Thinking about food rules

DO NOT put fresh tomatoes in the fridge, people!

Robyn’s Obnoxious and Totally Judgmental Food Rules (Mostly Having To Do with the All-Important Tomato)

- Never buy corn on the cob out of season. It’s an abomination. Really, you shouldn’t eat it any way besides directly off the stalk and into your pot, but definitely not from the Kroger in February.

- Fresh fruits and vegetables that CAN go in the fridge: watermelon, cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, any kind of berry, bell peppers (or mangoes, if you grew up calling them that).

- Fresh fruits and vegetables that should ALWAYS go in the fridge, IMMEDIATELY, as soon as they come out of the garden: green beans and corn on the cob.

- Fresh fruits and vegetables that should NEVER go in the fridge: tomatoes.

- The uglier the tomato, the better it tastes. This is true of many fruits and vegetables, but especially tomatoes. Big, beautiful tomatoes with no blemishes or cracks are very pretty, but generally not very tasty.

- Can you eat the whole tomato, including the stem? Hell, yeah, you can. Waste not, want not, friends. Also, roughage!

- Watermelon must be eaten with salt. Specifically, table salt and not Kosher salt.

- Watermelons should be selected by the thumping method. I’m an expert, so if you’d like to pay me a small fee for this service, I’m happy to pick out your watermelons for you. My grandpa taught me and my method is foolproof. You will never eat a meh watermelon again.

- The best way to eat cherry tomatoes is at three o’clock on a hot, sunny day in July or August, right off the vine, with a little bit of salt (table salt), still warm from the sun.

- Related rule—if you’re the one who burrowed into the jungle that is the cherry tomato vines to pick the suckers, you get to eat them. All of them.

- Also related—you can’t eat too many cherry tomatoes. Really. I have forty-eight years of experience with this. Trust me.

Not a hard and fast rule, but sun gold are the best-tasting cherry tomatoes, though six plants in your small backyard is probably excessive

- Store-bought green beans out of a can are disgusting. Sorry, not sorry.

- Related rule—despite what the USDA and other websites say, it is okay to can fresh green beans using the water bath method. You will not get botulism and die. Or at least no one in my family has in our combined 70+ years of eating green beans canned this way.

- Beautiful is generally not better when it comes to many fruits and vegetables and neither is bigger. This rule especially applies to summer squash and cucumbers. The only thing you can really do with that zucchini the size of a baseball bat is shred it into zucchini bread. Loaves and loaves worth of zucchini bread and, yes, zucchini bread is delicious, but there is a point during high Indiana summer when absolutely no one wants one single more bite of zucchini bread or zucchini in any form, no matter how altered and unrecognizable.

- Related rule—one zucchini or summer squash plant is always enough.¹

- Okay, but can you put a tomato in the fridge after you’ve cut it to keep it from going bad? Well, I guess, but I will judge you. Better just to eat the rest of it right then because fresh tomato season lasts about three months tops and even one single bite of precious tomato that goes to waste in those three months is a sin against the tomato gods. You do not want to sin against the tomato gods.

- No, eating potatoes that have turned a little green won’t kill you. Or make you sick. Where did that nonsense even come from?

- Let me say it one more time—never, ever, ever put tomatoes in the refrigerator. If you do, please don’t risk our friendship by telling me.

What are your food rules?

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Thanks for reading and subscribing, friends. If you’re in the Madison area, come see me at the Jefferson County Public Library this Tuesday, July 12 at 5:30. The talk is, “When All Cheerleaders Were Boys: Sports and Gender Segregation.”

1. Jeff: Let’s plant three patty pan squash!

Me: You sure about that?

Jeff: Yes!

[Two months later]

Jeff: I will never eat another patty pan squash again.

Me: You think?