Hoosier voters failed to disappoint in one of their last elections — choosing this year’s so-called Indiana State Fair Tomato Signature Foods.

Their top selection tapped two choice foods — tomatoes and the brown food group (that, of course, is anything fried, deep, pan or otherwise).
Voters chose the Deep-Fried Pizza from Urick Concessions as the top signature food at this year’s state fair. They’re being sold in front of the Grand Hall on the fairgrounds.

This year’s fair, which opened last Friday and runs through Aug. 23, pays a salute to that fruit-slash-vegetable known as the tomato, if not tomahto.

The corporate sponsor is Red Gold, an Orestes-based tomato processor in northern Indiana. It contracts with farmers around the state, including here in Jackson County, to keep its line of products, including ketchup, tomato sauces and canned tomatoes, on grocery store shelves.

Other tomato-based foods spotlighted by concessionaires this summer at the fair include the Pizza Cone, Ya Ya’s Tomato Balls, Sun-dried Tomato Pork Burger and the Tomato Bob.

Do you like tomatoes?

I love tomato sauce. I love ketchup. I love pizza sauce and salsa. I even love stewed tomatoes. It’s the one way I can eat zucchini that’s not been turned into bread.

But I have a confession. I don’t like raw tomatoes.

Ann Lentini, whose accent reveals she moved to Seymour from New York, urged me to try them again, telling me that’s what her grandfather once told her. She’s been eating them ever since.

But I have tried them, over and over, at least once each summer.

And much to my Pop’s dismay, I just don’t like them. Pop loved snapping a tomato off the vine and eating it like an apple.

I don’t know. I think it’s the texture. That usually gets a roll of the eyes from true tomato lovers. Lentini gave an understanding nod as we talked after she bought some tomatoes Wednesday at the Seymour farmers market.

“I don’t like peanut butter,” she said. “Although I can eat some on a cracker.”

I’m certainly not in the majority, however, in my disdain for raw tomatoes. According to the USDA, Indiana ranked second in U.S. tomato production in 2007. That year, Hoosier farmers planted tomatoes on 10,000 acres.

That’s not including the thousands of home gardens like Ed Mills’ plot on North Elm Street in Seymour. He was selling tomatoes, watermelons and blackberries produce Wednesday at the market.

“There’s nothing better than a big slice of tomato, green beans and corn,” Mills said.

I’m down with the sweet corn and beans. Just don’t make me eat a raw tomato.

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