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Show 'Love Apple' Popular The scarcity of tomatoes in the past year's otherwise abundant harvests recalls something of the history of this romantic fruit-vegetable. fruit-vegetable. A sharp drop in production in some of the nation's principal tomato-growing areas means smaller domestic stocks of tomato soup, juices, stews, ketchup and chili sauce this winter. Unseasonable weather is given as the cause. One hundred years ago the tomato to-mato was just beginning an uphill fight for respectability as a food ("PLEASE DOMT (SQUEEZE OA lAA item. Indians of the Andes had cultivated cul-tivated it since about 1000 A. D. The Aztecs of Mexico gave it the name that Cortez' men a ered into "tomato" and they probably said "toh-mah-toe." And the Spaniards took it back to Europe, but there it was recognized as a member of the deadly night-shade family. It was wrinkled and small and was known asvthe "love apple" in Europe and, later, in North America. Amer-ica. And for centuries' the supposedly supposed-ly poisonous fruit was nothing more man a garden ornament. |