No mushy tomato for me.
Jul 5th, 2008 by Eve
At Tomato Casual, Vanessa Richins recently offered some answers to a reader’s question: What makes a tomato mushy?
- The variety of tomato.
- The environment the tomato was grown in.
- Storing picked tomatoes in the fridge.
I was initially surprised by that last one. Anyone who’s seen tomatoes swell and ripen quickly over a period of one or two very hot days knows tomatoes thrive in the heat. But, I thought, shouldn’t everything go in the fridge? What if my tomatoes spoil before I use them?
And then I remembered how my mom always stored her massive tomato harvest every year in crates in the laundry room. Even as fast as they were added to salads or sandwiches or made into pasta sauce or jarred for the winter, scores sat out there for weeks or even months, in the hottest room in the house! They were never refrigerated and they never spoiled.
So, my tomatoes are coming out of the fridge today. No mushy tomato for me!
I also found a very helpful online tool for diagnosing tomato problems through Tomato Casual: Tomato Problem Solver pointed out that one of my plants has bacterial speck. I need to move it away from the sprinkler.
Image Credit: tomatoes squaredcircle by Muffet at Flickr.
