I’m glad I’ve been buying tomatoes at the farmer’s market.
According to Fox News, a salmonella outbreak linked to tomatoes has spread to 16 states, including Oregon. My family consumes a lot of tomatoes. But for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been buying my tomatoes from a local grower at the farmer’s market.
I’ve been paying $3 a pound, which is way more expensive than what I’d pay at the grocery store, but I’ve been telling myself that it’s worth it, because locally grown tomatoes actually taste like, well, tomatoes. The tomatoes from the grocery store taste more like water.
But now I’m breathing a sigh of relief. I’m grateful that I won’t have to worry about this particular salmonella outbreak, and I can still enjoy my tomatoes. Suddenly that $3 a pound seems even more worth it.
For those of you who don’t have access to local tomatoes yet, here are some precautions you can take when buying tomatoes, according to the report I saw on Fox News this morning.
- The outbreak is linked to roma and round red tomatoes. Stay away from them. Use cherry tomatoes or tomatoes sold on the vine instead.
- Wash your tomatoes before using, and even better, cook them.
- Stay away from tomatoes all together.
Health officials still haven’t pinpointed the source of the salmonella outbreak, so it could be a while before grocery store tomatoes are safe again.
Photo by visualdensity.
June 8th, 2008 at 10:52 am
And it makes me glad we’ve got a few tomato plants growing in the yard. They have yet to produce a ripened tomato, but a few are close.
June 8th, 2008 at 11:59 am
You want to know something sort of ironic, Hubby who only eats local and American veggies. Ate a roma tomato, he got sick.
Once you get used to eating seasonally all of it will taste better I promise. You will not want tomatoes when they are not fresh.
June 8th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I only eat cooked tomatoes but this is still worrying. I probably started because of how uninteresting uncooked tomatoes taste. Cooked at least they’ve got spices.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:54 am
I’ve had several from my backyard garden, so I’m not conserned about this.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Well, that was enough to make me toss the one Roma I had here….
Tomatoes are soooo iffy here - it just doesn’t get warm enough for them.
Here on the north Oregon coast where winter lasted clear into May…well, let’s just say that I cheated on the tomato plants and bought a BIG started one… I have 2 green cherry-sized tomatoes on one plant - and I am just doing daily cheers for them to grow fast
On the other hand - I’ve got more lettuce than I can eat
It likes this cool wet weather apparently. ahhh! Success!