I’ve been accused of having a phobia when it comes to tomatoes. The American Heritage Stedman’s Medical Dictionary defines a phobia as An intense, abnormal, or illogical fear of a specified thing. I am not afraid of tomatoes I just can’t stand the taste of them. It’s not like I run away from them screaming like a girl from a 1950’s horror movie. I save that for bees. I have a phobia of those. The only tomatoes that I’m afraid of are these guys.
I hope they’re not real.
My disdain for the tomato began really when I was a teenager. While I never “liked” tomatoes I didn’t avoid them like I do now. My parents love tomatoes and always grew them. One year they had a bountiful harvest and my mother decided to make tomato sauce with them. Now my mother is not a culinary expert( I love you mom in case she’s reading this), she would be the first to tell you this ( I guess she did OK none of the 6 kids died of starvation). She pureed the tomatoes and simmered them down I think for weeks, maybe months, at least that’s what it seemed like then she would freeze it. It didn’t smell like a really good marinara it just smelled like boiling tomato juice. The whole house smelled like it. She simmered morning, noon and night. I, being a teenager who liked to sleep in , would be woken up by the sensory overload that was the aroma of the tomato sauce. It, in my mind ,wreaked. So you can imagine that I was less than excited when the sauce was made for spaghetti. Italian sausage helped but not much. Every time she made it I could smell the sauce and would flash back to the making of it.
Moving forward to adulthood( in my case that’s a relative term). For those of you that don’t know I work at Sysco Foodservices of Denver. I worked nights for 14 years. One night I was sent to clean a spill, you can imagine my horror when I saw that it was a clean up of tomatoes. Not just a few but 10, 10 pound flats of cherry tomatoes.That’s right a hundred pounds of tomatoes, rolling all over the floor. That wouldn’t have been bad. but most of them had been run over until they were something like a muddy tomato paste. Then the smell hit me! I immediately flashed back to my youth. AAAAAAAAAGGGG, the tomato sauce was back to haunt me again(love you mom) . I gagged on the smell. I wanted to run away screaming like a girl from a 1950’s horror movie. It was all I could do to keep my lunch down but I did. Like a good employee I forced my way through that unpleasant situation, but I haven’t been able to stomach them at all since.
I’m happy in my denial that I have a phobia of tomatoes, I don’t have to eat them in my world. I do like one tomato his name is Bob.
Please don’t eat him. Bryan
I was a little tentative about getting Roddy when we decided to get a dog. You know mostly about cleaning up all the poop. But yesterday he made my day. We were barbecuing the traditional hamburger and hot dog Fourth of July meal, Pearl was slicing up some burger toppings and she decided to give Roddy a slice of ( ugh) tomato. Which he quickly snatched up. I was thinking that I was going to have to disown him now for eating the tomato. He wallowed it around in his mouth for a few seconds and promptly spit it out. That’s right, my dog hates tomatoes.The dog that chews through a rawhide bone like a lion through a gazelle won’t eat a tomato. My dog would rather eat a stick than a tomato. My dumb Friend from the Dumb Friends League that thinks cat poop is a snack won’t eat a tomato. I’ve never been so proud of him, It brings a tear to my eye. I love my dog now I think I’ll keep him.
