The Joy of Tomatoes

Another two weeks have passed making yesterday CSA day. I’m always amazed at how happy this every other week ritual can make me. Even though the vegetables don’t change too much from delivery to delivery, two weeks seems to be just enough time to make me miss them and ready for more. The charge I get out of it is the opposite of a trip to the grocery store, which often leaves me cranky and hungry.

Yesterday’s box held much of the same as previous weeks. I once again saw cucumbers, zucchini, garlic, eggplant, cherry tomatoes, onion and lettuce and a few vegetables, such as radishes, made a return from earlier in the season. There was also new twist on an earlier vegetable, long flat Romano beans, which I recognized from season’s past.

But the most glorious discovery, and perhaps the source of all my happiness, was finding the first slicing tomatoes of the season inside. I actually picked them each up and smelled them, feeling their slight heft and noticing the variations in their color. There was even one orange one, which reminded me of a small DayGlo pumpkin.

As I lined the tomatoes up on the counter I noticed I was smiling. My supply was large enough to make everything I wanted, from the BLT I was still craving from two weeks ago, to the zucchini casserole of my childhood.

But the real moment of truth came when I found mold growing on the bacon I had been saving for the BLT. After a brief moment of considering cutting around it, and deciding that it was not meant to be, I made a salad instead. I didn’t feel disappointed at all, instead I was comforted by the knowledge that there would be more tomatoes this season. That’s the joy of an every other week delivery.