melissa schilling

creole tomatoes

It’s winter. It’s cold. And tomato season and long warm nights are months away. I have to dream a little.
Paging through all my photographs this morning, brought me to this shot of a wall I would drive by, constantly, whilst in New Orleans.
What is a Creole Tomato, anyway?

“The Creole tomato is such a bright red that it sometimes looks more like a painting of a tomato than an actual fruit. It’s okay to admire its beauty, especially if you are practicing the skill of delayed gratification, but most of us can’t look for very long – there is eating to be done.” – an essay by Diane Dees about Creole Tomatoes

… able to survive our wretched Louisiana summer because of the Creole tomato. The humidity is always at dripping-sweat level, the temperature ceaselessly in the 90s. If we’re lucky, summer lasts only four months, but some years we are doomed to suffer from May to October. The roses become distorted and faded, their leaves covered with blackspot. Giant grasshoppers devour amaryllis leaves within seconds. There are piles of laundry, as we deceive ourselves into believing fresh shirts will make us feel better. Our cars turn into heat capsules, and the deck smells like a mass of rotting organisms.

All summer produce is marvelous, of course, and we buy luscious Alabama peaches from roadside stands, pick cucumbers and squash from our friend’s generous garden. But anyone can do that. You have to live in south Louisiana to eat Creole tomatoes.

The Creole tomato is grown only in certain parts of south Louisiana, where the soil is just right. It can be large or medium-sized, and has an imposing corona at the top. No corona? Not a Creole.

Posted on Thursday, December 2nd, 2010 at 10:09 am. Filed under: 2010, The Citizen Journalism Gallery, The Magic Fifty Gallery Tags: creole, food, new orleans, summer, tomatoes RSS 2.0 feed.