Peeling Tomatoes

Hot summer days remind me of staying at my Grandmother Cramer's house.
By the time I was ten, she was 76. Aunt Elizabeth lived with her in the house on Piedmont Road in Charleston and they took care of each other. In the summer, Aunt Elizabeth liked to "get away" - to travel and visit friends. But how could she leave Grandmother all by herself?

The solution - have me stay with her. Grandmother and I loved each other and so this worked out really well. I didn't know that I was supposed to be taking care of her. She and I both thought that she was taking care of me.

She entertained me with long stories about our family and about what things were like when she was a young girl. We fixed meals together and she let me do some of the cooking.

One thing she showed me was how to peel tomatoes. I walked across the street to a tiny grocery store and got big fresh tomatoes. Grandmother did not believe in eating the tomato peel so each tomato had to be peeled. If the tomato was perfectly ripe the skin would come right off with a little help from a short sharp knife.

If the peel was too tight, here's what we did. First we lit one of the front burners on her old gas stove with a long wooden match. The matches were kept in a tin box on the wall beside the stove. I always had to scrape the match over and over before it lit - Grandmother could always light it on the first swipe. With the lit match in one hand held over the burner you turned the knob to open the gas with the other hand and with a whoosh the fire would flare up. Then you stuck a fork in the tomato and held it close to (but NOT in) the flame until the skin began to pucker and crack. You could hear the skin pop. If you got it too close the skin would turn black. When one side was loose you turned the tomato to get the other side. When the skin seemed loose all around the tomato was ready to peel. If you performed this operation correctly the skin basically fell right off.
If you didn't get the tomato balanced on the fork exactly right the whole tomato basically fell off.
In the fire. Ooops.
So that's how I learned to peel tomatoes.