You Say Tomato...

There is a café in Kuching that used to waste a whole kilo of tomatoes every week because of one man. And that man is me.

The café I am talking about is called Chillipeppers, which is really ironic given what I said in my previous post about my aversion to Chili. But the great thing about Chillipeppers is that it allows me to completely side-step my chili problem and eat lots and lots of other lovely things that absolutely do not have any chili in them!

My family and I have been eating our breakfast, lunch and even dinner at Chillipeppers almost ever since we came here. Chillipeppers is run by a tall, affable and grey-haired Chinese chap called Tommy, and all his staff are Malays, giving the place a pleasing multicultural flavour. The menu cements this multiculturalism marvellously – offering Chinese, Malay, Indian and Western dishes, so that all races and religious groups are catered for nicely.

And my favourite breakfast, without fail, is the smoked turkey ham and cheese croissant. This delicious repast always comes with a couple of tomato slices in it. Now, let me reveal another dark secret from my culinary life – if there is anything I can’t stand more than chilies, it’s tomatoes. They make me puke, simple as that. I can’t understand it, because I like tomato puree, tomato ketchup, tinned Italian tomatoes, and of course the tomato sauce they put on pizzas.

But for some reason buried deep in the Freudian folds of my past, I cannot take real, uncooked, raw tomatoes. So whenever I get my croissant from one of Mr. Tommy’s Malay staff, the first thing I do is lift the lid and throw the tomato slices out. I wonder if the Chillipeppers staff put the tomato slices back in the fridge to be re-used? We will never know…

Now, many of you reading this are probably nibbling with indignation that someone could be so averse to tomatoes. Even my dear wife, who can eat them till they come out of her ears, is always nagging me to eat my tomatoes, because they are good for me and will help me to get thinner.

So what’s a boy to do? Stay off the tomatoes and get fatter, or eat his tomatoes like a good boy and see if it will help him to reduce his voluminous tummy? Well, what with all the health issues floating around our family at the moment, I have decided to bite the bullet (or at least the tomato anyway) and try to take some tomato from time to time.

So every time I go to Chillipeppers I now eat the tomato slice, thus helping Mr. Tommy to reduce his wastage overheads. And actually, the tomatoes are not bad – especially if I close my eyes and think of England.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, will ever make me change my mind about chili. It stays in hell where it belongs!!