It's (real) tomato season!

The reason for the parenthetical notation above is, of course, that the things sold in the stores as tomatoes are actually nothing like real tomatoes. They may look like tomatoes but taste nothing like real tomatoes.

Real tomatoes are grown in a garden or on a farm during and harvested from about the middle of July until the end of September. Cherry tomatoes may set a little earlier than that. Real tomatoes are not firm like peaches. Real tomatoes have a rich flavor, they don't taste like cardboard. Real tomatoes don't go mealy inside when they ripen.

It's hard to find real tomatoes in a store; sometimes you can find them at a farm stand or open-air market, but even then, the prospect of finding a good one can be dicey.

One of my favorite varieties of tomato is Better Boy. The flavor is so much more rich and robust than most. I also like Big Beef or Ponderosa Pink.

Last year, I grew cherry tomatoes (Sweet 100, the only variety of cherry tomato I grow) and regular tomatoes (Celebrity, JetStar). The regular tomatoes didn't produce much...and what they did produce was not that great. I won't grow either of those varieties again. I will stick with my Better Boys.

The Better Boys are just beginning to ripen and I took the first one in last week. The flavor was spectacular; I am looking forward to more of them! Especially with some fresh basil I've grown and a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper...yum!

The cherry tomatoes are producing like crazy. I have one plant and it produces enough for us and enough to occasionally take some in for people who work in our offices. They are so sweet! When I get a lot of them, I like to cut them in half and use them in turkey-bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches.