I hated tomatoes when I was a kid and didn’t really warm to that clear-acid-red taste until I was in my mid-twenties. Now I’ll do almost anything to get a wintertime fix. Ugli tomatoes taste the most like the real deal to me but they are elusive this time of year. The other day I found these “cocktail” size babies at Trader Joe’s. They are from Mexico which added a fresh jolt of guilt about shopping a reduced carbon footprint.

People work the land in my town and some live mainly by the food they grow. A couple of years ago at the Town’s September Ag Fair, a group of families put together a brochure calculated to influence the most hardened supermarket junkie. They listed the distance a fresh produce must travel to get to my town using the current commercial food chain. It was something like 1500 miles for a tomato. Maybe it’s jet lag that gives the classic packaged ones that pale, hardened carapace.

Time to plan the garden. I’m ignoring the snow flurries outside the window.