Tomatoes: they come in all shapes and sizes, their color moving from the deepest, brightest red to a golden green, all the way to hues that reach the depth of purples. They can also be yellow, bright, and full of light, just like the sunshine they need to grow flavorful and juicy.

The humble, delicious tomato is the stuff of culinary poetry, but also of that made of words if you think that one of the greatest wordsmiths of contemporary world literature, Pablo Neruda, wrote an ode to it: the tomato “Invades the kitchen,/ it enters at lunchtime,/takes its ease/ on countertops,/ among glasses,/butter dishes,/ blue saltcellars./ It sheds/ its own light,/benign majesty.”