I don’t really know how to cook without tomatoes. They used to be a routine purchase – usually around the $1.50 to $2 a pound range, never expensive enough to make me hesitate or even notice. One of my staple dishes is South Indian tomato rasam, a spicy, tangy, soup-like dish made with tomatoes, lentils, herbs, and Indian spices – my kids love it. So when I saw tomatoes at Food Basics had reached $3.99 a pound, it didn’t feel like the price of just one vegetable had gone up. It felt like my entire way of cooking was suddenly out of reach.
By the time I've checked flyers, compared prices, changed the recipe, and persuaded myself that another store might be worth it, the savings look less like savings and more like unpaid labour.
For the amount of tomatoes rasam needs – for the way I cook – that price was beyond my budget, but that day, I did not have the time, energy, or spiritual fortitude to turn my grocery run into a treasure hunt for cheaper options. Dinner needed to happen. In my household, one pound is rarely enough – I have growing teenage children, and tomatoes disappear into rasam, salads, snacks, pasta, curries, and the tomato-mayo sandwiches I used to make the kids before school. I usually buy two pounds at a time, so this was an almost $8 decision before I even picked onions, lentils, or cilantro.
My mom and grandma advised me to compare prices, change stores, swap ingredients, and be flexible when an ingredient becomes expensive. But in the produce aisle, I realized the advice didn't work, because tomatoes are the soul of rasam. It assumes that I have time, transportation, and access to multiple stores, plus a way to cook with different ingredients, for a dish that's as comforting as rasam. It also assumes that just any tomato will do.
So I gave in and started comparing prices with other stores, but the more I looked, the less useful the comparison felt. Online, I found Food Basics listing hothouse red tomatoes at $3.99/lb, No Frills with Roma at $2.99/lb and beefsteak at $3.99/lb, and Walmart with Roma at roughly $1.90/lb. Prices can change quickly and differ by location, delivery platform, and store, but the exercise didn't make me feel like a smarter shopper. It just made me realize how much grocery advice depends on having options.
The cheapest tomato was technically a solution to my problem, but it wasn't always the right tomato for what I was cooking. For rasam, I usually use hothouse tomatoes; if those are not available, I use tomatoes on the vine. That preference isn't fancy – it's taste, texture, and what I know works for rasam. It's the kind of cooking logic that has nothing to do with finding the lowest price.
The cheapest tomato was technically a solution to my problem, but it wasn't always the right tomato for what I was cooking.
Krishnamoorthy Ramesh, who runs the catering company Bhojanam Inc., said they use tomatoes almost daily in dishes like rasam, sambar, gravies, and tomato chutney. “When I am cooking it for some 50, 60 people on a daily basis, without a tomato paste, it will be very, very difficult,” he said. Leaving tomatoes out, he said, changes the quantity, taste, and authenticity of the food.
We have the same substitution problem in my home. My children don't like pepper rasam in quite the same way as tomato rasam, so switching means negotiating at dinner instead of just serving a meal they love.
That's why the usual “just shop around” advice often doesn't make sense. It treats grocery shopping like a tender process (find the lowest number and that's it), when food is also about habit, appetite, culture, family routines, comfort, and time. A cheaper tomato across town means spending bus fare, gas, time, an extra stop, and energy; it may also be the wrong tomato for the dish. By the time I've checked flyers, compared prices, changed the recipe, and persuaded myself that another store might be worth it, the savings look less like savings and more like unpaid labour.
I wanted to know if what I was experiencing was specific to fresh produce – not just high prices, but prices that jump around too much to track. According to Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, tomatoes are a useful way to understand fresh-food price volatility.
“Your worst enemy is not necessarily food inflation,” he said. “Your worst enemy is price volatility.”
That volatility, he said, can push shoppers away from fresh produce and toward the centre aisles. Charlebois warned that online grocery prices can be misleading (they fluctuate quickly and often differ from in-store pricing), but he did acknowledge the broader pattern: fresh produce is volatile in a way canned or shelf-stable foods are not. Metro, which owns Food Basics, and the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers pointed to poor weather in Mexico and high energy costs. The reasoning is sound, but it didn't help me make dinner.
Your worst enemy is not necessarily food inflation. Your worst enemy is price volatility.
It may seem odd to stress so much over a single meal, but tomato rasam is comfort food in my house – the kind of meal I learned from my grandmother and mother, and it's my older child's favourite. It's everyday food, the kind of meal you'd toss together on a typical weeknight. But that's exactly why it's important: it carries part of my family’s legacy. What I learned from my grandmother and mother, and what my children are now learning from me. Without tomatoes, I can't pass those lessons on.
Inflation numbers don't track this kind of thing. When I cut back on familiar foods, it's not just the dish that goes away; my family loses all the little rituals that make our house feel like home. These meals will just get harder and harder to make, and eventually, the recipes I learned from my mother will become recipes I can't afford to pass down at all.
