Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

I have one third of the last giant Brandywine tomato from the massive quantity of various tomato varieties I took home the last time I visited my parents.  It's sitting in the fridge wrapped in plastic.  I plan on devouring it tomorrow morning for breakfast on a slice of whole wheat rye toast with some swiss cheese and a glass of milk.  

Along with the Brandywines, my mom grew smallish red tomatoes with tiger orangey stripes, yellow plum tomatoes, ghostly white orbs, sweet 1 million cherry tomatoes, and some minute yellow cherry tomato variety I'd never seen.  Naturally, my dad and bro were reaching their fresh tomato limit, so as a year-round supermarket tomato hostage, I was thrilled to relieve them of some of their tomato-eating duties.  There's nothing like real veggies.

Here's the deal.  People don't eat veggies because they taste like crap most of the time.  Varieties that make it to the supermarkets are bred for size, packability, and duration of perceived freshness.  Flavor doesn't factor into it.  Everyone's so removed from the land these days, they don't know what produce should taste like anymore, so they go to the stores every week, pick out firm tomatoes, and feed them to their families.  Firm tomatoes?  Real ones are soft, with juices ready to burst out and spray the guy or gal next to you should you bite into one. 

Can you imagine throwing a supermarket tomato from now at a bad act back in the day?  You'd kill him!  Think of how dated those caricatures of tomatoes going 'splat' are.  It's so sad and pathetic.  According Michael Pollan (who is the modern god of food policy as far as I'm concerned), one of the reasons produce prices are so high is because the government subsidizes corn farming.  If the government took away the corn subsidies, the farmers would immediately be up to their ears in debt, and because of the demand, HAVE to grow real fruit and veggies.  So I say down with the government subsidies.  

Why?

Because I want delicious, sweet, tangy, juicy tomatoes with intensely tomatoey skin that goes pop when I bite into them.  And I want broccoli with biceps, gustatorially speaking.  And cucumbers that taste like cucumbers!  Why are we so obsessed with making corn chips taste like fucking fake cheese or BBQ sauce and so detached from what the real deal tastes like?  

Hell, I'm not even going the nutrition route.  I'm going full out pure hedonism here.  What the hell, people.