Latest news with #Sungolds
New York Times
4 days ago
- Lifestyle
- New York Times
12 Gifts to Celebrate Tomato Season
In this edition of The Gift, we're celebrating peak summer with some whimsical tomato gifts. Because why not? Plus: the very best olive oil and what to gift a wiener dog mom. Last year, I found myself soundly defeated by six cherry tomato plants. As a gardening newbie, I'd avoided weightier varieties, thinking they might be harder to prop up. Oh, sweet summer child. By July, my Sungolds and Supersweet 100s had already rapidly outgrown their tall stakes and then seized on the fence behind them in a junglelike thicket. Every few days, they produced so much fruit that I was giving them away in old pho containers to the baristas at my local coffee shop. But even in the midst of that late-season abundance, I still loved catching a whiff of tomato leaves on my hands after pruning the multiplying branches. I know I'm far from alone in finding them irresistible. Just looking at red-orb designs on a bowl or T-shirt can conjure the feeling of dappled summer sun on your forehead, or a languid vacation dinner with fireflies glinting about. In that spirit, here are a few of our favorite knickknacks, clothes, and kitchenstuffs for gifting your favorite tomato-head or anyone you'd just like to treat this summer. For going out, I'm a fan of Staud's iconic beaded bag — the Italian-esque tomato version has a cheeky forkful of spaghetti on the back. This adorable fitted mini linen dress would also be a surefire hit on a sweltering August night. (It's a bit of a double entendre given that 'tomato' is, I recently learned, a synonym for a 'hot number.') And for days at the office, these handy sticky notes, which newsletters editor Haley Jo Lewis calls 'the absolute delight of my desk,' will brighten workday drudgery with a pop of fuchsia. They're a sweet small token to lift a pal out of a 9-5 summertime sadness. Several Wirecutter journalists love this fat heirloom tomato-shaped candle that smells like tomato leaves and, if it was sitting on a farmer's market table, would make you do a double take. Also, these cherry tomato-inspired dinner candles are both regal and eye-catching, and far more of a conversation starter than mere ivory tapers. It'd almost be a shame to actually burn them. For pomodoro decor beyond candles: I love this glass tumbler with an adorable little guy popping up from its center for summer sips on the patio. And this extremely fun throw pillow tossed on a sofa would help anyone beat accusations of a millennial-gray living room. Kids would be overjoyed to get this ridiculously cute plushie. Or for the canines: This hilarious canned tomato-inspired dog toy is squeaky and comes with three small tomato balls inside it. I think either are worth squeezing into what might already be an overstuffed toy collection. Ignacio Mattos, chef-owner of a number of lovely Mediterranean restaurants in New York City, once told me he favors the rich jarred Miracolo di San Gennaro Pomodori from Bronx importer Gustiamo. And our kitchen team also thinks their sundried tomatoes are divine enough to eat straight out of the jar (or sprinkled on pasta). Less on the nose — and quite special — are these hefty, handmade splatterware dinner plates from Puglia. While lacking in round, red imagery, they would contrast beautifully with a tomato salad. As I wrote this newsletter, I found myself pining for my favorite BLT — one made with Japanese milk bread, thick-cut bacon, and fat heirloom slices at peak juiciness. It looks like one tomato in my garden is almost sandwich-ready. I pared it back this year, by the way, to two cherry tomato and two Brandywine plants. I think I've learned my lesson. But ask me again in August. Including a quite cute (and curl-friendly) bucket hat. Your plants deserve to thrive in a confetti resin planter or a glittering disco ball. These exceptionally sharp pruners may be the last set you ever buy. My sister-in-law is especially difficult to shop for, because she doesn't really love anything in particular, except for going out to dinners with friends, hiking, and hanging out with family. She is a career elementary school teacher, married without kids, and has a weenie dog as of five months ago (her first pet ever in her life). — E.S. From gifting expert Hannah Morrill: Going out on a limb here and guessing that your newly minted weenie-loving relative is as weenie-obsessed as my weenie-loving relative. If so, let's start her out with a sweet doggo hair clip that could delight her students, too. If you've got a good picture handy — check your text threads — you could get a pair of custom socks or a pillow made. Wrap it all in Dachshund wrapping paper, and you're set. If you're not ready to go all in on the dog theme, some plush hiking socks are always appreciated, and our favorite Spanish tapas sampler would be lovely for noshing at home before dinner out. Lastly, if you've got the time, rescue memories from the digital graveyard by assembling a photo book of treasured family hangs. (Then schedule an IRL hang, too.) Our present-hunters are here to answer your questions. By completing this form, you agree that we may add your address to our list for the newsletter The Gift. What I Cover I cover a wide range of gift giving, with a specialty in food and drink gifts; I also touch on beauty on occasion. I work to ensure that we consider a diverse range of socio-cultural backgrounds in our guides.
Atlantic
5 days ago
- Business
- Atlantic
Tomato Season Is Different This Year
Every summer, there is a brief window—call it August—when the produce is exquisite. The cherries are at their best, as are the peaches, plums, and nectarines. The watermelon is sweet. The eggplants are glossy. The corn is pristine. And the tomatoes! The tomatoes are unparalleled. There's a reason tomatoes are synonymous with summer, staple of home gardens and farmers' markets alike. Giant, honking beefsteaks and sprightly Sungolds are begging to be transformed into salads and gazpachos, tossed with pasta and sliced into sandwiches, or eaten raw by the fistful. Enjoy them while you can. Come fall, tomato season will be over just as quickly as it began. Yes, you can obtain sliceable red orbs in virtually any supermarket, at any time of year, anywhere in the United States. But they are pale imitations of dripping August heirlooms. Out-of-season tomatoes—notoriously pale, mealy, and bland—tend to be tomatoes in name only. They can be serviceable, dutifully filling out a Greek salad; they can valiantly garnish a taco and add heft to a grilled-cheese sandwich. At the very least, they contribute general wetness and a sense of virtue to a meal. Flavor? Not so much. This year, of all years, it's worth indulging in the bounties of high tomato season. The bloodless tomatoes waiting for us in the fall are mostly imported from Mexico, and as with so many other goods these days, they are now stuck in the middle of President Donald Trump's trade war. This week, the White House imposed 17 percent tariffs on Mexican tomatoes. In all likelihood, that will mean higher prices for grocery-store tomatoes, Tim Richards, an agricultural economist at Arizona State University, told me. This will not make them better in terms of color, texture, or flavor—but it will make them cost more. Grumbling about grim winter tomatoes is a long-standing national hobby, and at the same time, their existence is a small miracle. You can eat a BLT in the snow or a Caprese salad for Valentine's Day with no effort at all. In August 1943, before Americans could get fresh tomatoes year-round, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia encouraged housewives to brace for winter by canning as many tomatoes as they could. 'They are in your city's markets and I want to see every woman can them while they are at this low price,' he announced. They wouldn't have to do it for long. By the 1960s, 'just about every supermarket and corner store in America was selling Florida tomatoes from October to June,' the author William Alexander wrote in Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World. They were visually perfect but tasted like Styrofoam, which is in many ways what they were supposed to be: durable, pest-resistant, long-lasting, and cheap. Tomatoes are famously fragile and quick to rot, so they are often picked while still green, and then gassed with ethylene. It turns them red, giving the appearance of ripeness but not the corresponding flavor. In recent years, the situation has somewhat improved: Instead of focusing exclusively on looks and durability, horticulturalists have turned their attention to maximizing flavor. There is another reason year-round tomatoes have improved: Mexico. 'Most of the nice-looking, really tasty tomatoes in the market are Mexican,' Richards said. That includes small varieties such as cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, and cocktail tomatoes, or, as he classified them, 'those little snacking tomatoes in the plastic things.' Mexico manages to produce this steady stream of year-round, pretty-good tomatoes by growing them primarily in greenhouses, which Richards said is the best possible way to produce North American tomatoes at scale. Even in winter, tomatoes sheltered from the elements can be left to ripen on the vine, which helps improve the taste. All of which is to say that an America without easy access to imported Mexican tomatoes looks bleak. Like all of Trump's tariffs, the point of taxing Mexican tomatoes is to help producers here in the U.S. Thirty years ago, 80 percent of the country's fresh tomatoes were grown in America. Now the share is more like 30 percent, and sliding. America could produce enough tomatoes to stock grocery stores year-round—Florida still grows a lot of them—but doing that just doesn't make a lot of sense. 'It's not cost-effective,' Luis Ribera, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University, told me. 'We cannot supply year-round tomatoes at the prices that we have.' Unlike Mexico, Florida mainly grows its tomatoes outside, despite the fact that it is ill-suited to outdoor tomato growing in pretty much all ways: The soil is inhospitable. The humidity is an incubator for disease. There are regular hurricanes. 'From a purely botanical and horticultural perspective,' the food journalist Barry Estabrook wrote in Tomatoland, 'you would have to be an idiot to attempt to commercially grow tomatoes in a place like Florida.' Exactly what the tariffs will mean for grocery prices is hard to say. Tomatoes will be taxed when they cross the border, so importers and distributors will directly pay the costs. But eventually, the increase will likely trickle down to the supermarket. The story of tariffs, Ribera said, is that 'the lion's share is paid by consumers.' In the short term, Richards estimated that price hikes will depend a lot on the variety of tomato, with romas hardest hit. 'That's the one we rely on most from Mexico,' he said. Beefsteaks, he added, will face a smaller increase. Compared with some of the other drastic tariffs that Trump imposed, a 17 percent price bump on Mexican tomatoes hardly portends the tomato-pocalypse. Last year, the average import price of Mexican tomatoes was about 74 cents a pound. If the entire 17 percent increase is passed on to consumers, we'd be looking at an additional 13 cents—enough to notice, but not enough for a critical mass of people to forgo romas altogether. Here's the other thing: People want tomatoes, and they want them now. 'We don't want to wait for things to be in season,' Ribera said, and we aren't about to start. For all of the many problems with out-of-season tomatoes, Americans keep eating them. It was true when winter tomatoes were a novelty: 'I don't know why housewives feel they have to have tomatoes,' one baffled supplier told The New York Times in 1954. But they did, and people still do. Season to season, our national tomato consumption fluctuates relatively little, the grocery-industry analyst Phil Lempert told me. Every burger joint in America needs tomatoes—not the best tomatoes, but tomatoes that exist. There is a whole genre of recipes about how to make the most of out-of-season tomatoes. A lesser tomato, of course, is better than no tomato at all.
