First Entry -- tomatoes are not your friend

I hate tomatoes.

Why is it you can't buy a sandwich without a tomato? And why is it, you might ask if you have nothing better to do than sit around asking rhetorical questions, do I choose, on my first blog, to write about this offending fruit? (Or is it a vegetable? Damned semantics...) Simple: I'm sick and tired of picking tomatoes off my food. Normally, I don't have anything against any particular fruit or vegetable. I do not discriminate on the basis of size, color or weight. If it tastes good, I'm for it and even if it doesn't I'm willing to co-exist. Olives, for example, taste to me like what I would imagine rubber soaked in lighter fluid tastes like to people who have the time to taste such things (critics and academics, I imagine). But I have nothing against the poor, innocent olive, it doesn't offend me. In fact, I've been known to cook with olive oil on the extremely rare occasions where my friends allow me close enough to the stove to light a flame. Tomatoes -- ubiquitous tomatoes! -- won't leave me alone, however, when I'm trying to ignore them. And here's the rub in all this: I actually like the taste of this dastardly fruit\vegetable (Aside: why the confusion over their nomenclature? Because they're often served with vegetables? They're served with everything! Tomatoes are fruit, so don't be fooled. Here's what the dictionary says: 1a. A widely cultivated South American plant (Lycopersicon esculentum) having edible, fleshy, usually red fruit. b. The fruit of this plant. 2. Slang A woman regarded as attractive). I simply cannot eat tomatoes because of a dietary restriction due to too much stomach acid (probably generated from worrying about this and other trivial matters). I can't eat oranges either, but I have nothing against them. Oranges know they're place, they don't try to sneak onto every sandwich in every restaurant in New York (where I haplessly live). Sure, they turn up in the occasional salad -- good for them! I like ambition and they look attractive sitting there and sometimes I'll even eat one, against my stomach's better judgment, because I admire the pluck of this delicious fruit. Tomatoes have gone too far. They are the cockroaches of the plant kingdom, insidious and impossible to avoid. (Fun fact about cockroaches: they fart about once every five minutes). It's getting to the point where you (and by you, I mean "me") can't even order a bowl of soup anymore, because every soup is tomato based! What ever happened to water? You know, boil some water, throw some stuff in there and, voila!, soup! (Clearly I know nothing about making soup, but like other critics who know nothing of what they criticize I can't help rambling on in the hopes that I'll sound intelligent. By the way, "Voila" is more or less the limit of my French).

Anyway, if you're like me (and you must be) you're sick of tomatoes too. It's time for us to take a stand before it's too late, before tomatoes start running for office, before they start declaring unnecessary wars on other countries, before they start walking slowly on sidewalks when you're trying to get some place fast, before they make you wait four hours for your cable installation appointment and then cancel and then make you wait four hours on another day and then show up with only 1 minutes left of your alloted time. Come to think of it, maybe tomatoes have already taken over! I, for one, think we should rid our fine (if overly happy with ourselves) country of tomatoes! I like the dictionary's alternative definition of this haughty fruit: it's a term I never use, but that has sexy, juicy connations and should be revived.

Thus, I'll begin today.
Anyone seen that Project Runway? Plenty of hot tomatoes on that show!
Who is with me?