It’s difficult to find a tomato at the grocery store that tastes the way I remember them. Sure, a few hybrid varieties have been developed for great flavor. However, commercial tomato breeders focus on hybridizing tomatoes to make them symmetrical and red, durable enough to survive the automated harvesting and long-distance shipping, picked green, with no chance to ripen on the vine, and a long shelf life. Unfortunately, something had to go and sadly, for us tomato lovers, it was flavor.

That’s why I love to go to the farmer’s markets in search of beautiful heirloom tomatoes. Heirloom tomatoes come in various shapes, sizes, and colors. But what they all have in common is they have been sown from seeds passed down from generation to generation, because of valued characteristics.

There is simply no comparison to the grainy, dry, flavorless things you find at the supermarket. Homegrown heirloom tomatoes are juicy, delicious, sweet and tangy. They have a marvelous mouth-watering, warm-from-the-sun, old-fashioned tomato taste you may remember.

Celebrate the end of summer with some beautiful heirloom tomatoes. Below are two great recipes from my kitchen to yours.