Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on May 25, 2009
By Vicki McClure Davidson * Frugal Café Blog Zone
Saving money at the grocery store is worse than getting Nancy Pelosi to stop bashing George W. Bush. I was out food shopping for the family yesterday, and crikey! Everything I needed to buy has gone up between 10 and 20 percent in just a couple of weeks. I slashed my list way down to stay within my allotted budget. Hopefully, some prices will be lower next week.
Many fruits and vegetables are in season now, and they offer a lot of nutrition and flavor without breaking your food budget. Tomatoes are one of Nature’s most amazing fruits (I know, tomatoes were determined some years ago by the Supreme Court to be vegetables, but botanically speaking, they are still actually fruit). Tomatoes are rich in anti-oxidants, vitamins, and lots of other good things. Plus, they’re refreshing on a hot afternoon during the Memorial Day weekend, sliced up with just a sprinkling of garlic vinaigrette.
On the Frugal Café main site, I’ve researched and written an informative piece on tomatoes, The Truth about Tomatoes, that sings their praises about their health benefits, briefly explains their history, offers preparation info, and dispels ancient myths about them. Here are a few tomato trivia highlights:
One tomato plant can produce an average of 15 tomatoes in a season.
Members of the nightshade family, tomatoes have been used throughout the centuries as love charms or aphrodisiacs, along with other plants of the same family, including belladonna, mandrake, henbane, thorn apple, potato, eggplant, paprika, and chile pepper.
A few bad spots don’t ruin the whole tomato. Just cut them off.
Ketchup was once used as a medicine in the United States. In the 1830s, it was sold as Dr. Miles’s Compound Extract of Tomato.
The Italian name for the tomato is pomodoro, which translates to "apple of love" or "golden apple," because the first tomatoes to reach Europe were yellow varieties.
Acids in foods such as tomatoes and vinegar affect bean tenderness when cooking dried beans. So add acidic ingredients only once the outer shell of the bean is tender, about halfway through the cooking time.
The first Harley Davidson motorcycle was built in 1903, and used a tomato can for a carburetor.
Cooking tip from Rachael Ray: "To sweeten a tomato sauce recipe, don’t add sugar—simply add half a minced onion to the garlic beforehand, and let it soften and sweeten over medium-low heat for 10 minutes. Then add your tomato products."
Regular use of kelp, or seaweed, sprays on your tomato plants in your garden have been shown to make plants heartier and healthier, and even improve the soil conditions and flavor of the tomatoes.
Tomatoes are four times as popular as bananas. Every year, 60 million tons of tomatoes are grown for consumers, and the average person will consume about 80 pounds worth of them annually.
The state beverage of Ohio is tomato juice.
After buying tomatoes at the store, it is best to not store them in the refrigerator. The cold storage is devastating to the taste. The fruits need 5 to 7 hours to regain taste again. The cooled food has practically no scent, because the scent, being a gas, does not come out. The cold also damages tomatoes. Many enzymes are no longer effective at low temperatures. Also, tomatoes emit ethylene gas, which can speed up the ripening and aging of other fruits and vegetables.
To read how ethylene gas makes fruits and veggies spoil faster, click here.
Categories: Business & Economy, Food, Drink, Frugal Kitchen Tricks, Frugal Shopping Info, Health, Social and Political Climate
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Try German Johnson, a heritage variety.
Low acid, almost solid, and very few seeds.