An Alternative to Canned Tomatoes

Ever since the news over BPA surfaced a few years ago, I've been doing my best to limit our exposure to it. I would say that in general, it's been pretty easy to find replacements for items that contained BPA (except store receipts!). The one item that I've had the most difficult time replacing: canned tomatoes.

In general, I've never bought many canned vegetables. I prefer frozen. But my pantry was always stocked with diced, crushed, sauced and pasted tomatoes. I rarely bought pasta sauce -- I just made it from the cans. As it turns out, the acid in tomatoes causes the BPA to leach in to the tomatoes even more than in other canned veggies. Apparently, it also affects the taste of the tomatoes, which I didn't really notice until I started making my sauces from actual, real tomatoes. What a difference! I did my best to freeze fresh tomatoes at the end of summer, but it won't be enough to last us a year. I started buying organic jarred pasta sauce, but it has a bit more sodium in it than I like. I feel like I am forever on a hunt to find an alternative to canned tomatoes.

A few weeks ago I discovered Pomi tomatoes, from Italy, that come in a box. Ah ha! According to the article I read, however, they were only available on-line. With shipping, a 26 oz box would cost around $5! Yeah. So I wrote those off. Until one day a few weeks ago when I was hunting through the pasta sauce aisle at Wal-Mart and lo behold there they were -- boxed Pomi tomatoes! They still aren't cheap at just over $3 a box, but that is certainly a better price. I saw them a few days later at Whole Foods as well (for a little closer to $4/box).

I haven't tried them out yet so I can't vouch for the taste, but those boxes of tomatoes made my day! I make a lot of recipes that call for canned tomatoes and I was way stressing out about the canned stuff. They still cost more than I am accustomed to paying for tomatoes, but I am learning that paying more usually means better quality and taste.