Oh wow, and it is a long time until you get the next home grown tomato to eat, isn't it.

Take comfort in the thought that it doesn't matter if you bought the cheapest tomatoes the store had, or the most expensive because, no matter what, they won't taste like a home-grown tomato, they won't smell like one, or have the texture of one. Heck, it is hard to guess if they will have any flavor at all. Let us know if you find any flavor hiding inside those store-bought tomatoes. So, there was no pointing in buying the most expensive ones they had, right? They do look like tomatoes, so at least there's that.

One of my favorite books is called "Can You Trust A Tomato In January?" As you might guess, the answer is "no" but it was fun reading all the reasons why you cannot.

I feel your pain.

Sometimes I buy cherry or grape tomatoes in winter. They aren't the same as fresh home-grown, but they do at least look like tomatoes, and sometimes the flavor of the little ones is passable. More often than not, though, the flavor is pretty much non-existent. More often, I rehydrate some dehydrated cherry tomatoes that were grown in our garden the previous year. I soak them in warm water for an hour or so and then add them to salads, or eat them straight from the bowl like eating grapes. It isn't the same as a summer tomato, but the flavor is good although the texture, even after being reconstituted in water, is a long way from the texture of a fresh tomato.

We all just do what we have to do in order to survive the non-growing season.

These are no different than any other store bought tomato, they just trying to sell " vine ripened " , even got the vine to prove it , hahahaha .

I do wonder what variety those are, they are in a cluster like cherries or some of the roma varieties.

I so miss succulent, warm from the vine, bursting with flavor tomatoes. The only "good enough" tomatoes from the store this time of year for us are the Campari tomatoes. They have good flavor but small in size. I love beefsteak tomatoes the best but the store bought ones (any time of year) seem to lack flavor. Summer....come on down!

Dawn, rehydrated cherry tomaatoes...are they raison like? Or is that the texture before rehydrating? I have dried grounnd cherries to a raison like texture, they are passable, kind of like dried cranberries which I'm not crazy about. But I think I could do a tomato raison in a salad. We made dried cucumber chips year before last. A little tomato and cuke in winter would be nice.

I had a bad craving for a BLT last week. The tomato i bought was so bland i spit it out and just had a Bacon sandwich. I promptly went out and bought some Bush Steak seeds to grow in the greenhouse. Way to early for garden transplants but if I can even get one ripe tomato Ill be happy.

A few years ago I bought one of those cherry tomato plants at the end of the season and moved it inside right before frost. It sat on my kitchen table and produced 5 cherry tomatoes on Dec 24. I swear those were the best tasting tomatoes I'd ever had, mainly because they weren't store tomatoes.

Amy, The dehydrated cherry tomatoes are more like raisins before you rehydrate them. Once rehydrated, they are more moist and chewy than a raisin but nothing like the texture of a fresh tomato. I also sometimes toss the dehydrated tomatoes straight into a bowl of salad without rehydrating, and eating them is just like eating a raisin, only it tastes like a tomato. Lately I've been tossing handfuls of dehydrated tomatoes into every pot of soup, chili, stew, etc. that I make. It helps feed my tomato hunger, but not the way a fresh, home-grown tomato would.

Y'all, in some previous years I have kept containerized tomato plants going all winter in the greenhouse and the tomatoes they produced were better than grocery store tomatoes, but not by much. Before we had the greenhouse, I kept them alive all winter by dragging them into the garage at night and back out into the sun during the day, or by carrying them into the house or the sunroom (although back then it was only a screened-in porch so didn't stay as warm as it does now). Tomatoes need lots of heat and sunlight in order for their flavor to develop, and in winter the sunlight is too weak even if a warm greenhouse does give them some good warm temperatures daily. Winter tomatoes that we've harvested have been smaller than the same variety produces in summer and have had less optimal flavor and texture. Ultimately, I decided they weren't worth the trouble. I just make sure to can, dehydrate and freeze lots of tomatoes for winter cooking. It isn't the same, but it is close enough.

Mike, I usually pick up a handful of tomato plants at the store whenever they arrive, which down here has happened as early as the first week in January (and then it snowed and the tomato plants, which had been left outdoors, all died, so they haven't had them that early since) but usually is around Valentine's Day. Then I pot them up, keep them in the greenhouse or on the patio during the day and move them into the greenhouse at night. The ones I get usually are in 5" peat pots, are a half-decent size and either already are blooming or are about to bloom. With those early plants, the pressure is off so that I don't feel compelled to start seeds too early or to rush my home-grown plants into the ground too early. From those early, purchased plants, we always get the first ripe tomatoes before the end of April. Really, though, if I get my own plants into the ground by the end of March, we usually are harvesting the first ripe tomato from them before the end of May, so the early purchased plants are only giving us fruit about a month earlier. Still, a month is a month! Most years we are eating fresh tomatoes from the end of April until sometime in December, and that's not bad.

Dawn