“Mama, I’ve got some kind of rash!” Scene: it is 2:00 a.m., I am ten years old, and I have broken out in the most magnificent case of hives that has been seen in my family for many a year. My mother helped me cover just about every inch of me with soda/water paste and calamine lotion, and eventually the blazing rough landscape of my skin began to cool. I went to sleep swaddled in medicinal goop.

It turns out that the hives were my skinny little frame calling attention to the fact that I had been subsisting through the hottest part of the summer on little more than tomatoes and Pepsi. Enough was enough.

Sometimes a negative food experience such as this will put me off the offending food indefinitely. Cases in point: falling victim to a stomach virus right after eating copious amounts of carrot salad, and for some ridiculous reason deciding to eat sardines for a 4:00 a.m. breakfast when on my way to a horse show, in which I would be riding and jumping fences all day long; after, of course, a long drive on narrow winding roads.  

But I still love tomatoes, and that includes the taste and the smell. When I was growing up, we always had them in the garden, and for many years in Craig my family and I had indoor window boxes growing them in miniature. Indoors or out, and I have always loved grazing and trimming the vines for a well-rounded sensory experience. Slice your tomatoes up for your sandwiches and salads or eat them whole; it’s all fine if you add plenty of salt. One thing you should never, ever do, though, is put sugar on tomatoes. Ketchup, therefore, is an abomination. Don’t talk to me about ketchup.

But here’s the strange part: tomatoes are part of the nightshade family, and for many years in the time and place of my grandparents’ formative years they were considered poisonous. People grew them for pretty and referred to them, for reasons that I didn’t know about until just now, as “love apples.” I’ve always wondered who in my family tried them first. Whoever it was, I am most grateful.

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For your further edification:

Nutritious Nightshade Plants: Tomatoes, Potatoes, and More (healthline.com)

Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladonna) – Woodland Trust

Why is a tomato called a ‘love apple’? (funtrivia.com)