Nepal: Tomato consumption and funny facts
Today I would like to say few words about funny fact we have here.
Our attitude towards tomato
For us it’s normal to eat raw tomato. We make salad of it. And some of us, (like my father) like it so much that we eat it plainly. I mean that when my dad is hungry we can just take a bowl of tomato and put on the table next to the computer where he works. He would eat them with salt (not cut).
I don’t know how it is for you and all the ‘English talkers’ but for us it’s totally normal. My father said that in his childhood he had a garden in which grow tomato. You know, this sweet juicy one. In the morning he would just pick one and eat. He got used to it.
Price and availableness
So as our father is a big tomato eater we always need them at home. We buy them on street taking 1 or 2 kg at once. Now there is no tomato season in Nepal and usually the price changes from 40Rs to 110Rs (37 cents to 1$). Like now there are everywhere mostly yellow or even rotten, with 80Rs for kg. It is a big price as for yellow, not sweet, often not tasty tomato. But we still try to take what’s possible meaning red, lightly soft, in a small basket of colorful tomato. And sometimes, if lucky we find someone with a lot of red pieces and small price but sometimes we can menage to get only half kg of not really good ones.
But enough about our miseries, I still haven’t mentioned the fact which is best part of the story.
You already know how we use them. (Of course beside this we add them to sauces like bolognese). So imagine a small basket such tomato and a group of Nepali women, picking up few pieces each. Tomato like this is totally fine for them. And the fact that they pick just few pieces.
Nepali way of using tomato
We had few situations when seller laughed or giggled when we bought few kg of tomato. It’s quite unusual for them. And here is why. They don’t need red or even very good ones because they use it only for sauce. Underlining the phrase ‘only for sauce’. Eating it only cooked.
Nepali attitude towards tomato
And once more; they don’t eat it raw. No salad, no plain. So when some Nepali seas us eating one we can expect a big eyes and a surprise on their face. Sometimes even a tongue out as for showing their dislikeness for the taste of this delicious vegetables. 🙂 It’s always so funny.
The reason why they don’t like, don’t want to eat it, beside simple ‘not tasty’, can be in their believe to being of it not healthy, not good for some of the body’s functions. We don’t believe that, always had eaten them and we always have been fine. And we love their taste.
Few times I had eaten a tomato just for show up and couldn’t believe that someone doesn’t like the taste. But now I think that it can be simply because of the region where tomato aren’t so good.
So the whole thing is about the dislikeness for them and the situations we had. The fact is quite interesting, funny for me, so I had to write about it and save in the history.
