I also love popping cherry tomatoes!! uber-yummy!!

I was lucky in that we had briefly lived in California after I was born and my parents loved mexican food. However, when we moved to Long Island, much to our dismay, there was none to be had. The only avocados were those nasty Florida monstrosities. Occasionally, Dad would travel to LA on business and bring back a suitcase of of avocados, tortillas, jalepenos, etc. It was always a really special treat. All of my friends though we ate very strange food though.

As far as tomatoes, my dad has always been a fanatical gardener. I grew up pretty much always having fresh tomatoes that were unlike anything available in the store. In the summer, he would slice them and some onions and put balsamic vinegar over them, along with a little salt and pepper. I hated the onions, loved the tomatoes. To this day, I'll eat them no matter how they are prepared. Well, except stewed, I suppose. Then again, I don't think I've ever had a stewed tomato. It just sounds wrong.

Oh yea. Yummy! I eat those like I eat peas. Bite a little hole in the skin and suck the insides out. With the tomatoes, it avoids the squirting in someone's eye disaster, eat the seeds and juice, then pop the delicious fleshy skins. With peas, discard the yucky plastic-like skins. Ick!

I love tomatoes, raw and cooked. I have snacked on cans of tomato paste and squeezed tubes of it onto my finger for a snack. I prefer good raw tomatoes to pallid bad ones. The only time I like a bad tomato is at a pizzeria where they give you a side salad with ice berg lettuce, a bad tomato, a slice of salami, some pepperoncini, a little oil and vinegar and a lot of salt. Somehow that works.

Some raw tomatoes have too much wet seed bits that are properly cut away. Dry farm tomatoes minimize this and have more intense tomatoey flavor.

If I were to live by the Cooking for Your Blood Type recommendations, I would swear off tomatoes, as well as most of the foods I enjoy.

I use lime in guacamole, not lemon.

Love fresh heirloom tomatoes - especially when making bruschetta, or served with fresh mozzarella.

Avocado is also lovely (I like it paired with bacon on a burger) and I use lime in my guac.

I put the lime in the coconut...

Damn you!! Now I am singing that!

We have a lotion that's got lime and coconut in it. I sing it uncontrollably if I use it.

"I said doc-tah....."

Do you have to shake it all up before using it?

The high overlord of satanic food products is the raisin. The raisin's chieftan underlords are tomatoes, avocado, and natto (chief underlord of Asia).

Together they rule in Satan's name with a monolithic disgustingness whose only chink is the fact that tomato's evil can be cleansed with the purifying power of the flame. This is a metaphysical counterbalance to the fact that the raisin only acquires its full potential evil from the flame as it is perverted from its innocent purity of youthful grapeness by the sun.

Together they seek to overwhelm the world through very ubiquity by appearing all over the place without announcement. It is amazing how many sandwich places will list every ingredient in a sandwich but the tomato. How many bread puddings and cinnamon rolls have been corrupted by the unannounced presence of raisins. How avocado has mind-melded with America's culinary institutions to deceive chef's into the notion that avocado goes well with everything.

Natto, fortunately, is so far an underperformer in the Western region. But foreign unknown gods are no less terrifying.

These are dark and troubling times, my friends, and we must be resolute and perpetually wary in our defense against the evil's encroachment. The prophet John De Bello warned us so many years ago and so few have chosen to listen. They'll come to regret their complacence.