So I guess it was bound to happen. I was doing my best to go through all the tomatoes that were left for me by my parents in this bag, but there are so many goddamn tomatoes! I tried to be disciplined, cutting them up for salads I bring to work and sometimes having them with my egg sandwiches, but I can't just eat all of them in one fell swoop.
Reading all the information I could find online about it, I knew it was a matter of time before the tomatoes, even though the process slows because they're in the refrigerator, would go bad. I was just hoping for some dead giveaways and praying that I could eat tomatoes that are giving some not-so definitive signs that they're getting rotten.
I think I reached a turning point last (Monday) night. One of the big signs of bad tomatoes is seeing juice underneath them. Well, I was picking through some of the big tomatoes to put on my salad and my Subway footlong, and when I picked up one of them, I saw this, uh, shitstain in the bottom of the paper bag. It felt soft all around, and I know that I have eaten tomatoes similarly soft, but the juice emanating from it and reaching the bag was enough for me; into the trash it went.
I then started feeling around the other tomatoes that have been in the bag for a few weeks now. Some of them were just oozing, more slime than tomatoes; they went. Some of them were OK but left wet spots in the bag; they went as well. Maybe I was overreacting, but once I got to deciding to chuck the first tomatoes I saw, it got much easier to throw away many, many more. In fact, I think I used the four tomatoes I think are still (relatively?) good. There may be, uh, two dozen cherry tomatoes of varying degress of health and aesthetic pleasantness and a dozen big tomatoes left in the bag, all of which have diseases that means, at best, they're partially edible. Hell, if I look in the bag tomorrow I might decide to throw them all away.
That triggered a fear of the tomatoes that are supposed to follow the ones in the fridge, the ones I have kept on the kitchen counter. I kept them there partially to let them ripen and partially because I read that it's better to keep them in room temperature than to store them, but mostly I left them there because I had no room in the bag with all the tomatoes in the fridge. That's not an issue now, so I took some tomatoes downstairs to wash them (something I have found out I should not do -- too late). But when I took them out of the container they were in, I saw that some of them -- if not a lot of them -- had mold on them. Now that's a sign I shouldn't eat those tomatoes. So right now I have, like, two or three dozen tomatoes I have to throw away tomorrow. What a goddamn waste.
I'm now more worried than ever about the tomatoes I washed downstairs. One site seems to say that if tomatoes have been in the vicinity of a tomato with mold, all those tomatoes have to be thrown away, too. You've got to be fucking kidding me!
I lament all the bad food I have to throw away. Food waste is a huge cultural issue, and I just did it with impunity. And yet, because I've already done it, and I'm doing it for the sake of my health, I'm not dejected or hating myself. I just have ... a lot of shit I have to throw away.
But still, such a damn waste.
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