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You say tomato, I say love apple

Recently I had written about the beautiful potato and its beginnings, as well as the rutabaga.
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Recently I had written about the beautiful potato and its beginnings, as well as the rutabaga. I see a trend starting here in my writing and it is that of the education of the food that makes us who we are, so in this article I shall write about the love apple.

The love apple, also known as a tomato, originated in the same place as the potato in the Andes, in what is now called Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador. This should not come as a surprise as both the tomato and potato are in the same family of Solanaceae or nightshade family to which we attain many of our tasty vegetables from.

As the Solanaceae family contains many plants that we use for culinary purposes as well as recreational (tobacco). Many of which have come from South and Central America.

Tomatoes, peppers, tobacco, potatoes (Solanceae) all coming from First Nations of the Americas along with squash, corn, and beans represent a true American diet (for the warmer climates than our own).

Through domestication, the nightshade plant now known as the tomato, has come from a poisonous family of plants to become the backyard gardeners pride throughout much of the world.

The beginning of the tomato is unclear timewise, but it is known that it was prior to 500 A.D.

Since those early years of domestication, we now have literally thousands of varieties of this wonderful plant.

The survival strategy of this plant to be very tasty and adaptable has led to it being brought all the way to Siberia where varieties were further developed and eventually brought to our farm east of Prince George.

During the early years of the curious European botanist, many thought the plant to be poisonous such as its relatives and many grew it only as an ornamental.

To help dispel the untruth of the plant being unfit to eat, the founding father of the declaration of independence, Thomas Jefferson, who was also an avid agricultural promoter, began growing and preserving this fruit.

Later on, Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson in 1830, ate a basket of tomatoes on the steps of the Salem courthouse to prove they were safe, while a crowd watched in horror thinking he would expire soon.

Seeing how tomatoes are related to the Datura plant which can cause hallucinations, it is well understood how the people of Salem were worried, seeing how a little over 100 years earlier many people began to burn "witches" that used magical plants.

Although it is well understood now that the problems of the witch trials were largely based on Ergot, a fungus growing on Rye that produces effects similar to that of LSD.

Funny enough, the tomato did not arrive in North America via central and South America, but rather it come from Europe with immigrants who had started growing it as the Spanish spread the plant around Europe.

Now as we think of Italian cuisine, we think of wonderful pasta dishes covered in a lovely tomato sauce, who would have thought that the food culture of the European world could have been transformed and adopted as its own from this South American plant.