While touring Spain we noticed that every grocery store would sell several variations of the tomatoes. Curious, we asked the kids Spainsh tutor to take us on a grocery tour to learn out more about the different types of tomatoes grown in Spain. Spaniards in general eat the most tomatoes than most of their neighbors in Europe. They are also the 4th largest exporter of tomatoes in the world.
What we learned was that the word “tomato” actually comes from the Spanish word “tomate”. Apparently in the 1500’s tomatoes were known to be poisonous by Europeans because of their bright colored fruit. Tomatoes are fruits, not vegetables.
In Spain, the world’s largest “tomato fight” called La Tomatina takes place every year on the last Wednesday of August in the Valencian town of Bunol. The festival is purely for fun, and draws thousands of particpants from all over the world. Unfortunately, we just left Valencia a week prior and missed the whole thing.
Since the local fruit and vegetable grocery was busy, we decided to grab one of each variety of tomato and go back to our hotel to discover which category they fell into and which tomato tasted the best.
After 2 hours we ended our lesson with a lot more knowledge about these lovely fruits. In the end, they kids couldn’t decide which tomato they liked best. They ate all of them and by then was confused which one was which!?
It was a fun learning exercise, Mom and Dad even learned a few things.
A great food for kids. As a child, I used to eat tomatoes like apples.
I love cooking with them, but eating them raw… That’s for my kids! 🙂 Thanks for sharing….