The Examined Tomato Life

by

Lauren Roberts

If it wasn’t for farmers’ markets, most of us wouldn’t know what a real tomato tastes like. We’d probably believe they were just edible versions of Saran Wrap.
 

That’s the problem with supermarkets; their produce looks great, but it doesn’t smell. Damn places are sterile and odorless as if their produce should be seen but not smelt. Go to a farmers’ market, however, and you will be overwhelmed by smells. Apple smells, green onion smells, lettuce smells, bell pepper smells, peach smells, tomato smells—all of them exuding mouthwatering scents. It makes me hungry, crazy hungry, to wander the rows of produce, breathing in the aromas of  raw foods that only hours before were surrounded by earth and sunshine.

The farmers who sell at farmers’ markets are passionate about their produce. It makes it easy for shoppers to fantasize that their lives are different, that they wake up each day to work in an atmosphere of nature and serenity, feeling clean dirt under their fingernails, enjoying the sight of newly sprouted greenery emerging from dark soil into the sunshine, wandering among trees while savoring the decision of which peaches to pick for their buyers.

At least that’s what I suppose I vaguely imagined until I read Blithe Tomato (Heyday Books; $15), a brilliant collection of short essays ranging from funny to poignant, philosophical to pragmatic by Mike Madison. Its cover proclaims that it is “An insider’s wry look at farmer’s market society.” It is that, but it is also pieces of a delicious journey through an agricultural kaleidoscope showcasing the joys and difficulties, dreams and reality, people and experiences of a small farmer’s life.

Madison’s eye for intriguing details is fascinating. Quite a few of the essays are about people: customers at the market, fellow farmers and family members. Others concern produce: persimmons, dried tomatoes, apples, grapes. And still others are about experiences: baking a cake, buying a roller, appendicitis. Regardless of the topic, Madison has a superb ability to enrich it with large dollops of sympathy, insight and values.

In “The Masters in the Trees,” Madison recalls an episode at a fancy Eastern boarding school when the pictures of former stern masters were removed from their dining room walls and left hanging on the trunks of rows of linden trees. The headmaster was outraged at what he viewed as disrespectful behavior. Not Madison. “It seemed an act of kindness,” he wrote, “like bundling an invalid relative into his wheelchair and taking him for a stroll in the garden.” Thus, thirty-five years later, in his own hall, when he suddenly perceived his maternal great-uncle’s image that had long looked upon nothing more than a phone, phone books and a rolodex, he realized that this man, for whom he was named and who had himself started  out selling produce from a pushcart, might enjoy a new view. He picked up the picture, put it in his pocket so the face looked out and went out.

Madison took this image on a walking tour, pointing out mountains and raised beds and a vegetable plot when his great-uncle suddenly asked him, “Why?” Why with his education was he “scratching away in the dirt like a peasant?” Madison’s answer to himself and to us is more than a simple answer; it is a tender exploration of societal expectations and personal choices.

In “Two Economies,” Madison goes on a search for a piece of equipment called a roller. His search for someone to make it takes him to two fabricator businesses and eventually a tiny blacksmith shop. It is at the latter place that he is able to procure what he needs. But this essay is less about his search than about the two economies he interacts with during his search: the sixty-dollar one and the ten-dollar one, the first based on written contracts and lawyers, the second on honor. It’s his realization that “working in the ten-dollar economy is not just an economic issue—it is also social and political” that provides the reader with an intimate view of the human side of economics.  

Then there is Ali, the Pakistani immigrant and follower of Islam, who farms by day and works a regular job by night, and who worries that God’s perception of a life spent always working is a wasted life. The brilliant essay entitled “Joe Drovak,” about a man who gave up an engineering career and a fine home to follow his values onto his land and a way of life so simple it is beyond most of us, is the living symbol of courage for Madison—and for us. Pete, the eternal seeker of his own youth, playing undergrad student even though well past 40, is forced to face the results of his life choices when an accident changes his lifestyle.

In “Eat Bitterness,” Madison explores the move toward sweetness in foods such as corn, grapes, apples, beets and carrots—with varieties that include the sh-2 (supersweet gene) and wonders if we aren’t moving downward toward “the lowest common denominator of human taste.”

“A traditional Chinese curse translates ‘Eat bitterness,” he writes. “to a child this is indeed a curse, but to an adult to eat bitterness is not such a bad destiny. I think of Turkish coffee, escarole, unsweetened chocolate, wild almonds, quinine, winter melon, endives. Bitterness is complex and interesting; it lingers on the palate, and like music in a minor key, it sets a mood of contemplation and regret. The truly terrible curse, which I sometimes suspect is being aimed at all of us, is ‘Eat sweetness.’”

This is a splendid book, and it’s no small irony that my review of it is one of the hardest I have ever done. This is not because it is difficult to find superlatives to describe it, but because its prose is so gorgeous, soaked as it is with rich detail and potent musings, that without quoting whole pieces, it can be difficult to give a sense of the profundity that pervades it. Rest assured that produce and flowers aren’t the only things Madison grows in this superbly rendered collection. If as Socrates noted, the unexamined life is not worth living, then the life worth living should be examined. In Blithe Tomato, Madison’s life is—wonderfully. It is, in fact, the “finest kind” of examination as a friend would say: encompassing and intimate, funny and sad, thoughtful and lighthearted. In short, exemplary.  

“Don’t ever underestimate a tomato,” the third husband of his wife’s grandmother advised him on the day of his wedding many years before. Madison has taken that advice not only to heart, but made it the core (so to speak) of this book. This is a truly fine book on food and on its role in our lives as both consumers and producers. My suggestion: Don’t ever underestimate this blithe tomato.

In honor of this book, I am sharing for the first time my personal recipe for gazpacho, the famous Spanish tomato soup. This cool soup arrived in Spain via the Moors, and you can still find its original version—made with green grapes, stale bread, almonds, olive oil and garlic. Even if you use the later, more common tomato version, soaked bread is a primary ingredient. My recipe, developed over several years, does not contain bread. Instead, it features only fresh vegetables and herbs resulting in a fantastic mouth-burst of fresh flavors. I am unabashedly addicted to it, and I hope that you will be too. (Note: I do not bother to skin my tomatoes or bell peppers so one of this soup’s characteristics is small bits of their skin on your tongue. If you prefer not to have this, you can peel them.)

Gazpacho 
2 bottles of either Trader Joe’s Vegetable Juice or 46-oz. cans of V-8
2 teaspoons each lemon juice, salt and sugar
1/2 teaspoon fresh nutmeg
4 tablespoon dark fruity olive oil
4-6 large cloves of garlic
2 pounds of tomatoes (seeded and skinned if desired), cored and quartered
2 Anaheim chilis and 2 yellow chilis, seeded and chopped (ripened to red if possible)
1 cup seeded, skinned, chopped cucumber
3/4 cup chopped green onions
1/2 chopped celery
2 chopped green onions (both green and white parts)
3/4 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/2 cup chopped yellow or orange bell pepper
1 cup chopped carrots
2 Haas avocados
1/4 cup chopped parsley leaves
1/2 cup firmly packed fresh dill
15-20 large basil leaves, more if desired

Combine all ingredients. Whirl in batches in blender until well blended; there  will be and should be some coarseness. Chill for at least three hours, preferably overnight. Serve in chilled bowls or cups and sprinkle each with fresh ground pepper. (For a spicy version, add one un-seeded jalapeno or habañero chili.)

Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, 800 bookmarks and approximately 1,000 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) and Book Publicists of Southern California as well as a longtime book design judge for Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards. You can reach her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it