One big, fat, messy tradition occurs
on the last Wednesday of every August when thousands of people gather in the
little medieval town of Buñol in Spain for the biggest tomato war on earth. La
Tomatina it’s called, and this year they threw six truckloads — maybe 100
tons — of juicy, red ripe tomatoes at each other. The town also hauled in
500 showers so everybody could clean up afterwards.
Lillooet cannot lay claim to such an
outrageous tomato fest, but they do grow some pretty hot tomatoes there, and
though town walls aren’t splattered with drippy red splotches this time of
year, we’re still in the thick of the season, so to speak.
“Lillooet has a huge history of
tomato growing. We used to have a big, big cannery that hired hundreds of
people from all around. All the plateaus, including some of the reservations
and so on, used to grow tomatoes,” says Leslie Malm, who helps her parents run
Old Airport Garden in Lillooet.
“They would take the kids out of
school in early September to pick tomatoes because they had so many and not
enough labour to deal with them.”
Now the kids stay in school in early
September. The cannery, which was started by Japanese families making a living
in the area after the World War II internment camps closed, burnt down in the
early 1960s. Local gossip had it that it was arson to force the canning
production south to the States.
As for the plateaus lining the valley
that once were festooned with tomato plants, it’s now pretty much come down to
people growing them in their big backyards and at Old Airport Garden —
the only commercial tomato-growing venture left.
But that doesn’t undermine the
quality of the tomatoes. They’re still superb, due to the wonderful sunny
climate (fewer than 80 days of precipitation annually) and the steadfast soil.
“We grow the best tomatoes in B.C.,”
says Sumi Tanaka, who, along with her husband, Bill, have about 100 plants
growing in their backyard. Leslie and her family grow good ones, too, she
concedes good-naturedly, but the Tanakas just give theirs away.
Meanwhile, down at Old Airport Garden
where they have four acres of tomato plants, people are driving in from 100
Mile House, from Vancouver, from Kamloops to get some red-hot tomatoes. Some
pick them themselves, maybe 1,500 pounds. Another family, Italian, went for
3,000 pounds. That’s right — 3,000 pounds. I don’t have too many zeroes
there.
“They make their own sauces to last
them throughout the year,” says Leslie. I guess so.
So what are they looking for? For
sauces it’s Romas, Romas, Romas. They have fleshier meat, fewer seeds and less
liquid, so homemade sauce is nice and thick and flavourful.
For canning, it’s regular old field
tomatoes or the beefsteaks. The big draw, though, is to just slice ’em and eat
’em.
“What people like about beefsteaks is
they can take one slice and it covers the whole slice of bread,” says Leslie.
Now that’s convenience food.
If you’re getting tomatoes for
canning, which a lot of people are doing these days, look for ones that have
that classic ripe-red colour. For canning it’s perfectly fine to go for ones
with blemishes or what Leslie calls “cat face”, where the bottom of the tomato
has a kind of scabby base. You’ll also get them for less.
But U-pick are cheapest of all: as
low as 30 cents a pound at the Malms’ if you go for more than 500 pounds. Ah,
come on, you’ve got a friend or neighbour you can share them with. But hurry
— prime tomato time is almost up.
What you don’t want are ones with
blossom end rot, which shows up as a black spot that looks spoiled at the
bottom of the tomato. It’s due to a lack of calcium caused by inconsistent
watering and can affect the inside of the tomato as well.
What else might you do with 3,000
pounds of tomatoes, besides possibly pasting your friends at a late Indian
summer party?
“A lot of people freeze them whole
because once you’ve got them frozen and you take them out of the freezer, the
skin just slips right off of them,” says Leslie. A slick trick for recipes that
require peeled tomatoes.
I think most people object to cooked
tomato skins because of their texture — they roll up like little bits of
thin plastic sheeting and are just as tough. Some people object to their taste,
calling it unpleasant or bitter; others think the tomato skin, or at least the
bit of flesh right under the skin, adds flavour. Decide for yourself, but if
you want to remove the skin Leslie’s freezing trick is 10 times easier than the
old “plunge them in boiling water” routine.
If you’re driving a ways to pick up a
bunch for canning, you may want to go for the semi-ripes — orange ones
with a blush of green. They’ll travel much better and will ripen up in a few
days, and they’ll have just as much flavour as the vine-ripened red ones.
If you can’t make it to Lillooet,
Leslie supplies North Arm Farm in Pemberton, plus she sells at Whistler
Farmers’ Market (in front of Portobello), but usually only cherry tomatoes.
Which brings us to another tomato
mother lode close at hand. Just along from Leslie’s booth, you’ll find Michael
Allen and his wife Ana-Liza selling sumptuous organic heirloom tomatoes grown
in their soil-based greenhouses in the Fraser Valley.
Not just another pretty tomato face,
these babies have pizzazz. With some of the varieties dating back more than 100
years, heirloom tomatoes (or heritage tomatoes, if you’re from England) are
hugely popular, partly for nostalgic reasons and partly because they taste and
look so good and are loaded with healthy properties.
“I’m surprised at the number of young
people who come out to buy our tomatoes by themselves without their parents,”
says Michael, who used to play for the B.C. Lions before starting Garden Back
to Eden. “They were losing something, and it’s like a lot of people are
gripping it back.”
His heirloom favourites? Try the
Black Pineapple from Belgium, with its big beefsteak-y form but a bright green
outside and purple, pink and red stripes on the inside. It has a phenomenal
look, and sweetness to match. The Moskovich delivers a more traditional, tangy
tomato flavour, while the exotic Black Krim is like nothing you’ve ever tasted
— a complex, smoky, hickory-like flavour “with a twang.”
Whether they’re from Lillooet or
times past, any of these babies would be far too precious to toss, so La
Tomatina at Whistler will just have to wait.
Check out Whistler Farmers’ Market
every Sunday until Oct. 7.
Glenda Bartosh is an award-wining
freelance writer who says “tomato.”