. I didn't realize that tomatoes could be so tasty on their own until I left.

hilbert42 2y ago

Oh how I emphasize with this story, it too reminds me of my childhood. When I was a child my grandmother grew tomatoes that were truly delicious. She used to pick them just at the right time when they were ripe-red and lusciously sweet on the outside but just retained a hint of green on the inside. This gave them a slightly acidic edge that one just doesn't get with over-ripe tomatoes or ones that are ripened slowly. I'd add that the ideal ripening also requires good sunshine. Her tomatoes just spoiled me forever, I've never been satisfied with tomatoes purchased in shops, whilst some are just OK most commercial tomatoes are tasteless compared with ones that are freshly picked at their optimal ripeness. It seems to me there's no ideal solution when it comes to commercially distributed tomatoes, they have to be picked before they're at optimal ripeness for efficient transport and distribution and it's just fact that tomatoes just don't ripen off the vine to give them that luscious taste of vine-ripened ones. Frankly, I find some canned tomatoes better than ones that one buys in shops, they definitely can have more flavor. Canned tomatoes like those from Italian canning companies such as Mutti retain flavor because they are picked at just the right time then canned immediately. That this is noticeable even after the canning process shows just how critical it is to pick tomatoes at their optimal ripeness. These days I get most of my tomatoes in the form of small cherry tomatoes, they at least retain some of their flavor after the distribution process.

more_corn 2y ago

It’s not just Croatia. Local food is fresh from the sun and ground. Go to your farmers’ market. Meet your farmer. Sign up for a farm box and get it every week. You’ll eat better, live healthier, connect with your community. Oh and it’s cheaper and your money goes directly to the people who deserve it.

paranoidrobot 2y ago

I have very similar memories as a child, and also find it very difficult to get good tomatoes. There's great looking tomatoes, but they don't smell or taste right, and they are either too hard or floury mealy things. When I can get good tomatoes - my favourite thing is to have them on toast. Just slice the tomato, put it on some toast with butter, (or olive oil). Breakfast, lunch, dinner... it's simple but delicious. Anna Bay, just north of Newcastle in NSW, Australia used to have fantastic tomatoes. It was renowned in the region for it's fantastic tomatoes. The area had a huge flood of Italian immigrants just post WW2, and they brought the tomatoes with them. You'd see a few little road-side stalls on the road to Nelson Bay. The supermarkets took over and those little stalls disappeared. Then some opportunistic folks set up stalls using commercially grown tomatoes from others selling them as Anna Bay tomatoes, but they're not the same. Unfortunately this tactic seems to be becoming more common. We found someone selling Peaches and Nectarines by the side of the road. They offered us a sample, it was amazing. We bought two boxes at a reasonable price, they were almost all awful. Had the same thing with Cherries.

mastazi 2y ago
I also grew up eating traditional tomatoes, my favourite thing to do is toasting a slice of sourdough bread then cutting a tomato in half and smashing the two halves on the bread (it's a similar process to making smashed avo on toast - it won't work with supermarket tomatoes because they're too hard and not juicy enough); I add olive oil, a pinch of salt and sometimes oregano. If you have a Harris Farm Markets near you (I think there is one in Newcastle which is not too far from Anna Bay), look for the "heirloom tomatoes" - they are usually placed in a basket as a mix of different heirloom varieties and you can pick the ones you like, they are traditional tomatoes, not the ones you usually see in supermarkets.
- paranoidrobot 2y ago
  The smashed-tomato thing seems... inappropriate to do to a nice tomato. I'm sure it tastes great. I'm no longer in NSW, but Coles recently had some "Heirloom Tomatoes" which looked like the ones from the article. Smelled great, but were all floury in the middle. Transport and cold storage seems to do bad things to them. There's another fruit & veg shop nearby that sometimes has good tomatoes, but even at their best nothing like the Anna Bay tomatoes.

happyopossum 2y ago

FTA: “ I will not make salsa because it is a sin to cook them” Errr, umm, what? Yes, there is a category of cooked salsas, but 99% of the salsa I’ve ever had that didn’t come from a jar wasn’t cooked. I don’t recall ever getting a cooked tomato salsa in a Mexican, Mexi-Cali, or any other southwest restaurant. Do Europeans really cook all their salsa??? Also, salsa is one of the 3 greatest destinies a delicious tomato could aspire to.

INTPenis 2y ago

I lived further inland, in the rural areas west of Osijek. My family still to this day grow their own vegetables. And they share vegetables among the villagers. So if you have too much paprika, you give to others, they have too much cabbage, they give to you. It's amazing for a city dweller like me to re-visit that world. And my family near the coast grows olives. Every summer in Croatia there is this constant bartering of olive oil, rakija, vegetables, wine, back and forth between your visits with various family members. You can't leave one place without having some in your car's boot.

brna 2y ago

So, there is this guy in Croatia who specializes in collecting, cataloging, and sharing tomato seeds for free. He also creates his own varieties. https://www.volim-rajcice.com/popis-rajcica.html https://www.volim-rajcice.com/popis-rajcica.html https://www.facebook.com/groups/carstvo.rajcica/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/carstvo.rajcica/ A big kudos to Dražen from volim-rajčice (<3 tomatoes)

stiray 2y ago

A word of warning. Personally I am not touching the "homegrown stuff" vegetables from the home growers I don't personally know as: a few years back, it was uncovered (not Croatians only, this was wide spread in Adriatic region) smuggling EU forbidden pesticides from non EU countries into EU and selling them as they did improve harvest a lot. You can imagine this practice is impossible to control effectively and this is a huge issue, but also a huge potential for earnings. It was also shown, that the home growers have mostly no education about pesticides usage and are using them by "over the thumb" rule, where the levels in vegetables can quickly go over the allowed levels (from before the pesticide was forbidden) and as such can be far more harmful than controlled vegetables from store chains/distributors that have their own laboratories to check for the toxic content - they are responsible and fined for what they distribute. You can imagine, the nearest countries to Schengen borders were most affected. At that time Croatia wasn't in EU and it was source of pesticides for nearby EU countries, now they are probably coming from Serbia and Bosnia, while homegrown vegetables are not controlled and just sold on markets. Same goes for homegrown vegetables in Hungary, Slovenia and Italy. If you personally know the seller, go for it, their vegetables are surely better by taste then hydroponically grown in greenhouses, but I wouldn't take risks by random seller. Now for the "Adriatic islands" (and coastal region overall) vegetables, they have very poor soil, not a lot of it and also the rain is scarce, so any improvements for larger harvest are very welcomed to the locals (that are barely able to supply themself, not million tourists flocking to the country each year) and I would imagine the risk is even higher there. I don't want to say, that this is a general behavior, but without any effective control, there is just no way to know. Europol as source, not some tourist influencers or fake news site: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/hit-against-fake-pesticides-across-south-eastern-europe https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/hit-... https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/2-040-tonnes-of-illegal-pesticides-seized-and-21-suspects-arrested-in-global-operation https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/2-04...

rdtsc 2y ago
Absolutely, I know someone, who knows someone doing exactly what you described. EU has been eating a lot of “locally grown” garlic actually grown in China and other similar things.

culebron21 2y ago

This spring (2 months before strawberry season), I bought a pack of strawberries in a supermarket. They had a good strawberry smell, some liquid (I thought it was condensate), but when I tried them at home, were like rubber inside -- absolutely tasteless. Seems these rubber strawberries were poured with strawberry syrup!!!! I let my wife try them, to feel the absurdity, and threw the rest in the trash bin. I'm lucky to have a big marketplace in walkable distance. My friend lived in Saint Petersburg, then moved to Yerevan (Armenia) and then to Prague (Czech rep). In Yerevan, in contrast to the other two cities, there are vegetable markets, and they have a taste. In SPb and Prague, they're like made of rubber.

sourcecodeplz 2y ago

If you would make me eat only one vegetable all my life, it would be the tomato.

romanovcode 2y ago
Tomato is a fruit
defrost 2y ago
Vegetables don't exist: https://doodlewash.com/vegetables-dont-exist/ https://doodlewash.com/vegetables-dont-exist/

TheAlchemist 2y ago

Almost bring tears to my eyes ! It probably would, if I haven't started to grow my own tomatoes in the last 2 years. I wonder how many young people never tasted real tomatoes ? What you can buy in the supermarket has pretty much no taste. And that's in Europe. In US, you have absolutely 0 taste at all. No wonder you guys put sugar and artificial flavors in everything. I know it's hard to believe for somebody who never tasted 'the real stuff', but few things can beat a good bread, still a bit warm, with butter, salt and fresh tomatoes from a garden.

peepee1982 2y ago

When I was a teen I had a tomatoe at a friend's house on the island of Krk. I was having breakfast with his family and his mother served giant, ripe tomatoes from their garden. Those were the best tomatoes I have ever had, by a giant margin.

cainxinth 2y ago

I live in a suburb that used to be all farms. By some miracle, a single one survived and still operates, so I get fresh corn, tomatoes, and a few other things all summer long that is grown a mile away. If it ever goes, I’ll be beside myself. It’s an invaluable, irreplaceable resource.

jihadjihad 2y ago

It's hard to describe how drastic the difference is between a store-bought tomato and one that is homegrown. It's something you immediately miss once the season is gone and the tomato plants are composted, and you're hoping you saved enough jars to make it until next summer. But one thing that surprised me after a little while gardening is that there is a similarly stark difference for homegrown carrots. Everybody knows what a carrot tastes like from the store, but I had never tasted a carrot that stopped me in my tracks until I took up gardening. It's just like with tomatoes: a richer, sweeter flavor that is virtually nonexistent in the supermarket. If you love growing your own tomatoes, I can't recommend growing your own carrots highly enough.

enraged_camel 2y ago
As a fellow gardener, this probably has to do with the type of tomato/carrot that you grow. For example, the carrots in your garden are probably of the sweeter variety than store-bought carrots.
- _a_a_a_ 2y ago
  Was going to say the same. Tomatoes vary hugely in many aspects; you can't really talk about a 'tomato', they're so different. (anyone tasted a potato fruit? Toxic and like little green tomatoes, but I wonder at their taste)
resource_waste 2y ago
FYI, it seems canned tomatoes don't have this problem. When I try to do a side by side with canned tomato sauce and my own tomato sauce(unflavored, just mashed tomatoes), I lose every time.
vitaflo 2y ago
If you haven’t you should try growing celery. The flavor difference is simply incredible.
- jihadjihad 2y ago

leobg 2y ago

Joe Cocker spent the final years of his life growing heirloom tomatoes. https://www.denverpost.com/2015/02/24/joe-cockers-crawford-estate-on-the-market-for-7-million/ https://www.denverpost.com/2015/02/24/joe-cockers-crawford-e...

SergeAx 2y ago

I live in Serbia, which shares some history and traditions with Croatia, including great local food. I buy my fruits and veggies at the local market and in a couple of specialized shops and can't get enough every time, especially for raspberries and blackberries. We also have large pink tomatoes, which are just marvelous.