WHAT WOULD PIZZA BE WITHOUT TOMATO SAUCE?

A  NEIGHBOR'S WALL OF TOMATOES...

...OR TRELLIS, IF YOU PREFER...

PRODUCING END OF THE SEASON BEAUTIES

Wednesday, 9:00 AM.  53 degrees F at the ferry dock, 49 on the back porch.  Wind NW, mostly calm with occasional light gusts.  The sky has been cloudy with black rain clouds but is clearing, the humidity 82%.  The barometer is steady at 30.12" but is predicted to rise considerably, bringing partly cloudy skies and drier weather, with high temperatures around 60.  Hope we continue to dry out.
   For a while we thought there would be no vine ripe local tomatoes this year; not enough sunshine for these tropical fruits.  But here they are,  red ripe, responding to day length if not to sunshine in this fall of dismal weather.
   I planted two tomato plants, which is usually enough for our much diminished table, but this season, like Blanch DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, we have depended on the generosity of  strangers (and the supermarket). But the season has become lately productive, not to the point of having to roll up windows and lock car doors, a la zucchini, but sufficient.
   I love tomatoes, even fried green tomatoes, which we haven't resorted to as yet, but may still have to.
   Tomatoes, which  collectively constitute many varieties of the species Solanum lycopersicum, are a South American native, and were introduced from there to Europe in the 16th Century.  They were, like the potato (also a Solanum), a poor people's food, and long suspected to be poisonous as well, since many species in the Nightshade Family, the Solanaceae, indeed are so.
   I recently read that the wealthy ate from pewter plates, which contain lead, and the acid in tomatoes served on pewter plates caused lead poisoning.  The poor ate from wooden plates and were not so affected.  Makes sense.
    It took the introduction of the pizza in 1880 in Italy, and its subsequent universal  popularity, to fully establish the tomato worldwide. And that was indeed a good thing.
   After all, what would  the world be without pizza , and what would pizza be without tomato sauce?