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This year, with the big tomato scare we have not been eating any tomatoes. My bother and his wife think we are foolish. However with 25 lymph glands removed I do not take any unnecessary chances on inviting illness of any kind into my life.
With that in mind it was quite awhile until we had any tomatoes in 2008 until the other day when a few of our big boys and roma tomatoes turned red. What a flavorful treat and quickly they were gone.
The tomato scare was calming down and the FDA was now saying they thought it was the salsa in the Mexican restaurants or perhaps the cilantro that was the problem and when my brother, his wife, Carl and I were off on a day trip I mentioned this when we started to stop to eat and Barbara suggested a Mexican restaurant. Again my brother rolled his eyes and we settled on another place.
However, when we stopped at a supermarket, I did purchase two large lovely tomatoes and washed the heck out of them upon returning home. I sliced one up and they were picture perfect. However, where had the entire flavor gone?
I got to thinking about that and thought perhaps that is the reason why so much processed food or restaurant food is called “zesty” this or that. There is no flavor left in today’s produce because it is picked prior to ripening, gassed to ripen, shipped, stored or has whatever is done to it including having the flavor hybrid-ed out of it.
Not only is fresh, garden produced vegetables usually hand picked when you want to eat them, they are usually grown in safe soil, are grown for our own consumption, but they are chuck full of vitamins, fiber, minerals, antioxidants and flavor!
When we can, freeze or preserve, prepare or store our own home grown garden produce we can do it correctly to preserve all these vitamins, fiber, minerals, antioxidants and flavor!
Fruits and vegetables are 80% water and when you get to eat then you should be eating them fresh because vitamins like vitamin C and B vitamins (like thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, and folate are water soluble so if you can’t get to eat them fresh or don’t want to eat them fresh or raw, then steam them because that keeps you from losing a lot of the vitamins that are leached out when you simply boil them. Steamed vegetables are hot, crisp, retain more of the flavor and retain their color unlike boiled vegetables.
Fruits and vegetables are alive when you harvest them in your garden and tomatoes especially are loaded with lycopene which gives tomatoes, red grapefruits, guavas and watermelon their rich red color. Storing these vegetables at room temperature gain as much as 40% more lycopene than those stored in a cooler or refrigerator and they have much more flavor. The exception to this rule are tomatoes which, when processed, have more lycopene.
When we buy melons we buy them from farmers who have just picked them that day we let them sit out on the counter for about 5 days and they load up with more flavor and lycopene.
Lycopene, though not an essential nutients for humans is an important part of a food diet because it transported by our blood to important lipoproteins and accumulates in the liver, adrenal glands and testes and of all the cartanoids, lycopene is considered the most antitoxident in the prevention of certain cancers including prostate cancer.
So not only is creating a vegetable garden a good hobby, it will give you more flavorful and basically healthier food.
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Author Bio Box: Arlene Wright Correll
 For more gardening or cooking information click http://www.learn-america.com/
To see Arlene’s Gardens and to read her gardening diaries and to take a walk through her pictorial garden or click on Arlene’s Books where you can download or buy her gardening & cook books, including her new book, “The ABC’s of Wine and Beer Making”. Many of her articles written for Greenthumbarticles have paintings she has created of the subject and they can be seen at her “How to Do It” site. Remember to check out her artwork, especially of her fruits and vegetables. Arlene says, “All my royalties from the sale of my books go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I thank you for visiting my site.”
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