Tomatoes are up there among my favourite foods. Now there is a new reason to like them: apparently they are so Christian that one Muslim group has ordered its followers not to eat them. You can see why from the picture above with the blatant Maltese Cross staring out at us. H/T to William Oddie for this completely bizarre story.
Actually I'm not brilliant at eating vegetables and fruit but I do like tomatoes, whether sliced into a salad with oil and vinegar, spread in paste upon a pizza base (preferably without rubbery mozzarella) or taken from a tin to make spaghetti amatriciana or something similar. (BTW I did Biology A-level and I do know that the tomato is a fruit, so no pedantic comments on that subject please.) They are also very good sliced up in a sandwich with Wiltshire ham from the Sainsbury's deli counter. I am delighted to know that my tomato consumption now counts as an act of Christian witness.
The Lord is good to me. Da Dum DUM(I have a good memory and will never forget the songs we used to sing at Mass at the Seminary.)
His light will shine on me. Da Dum DUM
When city lights dim my eyes...
This new development launches Bara Brith into the Crusades. Her entirely peaceful posts on gardening take on a whole new politico-religious significance. Behold! She is launching tomatoes on an unsuspecting world:
Mind you, the poor Salafists are going to be hard put to avoid crosses in everyday objects. Look at that door panel! Aaaargh, don't drive through that X-roads! "Home Sweet Home"? - Are you crazy? What do you think those stitches represent? We must also be ready for an internecine conflict between English and American anti-tomatoists: "You say infidel tomARto, I say infidel tomAYto." Where will it end?
11 comments:
Indeed, Fr, "where will it end" ?
Charing Cross.
Gerrard's Cross.
Horn's Cross.
Waltham Cross.
Banbury Cross.
. . .
Presumably they would also have problems with vegetables of the family cruciferae, so called because their flowers have four petals and resemble a cross (I did Aricultural Botany as part of my degree).
This would be quite a restriction, as it would include many of the common 'greens', in fact the list is extensive, as can be seen from this Wikipaedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruciferous_vegetables
Well, that certainaly rings a bell. Remember Chesterton's "The ball and the cross", where the devil takes great pains to avoid all those crosses he keeps stumbling upon and that seem to be all over the place?
Jack Tollers
Shh.
I fancy these folks are not well versed in food preparation. had they ever sliced a tomato, they would have observed that slicing it in segments, stem end first creates crescent shapes. Not so good for putting in sarnies, but revealing the inherent interfaith possibilities of the humble tom.
I love tomatoes and we grew them in the back garden at home, stuffing ourselves all August, when these ripened.
I love the idea of eating a Maltese Cross, like having the cross surging through one's body, a reminder of the Eucharist.
Cool, plant these everywhere...and when they go rotten....
After reading this, I almost wish I could bring myself to like tomatoes... sadly, I can't. Not unless they've been pureed first!
Sadly I have to admit I've never noticed this holy mark of the tasty tomato (I'm a biter, not a slicer). But I have wondered how non-believers can stand visiting, living, seeing on maps, names such as "Sacramento", "Santa Fe", "Corpus Christi", "Trinidad" and countless saints. However with things going the way they are, I wouldn't be surprised if a person or group out there decided to sue and demand for name changes.
How can you cut a tomato to create a Star of David?
I've been slicing tomatoes all week and not managed to find a Christian one yet!
akp5401 - you have to cut them in the transverse plane - that is, horizontally (with the stem side uppermost)
Most people slice tomatoes in the coronal and sagittal planes (ie. vertically down from the stem)
Ha ha! I did slice them the right way! I got plenty of batman centres!
Mine obviously aren't developed enough yet! Great fun though.
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