Sixty-two miles and no tomatoes

It is a good thing I don't own a gun, because today I would have certainly used it! No, not to shoot an actual person, but maybe their car... or at the very least put some serious fear into well-deserving, self-aborbed, self-important yuppie-scum.

I had to go out to suburban northern Virginia this morning (in the rain!) in search of D.O.P. San Marzano canned whole tomatoes. Why? My foodie friends and I are having a tomato tasting on the 4th of June to determine if fancy imported tomatoes are really worth the hassle of seeking out. So off I was to Wegmans.

Wegmans... similar to Central Market in Austin. Or a Whole Foods on steroids. However, it always just strikes me as a soul-less place, like the McDonald's-owned Chipotles -- good food, good quality, but somehow lacking a sense of reality. As if it has been Disney-fied... everything is just too nice, too neat, too attractive. And the whole Wegmans' experience is not helped by the hoards of clueless people standing in the middle of the aisles apparently waiting for divine intervention.

So first I went to the Fairfax store. Nope, they don't even have the imported tomatoes (but what can one expect from Fairfax?). Then a trek across wet, poorly identified backroads between Fairfax and Sterling. I managed to successfully navigate the huge new interchange which has sprung up since the last time I was at that Wegmans (do that many people go there?!?) and drive into the parking lot to see... a school bus! No-no-no, please tell me no... Yes. A school field trip to Wegmans. Cute little 3rd/4th grade-ish children in adorable blue plaid school uniforms. These kids are right next to our nation's capital, the Smithsonian and surrounded by historic battlefields, sites & buildings, but where do they go? Wegmans?!?

After successfully navigating the touring tots, I located the canned tomato aisle. Aaack!!! The D.O.P. (which stands for something in Italian that basically means that the contents of the can are certified to be real San Marzano tomatoes grown in the appropriate region of Italy) tomatoes were all sold out. Yes, they had them on sale and there were no more to be had. I even asked the partially-coherent customer service chick who called someone to ask about them (or at least, she pretended to call someone!), informed me that all they had would be out on the shelves and offered me a rain check for the sale price. To which, I was a bit less gracious in my response than I should have been.

My current thinking -- there is no way in the world that any canned tomato could possibly taste good enough for a return trip out to suburban hell. Maybe the tomato tasting will prove me wrong and, if it does, I suspect I'll be looking for a mail-order source D.O.P. San Marzano canned whole tomatoes.