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Saul

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Dear ALL,

 

I buy my tomatoes from a farmer in the Rochester Public Market; his tomatoes are delicious and high quality -- and not contaminated with insects, fungus or anything else.

 

I store the tomatoes in a cool spot in my basement; they keep very well and are delicious.

 

However, for the past several weeks (actually, months) some of them have developed "holes" in them during storage -- and I've discovered small dark insects in the ones with holes (in the holes).  I bring such a tomato upstairs, wash out the insects, and cut off the bad part.  What remains is still delicious.

 

I've spoken to my tomato supplier about it - he recommends that I use an "insect bomb"  (some kind of device that produces a mist of gasses poisonous to insects -- and undoubtedly people) in my basement, closing off the basement (and while the tomatoes aren't there).  He says this will eliminate the insect contamination that evidently exists in my basement.

 

I thought that I should check the wonderful knowledge base that we have here in the Forums for some advise, before trying anything.

 

Thanks,

 

  -- Saul

 

:angry:

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Saul,

 

You could try such a drastic solution as a whole house insect bomb to eliminate your insect problem. But who knows what potentially harmful chemicals you'll be spreading around your house if you do.

 

Alternatively, why not just store your tomatoes in the fridge away from the insects? That's what I do, after having read this article (and more here) debunking the myth that ripe tomatoes lose their flavor and texture if stored in the fridge. Regarding nutrition, if your interest is maximizing it for tomatoes, you should cook them with oil, something I believe you mostly avoid Saul, IIRC.

 

--Dean

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Hi Dean!

 

Thanks for responding!

 

I speak from personal experience -- MANY such --- when I eat an unrefrigerated raw tomato, it's delicious.  Refrigerating - even overnight -- reduces the subtle flavors.

 

I also eat salsa -- that certainly has readily available lycopene. 

 

  -- Saul

 

P.S.:  One possible solution is to give up, and share my tomatoes with the insects.

 

I get to eat about 90-95% of them.

 

:wacko:

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Saul,

 

 

I speak from personal experience -- MANY such --- when I eat an unrefrigerated raw tomato, it's delicious.  Refrigerating - even overnight -- reduces the subtle flavors.

 

Given that professional foodies can't tell the difference, I'd be curious to see if you really could in a double blind food test like those conducted in the articles I linked to. I suspect you couldn't tell the difference and it is just your irrational mind fooling you into thinking you can. ☺. But heck, I could be wrong - you could have a more discriminating palate than the foodies.

 

--Dean

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My horror at the idea of using poison to correct a bug problem probably exceeds Dean's horror at the thought of eating an egg.  My first thought would be to store tomatoes elsewhere for a while.  Without food the bug population will eventually go away.  I wouldn't store them all in the fridge, but might put a few there.  I don't like cold fresh tomatoes for some purposes like salads, though allowed to warm to room temperature the impact is modest.   But for cooked/processed use like sauces I find the impact of refrigeration is minimal.

 

The only time we store fresh tomatoes for more than a few days is the end of season harvest when we have a lot of unripe tomatoes.  The larger ones we wrap individually in a sheet of newspaper or paper towel and then stack inside brown paper grocery sacks.  We fold the top of a sack and put a spring clip or two on it to keep it shut.  I don't know that is bug proof, but we haven't had bug problems doing it that way.  If that isn't sufficient I'd look for a bug proof container or make one.

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I like your response, Todd!

 

Whatever a "gourmet whatzis" says, if you enjoy the taste of really good, raw tomatoes -- as I do -- they taste much better when unrefrigerated.  MY taste buds tell me that -- and so does every farmer and produce supermarket employee.  (On all packages of fresh tomatoes at Wegman's Supermarkets, it says "do not refrigerate".)

 

It's a myth that it's a myth that RAW fresh tomatoes don't lose flavor by refrigerating. (If you must refrigerate, you can lessen the bad effect by storing them in ethylene absorbing plastic bags -- these can be purchased.)

 

Of course, if you're going to cook them, by all means refrigerate  (unless you're going to cook them right away).

 

Sharing them with insects isn't the worst idea  -- maybe a Deet insect spray -- used by some to prevent tick bites when hiking in the woods -- would kill them, and dissipate rapidly?  (Of course to use after removing the tomatoes from the site.)

 

I'll ask the advice of the produce manager in my local supermarket (the flagship Wegman's in Pittsford Plaza).

 

  --  Saul

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Saul,

 

 

It's a myth that it's a myth that RAW fresh tomatoes don't lose flavor by refrigerating.

 

^^^ Evidence please. Oh I forgot. You are Saul. You never give or pay heed to actual evidence. If you prefer the taste of your bug infested tomatoes, be my guest. Or go ahead, spray the Deet around your house. I won't even bother checking for you about the negative effects of Deet, since you don't care about evidence anyway... Why do you even ask?

 

--Dean

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Hi Dean.

 

The farmers, produce people and I beat whover you consider a "gourmet".  Chances are, your "gourmets" are NOT interested in serving raw tomatoes in their "masterpieces", but whole cooked meals.  (Raw vegetable-o-files aren't classified as "gourmets".)

 

I'm a CRONnie, not a "Food Network Star".

 

  -- Saul

 

:)xyz

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Dean, I read the article you linked to and it basically says that unripe tomatoes should be left out, only refrigerate fully ripe tomatoes.  And with that I sort of agree, though I would say only store unripe tomatoes.  Once fully ripe either eat or process them.  Further storage results in deterioration whether at room temperature or refrigerated.  Refrigeration may slow it, but better to use them once ripe.

 

Anyway I'd prefer a fresh salsa made with slightly overripe mealy refrigerated tomatoes than a beautiful tomato salad with deet dressing.

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Hi Todd!

 

You're absolutely right -- thanks for taking the trouble to debunk the misreading of the link that Dean had sent.

 

Absolutely!

 

I buy my tomatoes, freshly picked here in Rochester from the farmer.  I store them in the coolest part of my basement -- some ripen fully at different times.  I eat about 5 of the reddest -- raw -- each morning.  They are utterly delicious.  I buy a fresh batch every Thursday (from the farmer at the Rochester Public Market).   Neither he nor I use any pesticides.

 

I've had the bad luck that a population of small dark brown beetle-like insects has invaded my supply.

 

What I'm doing now:  I make sure that, among the 5 tomatoes that I bring upstairs are the ones with "holes" in them, which have a few insects in them.  I wash all thoroughly, removing any trace of soil and the insects.  I cut the tomatoes by parallel slices, place them in a large plate,  and eat them, together with some ChiChi brand mild tomato salsa.

 

I lose very little of my tomatoes this way -- I'm simply sharing them with the insects.

 

My newest thought: Spray the whole area with clorox (careful to not inhale any), before buying my next flat of tomatoes this Thursday -- but I'll discuss it with the produce people in my local Wegman's supermarket (the flagship Wegman's) first.

 

Raw tomatoes, when prefect, are utterly delicious -- and undoubtedly contain many goodies, most of which we don't know about.  Undoubtedly some are most available when the tomato is raw -- and we know that at least one, lycopene, is most available when it is cooked.

 

Nutritionally, I'm getting the best of both worlds, with the perfectly ripened ground grown absolutely fresh raw tomatoes, and the salsa.

 

  --  Saul

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I should note that the insects that are eating a small fraction of my tomatoes are weird.  I'm not even sure that they're insects.

They are about 1mm in length, and less than a third of that in width. Their colour is a very dark brown. I don't see any legs or antennae on them.  I've never been able to see them move -- even when I push them.  When I see them in a hole that they have made in a tomato they are likewise motionless -- even when I wash them down the drain in my sink.

 

They seem dead.  I don't know what they are.

 

  --  Saul

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Bugs on your tomatoes and actually eating them! Reminds me of an old farmer I knew years ago. He was an immigrant from Polan. He would always say "bug eat I eat, bug die I may die." Talk about folk wisdom!

 

As for room temp vs cold I am totally 100% with Saul!!! Hell any idiot (sorry Dean!) knows temperature greatly effects flavor. Dean it's the tongue man. Cold inhibits its sensitivity! The wine connesiours know this and that is why they drink it at room temperature and scorn cold wine. It's so obvious. Even ice cream tastes way better if you let it sit out for a while.

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Mike,

 

As for room temp vs cold I am totally 100% with Saul!!! Hell any idiot (sorry Dean!) knows temperature greatly effects flavor. Dean it's the tongue man. Cold inhibits its sensitivity! The wine connesiours know this and that is why they drink it at room temperature and scorn cold wine. It's so obvious. Even ice cream tastes way better if you let it sit out for a while. 

 

Does anyone actually read the friggin' stuff I post before blathering off at the mouth? It's clear Saul doesn't, as when above he needed Todd to (mis)interpret what the links I posted found - clearly having not read it himself. You obviously don't read stuff you're responding to either Mike, since if you had you'd realize first of all that I did not personally express my opinion one way or the other on the issue of tomato flavor after refrigeration. I don't personally claim to have a very discerning palate, or even to care all that much about the flavor of my food. I didn't even say whether I personally store ripe tomatoes in the fridge - which I do BTW.

 

What I did, and that you failed to recognize, was to point to links (here and here if you're too lazy to go back and find them) describing tomato experiments done with subjects who were either food connoisseurs (note correct spelling) or people with everyday palates. Neither group could reliably tell the difference between ripe tomatoes that had never been refrigerated and ripe tomatoes that been stored in the fridge for a couple days and then allowed to warm back up to room temperature before a double blind taste test. In fact, the subjects often preferred the tomatoes that had been refrigerated to the ones that had sat on the counter the whole time. The subjects, particularly the gourmands, were all shocked to discover that they couldn't distinguish between the two treatments, believing fervently in the same myth that you and Saul do - namely that refrigeration ruins the taste of ripe tomatoes, even once they've been rewarmed - two important qualifiers that all you guys blithely ignore.

 

It wouldn't be so bad if you folks decided not to read what I post and then remained silent about it. But you really make yourselves look silly when you claim both personal authority and a firm handle on the discussion, and then proceed to post statements that so obviously illustrate your blatant ignorance of both the available evidence and what has come before in the conversation.

 

I'm sure the two of you would have also been among the ignorant folks of Europe and the earlier American colonies who blindly believed the myth that tomatoes were poisonous for 200 years based on someone else's word, misconstrual of the evidence and your own intuitions.

 

Idiot indeed...

 

--Dean

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But Dean my point was not regarding storage it was regarding temperature of food. Freezing cold food effects taste buds. That's all. I don't need science to tell me what is subjectively obvious. You and I know these studies are often junk science anyways. So whether or not tomatoes are stored in the refrigerator is beside the point.

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Mike,

But Dean my point was not regarding storage it was regarding temperature of food. Freezing cold food effects taste buds. That's all. I don't need science to tell me what is subjectively obvious.

 

Your observation that food tastes different when eaten cold may indeed be true, but I hope you realize it is a total non-sequitur relative to this conversation, at least as far as I can tell. Although who knows, given the comedy of ignorance that has characterized this thread, you may be right in thinking you are agreeing with Saul, i.e. both of you may be misinterpreting me (or more importantly, the experiments I pointed to) to be saying that cold tomatoes taste as good as warm tomatoes. 

 

When you said effectively "any idiot knows tomatoes taste better when warm", you might as well have said "tomatoes taste better at low altitudes", which is probably equally true [1], but also quite irrelevant to the conversation, which you will recall (if you've actually read it) began when I suggested Saul might consider storing his ripe tomatoes in the fridge to protect them from the insects in his house, but never implying he should eat them directly from the fridge, i.e. while still cold.

 

--Dean

 

-----------

[1] Aviat Space Environ Med. 1997 Dec;68(12):1123-8.

High altitude effects on human taste intensity and hedonics.
Singh SB1, Sharma A, Yadav DK, Verma SS, Srivastava DN, Sharma KN, Selvamurthy W.
Author information
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
The study was conducted on human volunteers taken to 3500 m altitude for a period of 3 wk.
METHODS:
Subjects rated four compounds representing sweet, salty, sour and bitter taste, and the hedonic matrix in terms of taste threshold, taste intensity, and taste hedonicity were recorded using category scale. Blood sugar levels were estimated weekly.
RESULTS:
An increase in the taste thresholds for glucose and sodium chloride was shown while quinine sulphate and citric acid thresholds recorded a decrease. The taste intensity ratings showed a linear relationship with increasing logarithmic molar concentrations of each solution, as compared with taste hedonicity which showed an inverted 'U' type function. The blood picture did not reveal any change in the blood sugar level. All the parameters recorded at high altitude (HA) showed a tendency to return to basal values after reinduction to sea level.
CONCLUSION:
The study suggests that HA hypoxic stress brings about changes in the hedonic responses, primarily an increased palatibility for sweetness; we speculate that the mechanism may be anorexia-linked nutritional stress.

PMID: 9408563

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Dean I didn't bother with the discussion of rewarming in the stories because if you had bothered to read my previous post you would have seen I had already addressed that with the statements:

 

I don't like cold fresh tomatoes for some purposes like salads, though allowed to warm to room temperature the impact is modest.   But for cooked/processed use like sauces I find the impact of refrigeration is minimal.

 

We usually have a dozen tomato plants of salad/sandwich varieties that we mainly eat fresh.  When they outpace us we will refrigerate them and use them for cooking though our preferred sauce tomatoes are Italian heirloom paste varieties.  We only grow a half dozen of these as they are determinate types meaning they tend to produce one big flush instead of continuously producing.

 

And we grow a dozen or so plants of smaller grape and cherry varieties.  These are the most reliably productive plants least affected by drought, drenching rains, pests or other issues and they tend to start producing earlier and most years we can keep a couple going until Christmas in our hoop house - not bad for fresh tomatoes in Chicago.  And they dry well.  Mostly we dehydrate them to a state like moist raisins and then freeze them in zip lock bags.  These are almost better than fresh as dehydrating them intensifies their flavor and their texture works great in both salads and most any cooked dish.  With jarred paste tomatoes and a chest freezer full of dried cherry tomatoes we have little need to ever buy any tomatoes.

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Hi Dean!

 

I, and I think everyone else on the Forums, greatly appreciate your extensive contributions to the Forums; without your extensive contributions, I think that the Forums would have collapsed from lack of use.

 

(Now, fortunately, IMO they have become active enough that we can assume that they will survive :)xyz.)

 

I do have some additional information about the troublesome insects:  I observed them carefully, in one of the "holes" in one of the tomatoes:  They do have legs, antennae and, though they don't move quickly, they do move at a (slower than) snail's pace.  So they are adult insects (I think), not larvae or pupae.

 

Again, they are dark brown, and about one mm long, and about 1/3 mm wide.

 

At the suggestion of a produce employee at my supermarket,  I placed the tomatoes that weren't infected in an uninfected container on an elevated area in my basement -- this worked for a few days; but on the third day, there were holes and insects -- so there seems to be some way for them to traverse distances and get to higher heights.  (Possibly, the insects with legs are larvae, the ones that look dead are pupae and there is some briefly living adult variety that can fly?)

 

I then removed the uninfected remaining 5 tomatoes, washed them and stored them in a bowl on my kitchen table -- that was three days ago.

 

They're fine.  I'll eat them before going to work out in my gym.

 

I'll be buying another box of the delicious tomatoes tomorrow, freshly picked by the farmer at the Rochester Public Market.  I'll probably simply leave the box on the kitchen table; I suspect that that should be fine.  (I'll show the farmer the 2 boxes with some of the dead insects in them; he may recognize them.  I might do the same with a produce person in my supermarket.  The ultimate way to identify them:  There is an organisation called the Cornell Cooperative which is expert on these things -- but I think that they are about half an hour's drive away -- so I'll call them first.)

 

About the argument of fresh versus refrigerated tomatoes:  I agree that, if used in a salad with other vegetables, it probably would be difficult, if not impossible, to taste a difference -- and of course I love salads.  (Dean, your references discuss tomatoes used in salads.)

 

But with such fresh, perfectly ready to eat (I eat the reddest ones each morning -- giving the pinker ones time to ripen), flavourful tomatoes, I want to eat them on their own -- together with some salsa.

 

:)xyz

 

 --  Saul

 

(P.S.:  If anyone has any ideas on about the mysterious insects -- including maybe how to get rid of them -- please post!)

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Todd,

 

I too grow my own tomatoes, all grape, cherry and pare-shaped variety. I find the smaller ones last longer, and provide a more steady stream of delicious tomatoes during the growing season. I've been harvesting about a pint per day and sharing them with my family for the last week, when they really started to ripen. You may be amused by this.  I harvested extremely green cherry/grape tomatoes just before our first frost last fall, in the middle of November. Despite their dark greenness, they continued ripening in my 65 deg basement, and I enjoyed tasty raw homegrown tomatoes right up until Christmas, as documented here.

 

--Dean

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Hi ALL!

 

Problem SOLVED!

 

I've just returned from my usual Thursday morning trip to the Rochester Public Market, returning the boxes that had some of the insect bodies in them, and showed it to the farmer that I buy from -- he immediately identified the "insects" -- they're not insects at all -- they're mouse shit!  (This was immediately confirmed by several other produce people.)

 

In fact, there HAD been a mouse in our house that my cat hadn't caught, which mysteriously disappeared.

 

The produce people say:  Put a mouse trap with peanut butter on it, against the wall where I usually store my tomatoes.

 

I'll do that -- and when the mouse is caught, I'll set another trap, to see if it catches any more mice.

 

Until I'm sure that all the mice are eliminated, I'll keep my tomatoes on the kitchen table, upstairs.

 

(I just bought a new just-picked 12lb box of the delicious tomatoes for $15 from the usual farmer; it's on the kitchen table.  I'll eat some, and some salsa, before working out in on an Elliptical in my gym.)

 

:angry: ^_^ :)xyz

 

  -- Saul 

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Saul,

 

Problem SOLVED!

 
... showed it to the farmer that I buy from -- he immediately identified the "insects" -- they're not insects at all -- they're mouse shit!  (This was immediately confirmed by several other produce people.)

 

Glad you solved your tomato mystery - kind of a gross revelation that the 'bugs' were actually mouse excrement. I hesitate to point out the obvious, but what about what you said yesterday:

 

I observed them carefully, in one of the "holes" in one of the tomatoes:  They do have legs, antennae and, though they don't move quickly, they do move at a (slower than) snail's pace.  So they are adult insects (I think), not larvae or pupae.

 
Again, they are dark brown, and about one mm long, and about 1/3 mm wide.

 

That last description sounds like mouse sh*t, but no mouse sh*t I've ever seen has legs, antennae, and move around under its own power, not even "slower than a snail's pace". Another crazy fantasy / hallucination perhaps? ☺

 

The produce people say:  Put a mouse trap with peanut butter on it, against the wall where I usually store my tomatoes.

I'll do that -- and when the mouse is caught, I'll set another trap, to see if it catches any more mice.

 

Please tell me you are using a no-kill mouse trap. They are inexpensive, and there is no reason to needlessly take the lives of innocent little mice simply trying to make their way through life. I sometimes get mice in my basement kitchen too, and use this $3.99 no-kill mouse trap (also available at most hardware stores) to capture them:

 

is95T6I.png

 

I then release them near a wooded area about ½ mile from my house (when out on one of my daily walks), to make sure they don't return. I've caught and released at least 10 mice this way over the last 6 or 8 years. The trap works really well. Heck, if you send me your address I'll order one and have it shipped to you if you'll promise to use it.

 

--Dean

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