Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/724773
4 4 | t h e c l e v e r r o o t STORY AND ILLUSTRATION BY JEFF COX W hen Europeans discovered the New World in 1492, it changed the Western Hemisphere forever. But those voyages of conquest also wreaked a profound effect on Eu- rope, especially on how and what Europeans ate. Before Columbus, the only beans known to Europeans were fava beans. They didn't have sweet or hot chilies. No potatoes—sorry, northern and eastern Europeans, go back to eating barley and rye gruel to get your carbs. They didn't have corn—field or sweet. And they didn't have tomatoes, the fruit that made Mediterranean cooking the world's choice for delicious cuisine. How happy were Europeans to embrace the tomato? We can get a sense of the delirium by watching the thousands of people at the annual La Tomatina festival in Buñol, Spain, on the last Wednesday in August. Truck- load upon truckload of tomatoes are brought to town and the celebrants hurl tomatoes at one another in wild, sensual abandon until the people, the streets, the town itself is one giant, gooey mess. The progenitor of our modern to- mato (Lycopersicon lycopersicum) still grows wild in Peru, Ecuador and elsewhere in South America. It's an unassuming tropical vine with pea-sized fruits. Central America's indigenous peoples made selections for size over many hundreds of years ANATOMY OF THE TOMATO