When: April 6
Fresh Tomato Day on April 6th celebrates the tomato in its peak state — vine-ripened, sun-warmed, eaten with nothing more than salt. It's a reminder that the tomato most people eat most of the time bears little resemblance to what a tomato can actually taste like, and a prompt to seek out the real thing.
A ripe tomato picked off the vine and eaten warm is one of the most intensely flavored foods in existence — commercial tomatoes are bred for shelf life and uniformity, sacrificing most of that flavor in the process.
The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) was domesticated in Mexico from a small, cherry-sized wild species and was cultivated by Aztec and other Mesoamerican civilizations long before European contact. Spanish colonizers brought it to Europe in the 16th century, where it was treated with deep suspicion for two centuries — the tomato belongs to the nightshade family (along with potatoes, peppers, and eggplant), and aristocrats who ate from pewter plates suffered lead poisoning when acidic tomatoes leached the metal. The tomato was blamed rather than the plates. Widespread European acceptance of the tomato as food came in the 18th century, first in southern Europe (Spain, Italy, southern France) and more slowly in the north. Italy's adoption was so complete that it's now impossible to imagine Italian cuisine without tomatoes — yet tomato-based pasta sauces, pizza marinara, and caprese salad are all less than 300 years old. In North America, Thomas Jefferson grew tomatoes at Monticello and...