Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen the promised land, and it is good.
For about a year now I’ve been passing heirloom tomatoes in my local store and noting that they are twice the price of any other tomato. “What’s the big deal?” I’d wonder. But I could never really justify the expense in my mind. And then a few days ago I decided to indulge my curiosity.
Let me just say that heirloom tomatoes have ruined me for any other tomato for the rest of my life. I had forgotten what tomatoes tasted like in my childhood, before they became texture-less and soulless and devoid of any passion whatsoever. Heirlooms may not be particularly pretty, but they are tomato nirvana. Once you’ve had heirloom, you never go back.
And that’s a big problem, because I’ll rarely be able to afford them, they’re still not universally available, and quite obviously they’re not used in most restaurants. So here I am, having been to the promised land, faced with the grim knowledge that most of the time I shall be forced to dwell in the tomato equivalent of metropolitan Detroit. Life can be exceedingly cruel.
This leaves me wondering if I might have been better off if I’d never left “Detroit” in the first place. Is it better to live in blissful ignorance, or should you be grateful for the brief shining moment you are allowed to experience true genius with the sure and bittersweet knowledge that witlessness shall once again be yours?
It is the same when you experience the perfection of 500 thread count Egyptian Cotton sheets, five star cuisine, truly dank weed, or phenomenal, mind blowing, out of this world sex. You have been to the top of the mountain, and you prefer the view up there, but in the back of your mind you know you’ll never be able to keep up with the property taxes, so you heave a heavy sigh and trudge back down to the valley and try not to spend the rest of your life gazing longingly skyward.
[image credit: windrosefarm.org]
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