Tackling (Not So) Tough IssuesWe deal with some pretty heavy stuff around here.
I feel guilty, sometimes, that my space in Wednesday’s paper is often filled with hard lessons and tough subjects.
So today, well, is not that. It’s also not about sports, but sometimes you have to deal with what is in front of you.
There are a couple of serious wrongs being perpetrated in our culture and society and it takes guys like me to stand up and correct these injustices.
For example… are tomatoes fruits or vegetables?
I found a website that defines the difference this way: “a fruit is a seed-bearing structure that develops from the ovary of a flowering plant, whereas vegetables are all other plant parts, such as roots, leaves and stems. This includes such botanical fruits as eggplants, bell peppers and tomatoes.”
OK, so what about tomatoes?
We talk about them like a veggie, we treat them like a veggie, but they have seeds and so they are fruit.
No…that’s crazy! They are a vegetable!
Can we create “The Tomato Exception”? We could say tomatoes don’t follow the rules but are, in-fact, a vegetable. I’d ask Congress to help with this, but, ya know.
So then I got into a Twitter discussion (with someone who turned out to be from London) about the use of fruit on pizza—specifically pineapple.
I love pineapple. The taste of pineapple at the end of a good meal just feels right.
But pineapple is a fruit, and fruit does not belong on pizza.
Oh I hear you out there bellowing across the land—you chicken-barbecue-and-pineapple ordering consumer. But as a bearer of truth, I am sad to inform you that what you have been ordering and eating all this time is not pizza no matter what the place you get it from calls it.
I don’t know what it is exactly, but it is not pizza.
In my discussion with the “bloke” from across the pond, he made the point that “you eat pizza with tomato sauce, and tomatoes are fruit, so virtually everyone eats pizza with fruit on it.”
That’s fine on some botanist’s lab notes, but that is not how it works in real life.
Tomatoes are vegetables in all reality.
My adversary went on to say “What about fruit in salsa? Don’t you eat fruit in salsa like everyone else?”
I responded with “Bite your tongue, man!”
The presence of fruit then changes this concoction from salsa to fruit dip. Yes, you can put a chip in it if you choose. You can add anything you want to it if it floats your boat, but the term “peach salsa” is an impossibility. Peaches can’t be in salsa in the same way a stripe on a horse doesn’t make it a zebra.
You should know that this person I was sparring with on social media was quite serious in his responses to me, until he realized that I was just trying to have some fun. Once he realize that, the tenor of the conversation became quite humorous and we wished each other Merry Christmas.
I have no doubt he will spend his New Year’s Eve surrounded by friends and family and welcoming in the new year a few hours before we all do.
I also have no doubt that he will be dipping a chip into something fruity that he calls “salsa,” which is ridiculous.
But, it’s the holidays, so in the name of peace on earth…do whatever you want – just know that you are wrong.
