Currently Craving

✴︎

Currently Craving ✴︎

crav·ing

noun: a powerful desire for something.

I’m always craving my next meal, reading about food or watching I’m a fan of Top Chef and the Great British Baking show (the Mary Barry years). Books written by chefs are my jam, I buy wines based on the label, have purchased food only for it's packaging and I’ve filled my home with food and beverage advertising memorabilia. I’m here to consume food using every one of my senses.

This is where you will find everything I’m cooking up and what I’m craving next.

Follow me in real time on Instagram

Craving:
Tomato Girl Summer

Let’s talk about Tomato Girl Summer. The trend that everyone is talking about is not about the tomato per se but inspired by the locations that obsess the tomato like the coastal cities of Italy & Spain. Oh, and if you’re like me, at least 2 people you know jetted off to Europe this summer and you’re stuck home craving a piece of that out of office tomato pie. I bet your summer IG or TikTok feeds are full of beautiful pictures of tomato girl summer fashion. Think headscarves, retro sunnies, florals and lots of tan and white. For us print obsessed people we are also being bombarded with tomato prints. Enter MY tomato girl summer.

I should’ve seen tomatoes coming after European travel JUST opened up for travel again after the covid vaccine release, or even an aftereffect of lockdown when everyone started to garden. I seriously underestimated the power of the beast.

Before I continue, I must admit something to you dear reader. I’m not a big fan of tomatoes in my food. Honestly, I’m scarred from canned tomatoes growing up…and who wants to risk a fresh tomato after that, didn’t the canned ones used to be fresh once after all?

I always remove tomatoes from burgers, sandwiches and salads to this day. I don’t swear off tomatoes entirely though. In my heart of hearts pasta and red sauce are the perfect combo. I recently went on a personal journey to find the best grocery store jar of red sauce available to me in the desert. Rao’s sauce is the winner by a desert mile. Red sauce is also my preferred sauce on my pizzas. And if I love any food passionately it’s pizza. Growing up we ate it every Saturday night and if I was only allowed to eat one food for the rest of my life, I would choose pizza. So it’s a balance…no tomatoes on their own, but give me their sauce!

August 2, 2023

Back to tomatoes. They are EVERYWHERE I turn. Tomato prints on pottery, scarves, clothing, handbags and art for your home. You name it, it’s out there. And TBH I’m falling for its spell. I am over here contemplating these pieces like they are a vegetable (I stand by that) that I fiercely love like corn or potatoes. There is something about the striking quality of the range of shapes, sizes and colors they come in. I feel faint at the sight of a large multi-colored heirloom tomato.

Tomatoes have been a part of pop culture long before we entered Tomato Girl Summer. Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Full stop. Give me a kid that doesn’t eat that sauce with everything? Andy Warhol was famous for his Campbell’s Soup Can series, and what’s more iconic than a can of Campbells Tomato Soup? Also, the onslaught of Rotten Tomatoes in 1998 and their “tomatometer” and whether the movie is “certified fresh” or “rotten”. Let us not forget the tomato in cinema and television: Pulp Fiction, The Simpsons, Fried Green Tomatoes, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, or a deep cut for my Bravo fans Vanderpump Rules “it’s not about the pasta!”.

So, feast your eyes on my tomato girl summer cravings.