I say tomato

Many years ago in my undergraduate days I took a course in Children's Lit. I remember little from this course except that it was the most unpleasant class I have ever been a part of. Although I have long forgotten the details of the mistrust, I do remember that the students were unanimously antagonistic towards the professor. It started in the first hour and culminated in the final class when the professor expected us to disregard the university generated course evaluation forms normally distributed and write out our assessment on a piece of paper. We all submitted a comment, but most of the students I'm sure wrote a bland "good course" on their review. I was naive enough to believe the professor's promise that whatever was written would not affect our grade. This was the closest I have ever come to failing a course! Apart from the barbs of antagonism that flew back and forth across the classroom that year, I also remember an apply poem, regrettably the title and poet long forgotten. It consisted entirely and only of varieties of apples. It took only a minute to read the poem, but I was mesmerized as variety after variety of apple skipped and tumbled from the professor's lips. Not in possession of the greatest interpersonal skills to be sure, but that professor knew how to read poetry!

This summer a friend introduced me to The Seed Savers Exchange and Amy Goldman's Heirloom Tomatoes. I spent hours examining pictures of heirloom tomato varieties, read about them, studied their properties. Ever interested in the history of food, I questioned my mother and aunt about my grandparents' gardens. I researched the varieties of tomatoes my grandparents might have grown in the 30's and 40's with the help of my sister who uncovered seed catalogues in the archival collections of MacFayden and McKenzie Seed Companies. As my tomato-variety knowledge increased, my memory retrieved that long ago poem and I couldn't help but try my hand at variety poeming.

Red Velvet, White Beauty
Ruffled Yellow, First Lady

Lemon Boy, Ida Gold
Bonny Best, Juliet

Red Fig, Yellow Currant
Brown Berry, Black Plum

Old Brook, Long Tom
Moon Glow, Nebraska Wedding

Cream Sausage, Amish Cherry
Elberta Girl, Redfield Beauty

Gold Nugget, Gold Rush
Mule Team, Farthest North

My poetic skills are fledgling at best, but in my culinary fantastic world I create a tomato-y splendor inspired by each couplet. Picture them with me.

• A bowl of thrice-strained gazpacho topped with rosemary twists and marscapone gelati, elegant and sophisticated like a ballroom lady.

• Silken rose vodka sauce spooned over a bed of nutmeg parmesan garganelli like a gigolo effortlessly, smoothly gliding from woman to woman.

• A pot of tomato chutney cooked up with ginger, garlic, raisins and almonds, sweet, sticky, like jam.

• Eggs, sausages and tomatoes in a butter greasy cast iron griddle in this happier version of Brokeback Mountain.

• A tureen of hearty tomato beef and barley soup, a loaf of bread, a pat of butter.

• Another fry-up, but I'll add a mug of bitter, disappointing camp coffee to the picture; the first gleam of gold almost forgotten in this cold, cold Yukon.

Now all I need are friends to help me cook and a food photographer to document our creations. What a food essay that would be!