Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

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

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.

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.

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.facebook.com/groups/carstvo.rajcica/

A big kudos to Dražen from volim-rajčice (<3 tomatoes)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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-...

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/2-04...

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.

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.

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".

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/

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Joe Cocker spent the final years of his life growing heirloom tomatoes.

https://www.denverpost.com/2015/02/24/joe-cockers-crawford-e...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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

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.

just grows your own

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.