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How to Eat 213 Tomatoes

2018-07-17 · letter vlog · John · 2:45 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Everyday life (also: Personal life) · mode: Advice & reviews · tags: community lore

John shows his summer garden, picks hundreds of tiny tomatoes to eat 211 in a single sitting, and walks Hank through a panzanella recipe; he says tomatoes are one of the few foods whose good version is essentially a different thing from the bad one, and reports eating about 100 at lunch and splitting the rest with Sarah.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The garden since the last visit: zucchini, sunflowers, beans, eggplant, oregano and many tiny tomatoes; the goal of eating 211 tomatoes

  • ★★ John shows his garden: mostly dirt at the last visit, it now has zucchini, sunflowers, dragon tongue beans, eggplants, oregano and, above all, tomatoes. — 00:00:02
  • ★★ Besides black and red cherry tomatoes, John grows a huge number of golden currants, tiny tomatoes not much larger than a pea. (playful) — 00:00:14
  • ★★ John says he planted so many tiny-tomato plants because he wants to eat 211 tomatoes in a single sitting. (playful) — 00:00:23

00:00:29 — Picking the tomatoes and a mock-serious panzanella recipe, with asides on tomato overdose and why good tomatoes differ from bad ones

  • ★★ Picking the tomatoes took John 34 minutes and left him drenched in sweat. — 00:00:34
  • ★★ John tells cooks to consider the time, energy and sweat that went into the roughly 900 calories of harvest, and then to give thanks to actual farm workers. (playful) — 00:00:52
  • ★★ John is making panzanella, which he describes as essentially tomatoes with croutons. — 00:01:09
  • ★★ For the croutons: tear good bread into a pan with about four cloves of minced garlic and olive oil, toss it, and bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. (hedged) — 00:01:19
  • ★ John googled whether eating too many tomatoes can kill you: probably not, but it can turn your skin orange. (hedged) — 00:01:42
  • ★★ John thought he hated tomatoes until his late twenties, but he had just never had a good one. — 00:01:50
  • ★★★ John says tomatoes are one of very few foods whose good version is essentially a different thing from the bad version, like real versus knockoff Lucky Charms. (hedged) — 00:01:55
  • ★★ Dress the tomatoes with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper; because panzanella's secret is crunchy croutons with juicy tomatoes, keep them separate for leftovers and mix by the handful, topped with basil. — 00:02:14

00:02:33 — Eating the tomatoes over three meals with Sarah; the zucchini; sign-off

  • ★★ John ate around 100 tomatoes at lunch and split the rest with Sarah at dinner: three great meals, and his skin did not turn orange. — 00:02:33 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★ John now has to figure out what to do with his zucchini. (playful) — 00:02:41

Humor (significant)

  • Having snacked on two tomatoes while picking, John renames the video on the spot. — 00:00:48

    “New video title, "How to Eat 213 Tomatoes in a Single Sitting"”

  • Laying out the harvest, John insists on counting exactly 211 tomatoes. — 00:01:04

    “And then count out exactly 211 tomatoes because people on the internet are sticklers about that stuff”

  • Preheating the oven for croutons, John adds a warning. — 00:01:14

    “being careful not to look at your ghoulish reflection”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: panzanella · tomato

Also: kitchen garden · Lucky Charms · Sarah Urist Green

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