In writing this admission, I reckon it is a good bet that some moron invested in a fraud I have, or am exposing, will take time out from discussing with other internet warriors about having me killed to report me to social services in Wrexham or our esteemed dear leader here in Wales, Mark Drakeford. The idiots at the Badger Trust have yet to apologise for harassing me after I was maliciously reported to them as being a badger killer. So, nothing surprises me although the local rozzers do now know about this sort of harassment and are thus ignoring spurious complaints from crooks like Julie Meyer rather than interviewing me as I laugh at the silliness of it all. Back to green tomatoes.
A kind reader has read my recipes and notes my liking for them but asks if they are poisonous. Anything is poisonous if you have enough of it, even water. But tomatoes do contain the alkaloid solanine and there is much more in green tomatoes than in ripe red ones. You need to eat about a pound and a half of greens in one sitting to get even the first signs of poisoning: vomiting, feeling light headed and diarrhoea. To ensure that you kill yourself you would need to eat 20 lbs in less than a day. There are far easier ways of ending it all.
Red tomatoes also contain solanine but much less – to even get ill you’d need to wolf down hundreds of pounds in half a day.
Assuming the Mrs and I split the fried green tomatoes equally we would in a typical meal be consuming 3-4 oz, that is to say less than one fifth of the amount needed to get any symptoms. And within a day all the solanine will be washed through ones system allowing for another helping of fried green tomatoes the next day.
If your green tomatoes show even the slightest signs of orange as many of mine do thanks to the beating Welsh sunshine, then the solanine levels drop dramatically and so you could happily enjoy extra helpings of fried green tomatoes with every meal rather than about twice a week as happens here at the Welsh Hovel. So, I am not poisoning my family, not that this will deter the chatroom warriors for calling social services in Wrecsam first thing today.
Incidentally potatoes also contain tiny traces of solanine and I grow vast numbers of them too. Quick morons: add that to the complaint.