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
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