I've eaten a lot of tomatoes in my time. Some of them have been good, some of them have been bad. But I've never stopped mid-bite, sighed, and wished that a tomato were more robust. But as the Marc notes, these days, robust actually makes a lot of sense as an adjective:Safeway is running ads declaring that their tomatoes are “robust,” a word that makes me think of strength and resilience, two qualities that should have nothing to do with burstingly juicy red orbs. These characteristics, however, are ridiculously common in tomatoes sold in the United States. Tomatoes need to be robust in order to make the long journeys required for year-round, nationwide availability, and so most are picked when green (and rock hard), put into storage, and when needed, gassed to change their color to something close to red.Yum! Unfortunately, even robust tomatoes aren't immune to salmonella, and so now we can't buy tomatoes at all. Still, like Marc, I'm waiting for that point in the summer when tomatoes become ridiculously un-robust, when you can barely get them home from the market without bruising them, and it's all worth it because they're ridiculously delicious.
