Picking Tomatoes

This, dear friends, is a Green Giant tomato, and it's one of my favorites. I know you won't believe me, but it smells like BLTs. I can press my nose against it and pick up not only the sweet scent of tomato, but also mayonnaise and peppery bacon. It is truly amazing.

A few days ago, while making a tomato salad for dinner, I bit into a Black Cherry tomato, sighed happily, and was about to tell my mom that if I ever lived in a place where I only had room for one tomato plant, that would be it. But it came out like this: "If I could only grow one kind of tomato, well, no, if I could only grow two kinds of tomatoes, no, if I could only grow three kinds of tomatoes..."

I have since come to the conclusion that I will always need to live in a place where I can grow at least four kinds of tomatoes: a Black Cherry for snacking and salads, a Flamme for oven-roasting, a Speckled Roman for sauces, and a Green Giant for sandwiches.

There's a reason they call tomatoes like the Green Giant beefsteaks, and here it is:

In my opinion, anything that I can pick from its vine, sniff happily, and put on toast is a very good thing.