Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Alternative Sources of Tomatoes

A few weeks back, when all hope seemed lost for the last of my tomato plants due to wilt - I was pretty woeful. How could I go several months without their tastyliciousness???? Having promised Hurricaine J a meal of steak on Anzac Day, and finding the markets shut, I decided that the only way of procuring an impressive steak meal was to wander into the city and hit David Jones. They have an expensive foodhall that just so happens to have some damn fine (if slightly overpriced) steaks.

I was on the escalator descending into fiscally challenging carnivore heaven when something made me squeal with delight. I ran down the escalator throwing aside my housemate, an old guy and two posh ladies and stopped suddenly by the fruit and veg section. There, before my eyes, was a bowl of Heirloom tomatoes. I am a market regular and all I ever managed to find there in the way of Heirloom tomatoes were a few black russians and some green zebras for one week in February. Now at this market alternative there was a whole basket of them! I nearly fainted with delight (and for once I am not exaggerating). I grabbed these three beauties, all as big as my fist!


I went back the next day and got a black zebra, a green zebra and a tigerella, but they were a bit smushy. Of all of them, the white was by far and away the most amazing of them all! Soft and, if you can believe it, creamy! I am heading back to Djs tonight, a few weeks on, just to see if they still have this collection. Fingers crossed.

8 comments:

Kirstie Close said...

Hello you tomato-mad woman! Pardon my ignorance, perhaps i missed it, but what varieties are these? :)

PJ said...

Hi Ms K. The White is, um, I am not sure, same with the yellow, but the purplish one was a purple cherokee. Totally Yummy. Bought more yesterday. Will take you in when you get back!

Kirstie Close said...

Hooray! Tomatoes forever!

Alexa said...

Heirlooms at DJs? I'm going to have to keep an eye out for that!

PJ said...

I also found some at the Lygon Street Green Grocers (thanks to an observant office mate)

Chandramouli S said...

Yummm! Great find. No wonder you were excited!

SuburbanGardener said...

That's a great story. Reality. We'll have to ship over some tomatoes when they get a little bigger. Our plants are growing so fast. Maybe if we ship them green, they'll ripen by the time they arrive...

Do you pinch off any flowers when you grow tomatoes? Ours have so many flowers. Just wondered if we should concentrate the plant on lesser fruits...

PJ said...

Suburban Gardener! heheh awesome tomatoesss, and you can NEVER have too many! I am a lazy gardener and let my tomatoes do whatever the feel like, no pinching, no pruning, and they all fruited quite fine. Maybe the fruit would have been bigger ... so alas my advice is a bit of a cop out, do whatever feels right.