Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Battle Between Me & The Tomato


Tomatoes. I hate tomatoes. At least that’s something I would say when I was a kid. My parents grew organic tomatoes in the backyard and I remember during harvest time having to go through buckets full and bagging them to store in the freezer for winter months. I never appreciated them because they just plain didn’t taste good to me, I’d have the occasional slice of tomato in my burger but that was the extent of it.
  
One day, I saw the inevitable, I witnessed a girl in one of my classes eating a tomato like it was an apple, and as gross as it looked, there was something about it that made me want to eat it too. I envied her. I wanted to be able to eat a tomato and actually enjoy it as if it were an apple, so I set sail on this journey of battles between my mind and my taste buds.

I started with pouring salt on the large tomatoes in my mom’s fridge, because salt makes everything taste better, right? FAIL. I didn’t taste another tomato for a couple of years. When I moved to California several years ago, I decided to battle it out again, this time I bought a different kind of tomato, a tomato on the vine.  To my surprise, it didn’t make me want to throw up. I started drenching it with lemon pepper dressings and tossing them in my salads to build up to the one day when I would straight eat it like an apple. I began packing a single tomato in my lunch for work and then the day came, when I had no dressing and no utensils and I was forced to take that long-awaited yet dreaded bite. My teeth sunk into the thin skin of the tomato, pierced the slightly mushy first layer and made it all the way to the seeds and back out and it was so refreshing I couldn’t believe it. Could this be the day? Was someone looking at me and envying that they could bite into a tomato like an apple? I felt victorious. I did it. I won the battle between my mind’s perception and my taste buds. Of course, from this day forward, I ventured into eating all kinds of tomatoes: cherry, grape and even heirloom (which are SO good by the way). 


In my young adult years, I wish I would have appreciated the abundance of organic tomatoes from my parents’ garden. Now, I have to spend a little more money to get those kinds of tomatoes. I’m not sure if I was just too closed-minded or perhaps I just gave up too easily back then. Just because something tastes bad once or twice, or even the next couple of times, doesn’t mean that I will never like it. I know as you get older, sometimes your taste buds change, so maybe the tomato never changed, maybe I did. Whatever it was, I gave it another chance, I tried different kinds, and I prepared them in salads, pastas and even ate them by themselves. I didn’t give up on them. Now I can honestly and proudly say I LOVE eating tomatoes.

There’s always a lot of talk about things you should “give up” and get rid of for the new year. My question is, “What are you willing to NOT give up on?” A friendship? A love relationship? A healthy life? My hope is that you would appreciate the abundance that IS in your life rather than focusing on all the bad and convincing yourself that bad will be bad all the time. It may take a little change or a lot of change, but time and persistence and most of all PATIENCE are required.  So go out there, and eat some tomatoes! You might be surprised that this time around, it won’t make you want to throw up. ;D

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

ANNA + ANDREW: SANTA CLARA WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY-FREEDOM HALL & GARDENS


We met Anna and Andrew late in wedding season, but they were a beautiful surprise to end 2012. This San Francisco couple were a bit shy in front of the camera, they even joked about practicing their posing techniques before their engagement session, but we quickly learned that all we needed to do was put them in front of each other and the chemistry was amazing! From that chilly day on Potrero Hill to the beautiful union at the Freedom Hall & Gardens, you probably couldn't ever tell that they were camera shy at all. In fact, the expressions on Andrew's face when he first laid eyes on his bride coming down the aisle and the couple with their moms are more than we could have ever hoped to capture! Congrats Anna and Andrew!