to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to

At home after a dinner to-do with the parents and friends. Psych is playing in the background somewhere upstairs. My mother is analyzing her latest knitting project. My brother is at the lake with the girls and Drew is hanging out at a friend's house and probably participating in what I can only hope is a handful of worthy high school summer mischief.

So here I am and my mind is locked upon one specific subject: tomatoes.... several of which took starring roles in what was truly a lovely evening meal. For the record, tomatoes are probably my favorite local summer harvest. Vivid scarlet clusters explode from every novice gardener's plot for the entirety of our few delicious months of midwestern summer splendor. And damnit they make for real good eatin'... and fryin', especially the green ones.

Confession: I love anything I can salt, just can't help myself. Especially grapefruit. Mmmm. Why the hell you would put sugar on such a magnificent product, I simply cannot say. I'm sure my arteries are as stiff as steel piping. And I hate ketchup. It's nasty, goopy, and proven to contain rats and rodents and flies and spiders. Let's face it, the ketchup factory is where sub-par tomatoes go to die. Ewww and what could be more disgusting than people who use it as gravy-substitute to drown the likes of peas and cooked carrots? Disgusting. Grow up and just hold your nose like civilized people.

Regardless, have been pondering the old debate over the classificaion of tomatoes as fruit or vegatable. In terms of straight-up-now-tell-me* scientific fact, they are the ripened ovaries of a tomato plant and therefore a fruit. However, because they are used as a sauce base and usually spiced and salted, this is a difficult concept for the likes of elementary school children grasping the why's and wherefore's of life, the one-fish-two-fish-red-fish-blue-fish curriculum that arranges itself in a neat grid of time tables and shoeboxes and stone soup and sunflower seedlings growing in styrofoam cups. And paper mache - that was always the start of an awesome project.

At any rate, I have concluded that tomatoes are the drag queens of the fruit world. And that is precisely why I love them the most.

*Paula Abdul reference... because that was my first cd ever. And she's awesome. Especially in that terrific music video where she dances with a cartoon cat. (opposites attract?) That was totally slammin', like, seriously.