Virgins of Del Monte (Tomatoes)

Member Name: mpafp

Product:	Tomatoes
Date:	04/02/02 (147 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Juiced, it will cure New Year's Day Blues, May enable you to explore and deepen your relationship with your grandfather, Used to have a cool name

Disadvantages: May not taste great

If you read the personal profile of my good friend clissoldjones, you will see that he claims, at least momentarily:

‘when I eat a tomato I become....tomato man!!’

You can take my word for it that he does not, but nevertheless it was a good quotation.

My personal view on tomatoes has, throughout my life, been variable to say the least. I have gone from loving them to hating them, according to my mother (mothers, by the way, are a good, if not always reliable source of such things. Grandmothers more so) and at the moment I am learning to tolerate them.
Everyone knows that tomatoes are fruit, except stupid people like toby113, but in the fruit wars they come nowhere near lemons. However, they do have enormous potential:

Things you can do with a tomato:
***************************

1. Throw it at Shakespearean actors, if ever you get transported back in time.
2. Throw it at the wall and smile as you observe the effects. (When owner of said wall complains, say it is art, and offer to sell it to them for £250,000.57)
3. Juice it (more to be said later)
4. Squish it onto your nose if you are a cheapskate and don’t want to buy a plastic one on Red Nose Day.
5. If it is one of those little tomatoes, throw it into the air and catch it in your mouth. This will impress girls at parties.
6. Use it to plug up your ears when in the same room as a French person/dog.
7. Erm…eat it (this is a last resort and not as much fun).

Last time I went around to my grandfathers’ house he gave me some Del Monte tomato juice. He was under the impression that Del Monte was some exotic region, and that the juice had been recently squeezed by purest virgins and quickly transported to Sainsbury’s, but nevertheless it tasted quite good, and in fact it was New Year’s Day and I got the impression that the stuff was reasoning with my stomach and slapping it into shape
after the excesses of the previous night. As if reading my mind, he said, with a twinkle in his eye, that he had often asked for a tomato juice from the barman back in India (where he spent his youth) after a particulary wild night/morning.

My grandfather is quite a quiet, conservative man, and I was shocked by the revelation that he might have been a wild teenager at some point. Furthermore, when my mother revealed to him that I had only got back at 4.30 that morning, he shrugged his shoulders, pouted and said ‘Not bad…for his age.’

I had about 10 glasses of tomato juice that day, and felt much better for it. More importantly, however, I discovered a different, wilder side to my grandfather which he will probably not reveal again to me for some time. And it is all thanks to tomatoes, and those nice virgins in Del Monte.

By the way, according to my sources (clissoldjones in fact), the tomato used to be called the ‘Blood-apple’. How cool is that?

Summary: