Something Is Very, Very Wrong With Me
A couple of years ago, you would not have been able to get me to voluntarily buy or eat a tomato for any reason short of impending apocalypse. As my Brit friend and fellow English teacher in Japan used to say, there was a level of hungry that was 'tomato hungry" which was how famished he'd have to be before he'd eat a piece of tomato. I've long felt pretty much the same way. On my honeymoon as the waitress cleared our dishes one lunch, she observed that no tomatoes had been consumed on both my bride's and my salads. This resulted in the immortal phrase, "Neither one of yeez likes damadahs then." (This was in St. John, NB though you may want to place the accent more Joisey-like.)
The past, though, is always prologue. A couple of days ago, I sat at the kitchen table having a lively time with my visitor who had acquired a nice block of mozzarella for snacking purposes. I had also acquired a nice little Costco pack of Roma tomatoes (on the vine) for use in a dish I'll make in a day or so. I also had, in the kitchen, as I hadn't gotten to point of potting them, several young basil plants. You see where this is going, don't you? You'd be right.
I sliced the tomato to about mousepad thickness (probably should have done this on the bias but didn't think of it at the time), ground some smoked sea salt on the rounds, laid a hunk of the mozzarell' on each slice and a basil leaf atop that. Just amazingly delicious. Which is something you probably already know and is no surprise. But brother Lycurgus is reading this with his jaw dropped at least two notches. It's possible we may be in an alternate universe as what I described above would never have happened in the not-too-distant past on Normal Earth. Strange Earth has good tomatoes!