Posted on 29 December 2008 by tomatocasual.com
By Michelle Fabio
Gary Ibsen, founder and executive director of the Carmel TomatoFest in Carmel, California, loves tomato stories so much that he offers tickets to the famous festival to those with the best stories every year.
And don’t we all love great tomato stories, especially around the holidays?
The 2008 winners are as follows:
1st Place: Larry Volpe, San Jose, CA. “I teach at Seven Trees School in San Jose in a low-socioeconomic neighborhood made up mostly of Hispanic immigrants. When I started teaching I quickly noticed that the non-English speaking, immigrant community I served was reluctant to come to school. I had very few parents coming to Back to School Night, and even less would come to various other school functions. Working in the garden has changed this to the extreme….”
2nd Place: Linda Brown, San Ramon, CA. “After the yard was Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on 27 December 2008 by tomatocasual.com
By Vanessa Richins
Apparently, Randall Lee Rahal couldn’t sell tomatoes without resorting to illegal methods.
Charges–including racketeering, price fixing, bid rigging and contract allocation, and with money laundering– were filed against him on December 10th, 2008 in the U.S. District Court in Sacramento, California.
Rahal, the president of a New Jersey wholesale company named Intramark, worked as the sales broker for SK Foods in California, which sold processed tomato products.
The charges filed state that Rahal had the consent of the company to offer bribes to the food buyers so they would choose SK foods over the competitors. These bribes allowed SK Foods to Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on 23 December 2008 by tomatocasual.com
By Michelle Fabio
A popular southern Italian Christmas Eve tradition carried on by Italians all over the world is the Feast of the Seven Fishes.
The number seven represents the seven sacraments, seven days of creation, or simply the fact that seven signifies perfection in the Bible.
And the fish?
Well that’s because Catholics aren’t supposed to eat meat on the Vigilia di Natale.
Popular fishes in the feast include calamari, smelt, clams, and shrimp, but my favorite is baccalà: dried, salted cod.
To reconstitute the fish, you soak it for two days, changing the water three or four times, a nice ritual that increases the anticipation of a delicious Christmas Eve dinner with each change of the water.
Here is a recipe for baccalà typical of Calabria in southern Italy: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on 21 December 2008 by tomatocasual.com
By Michelle Fabio
The economy isn’t looking good anywhere, but tomato growers are slowly getting back in the produce game after the several months-long salmonella scare earlier this year, according to an article in the Bradenton Herald in Florida.
Lower prices are encouraging consumers to come back to tomatoes, which is great for tomato growers, but now they have even more concerns, including food safety and new regulations mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) such as restrictions on soil fumigants that combat pests, diseases, and pathogens.
Tomato growers must also have a buffer zone between treated fields and home and schools.
How low are the prices going? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on 19 December 2008 by tomatocasual.com
By Vanessa Richins
A friend was telling me about how she was making a Christmas tree from a tomato cage.
I thought this was intriguing.
She doesn’t have her project up on her website yet, but evidently she is not the first person to come up with this idea.
I found several websites that took the humble tomato cage to new heights for Christmas, from Christmas trees, to snowflakes, to snowmen.
DIYNetwork
DIYNetwork’s website features instructions for several different kinds of tomato cage Christmas trees. Their suggestions include :
- A tinsel tree (wrapping tinsel around the frame and adding ornaments)
- A feather tree (using feather boas)
- A fiesta tree (with Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on 15 December 2008 by tomatocasual.com
By Vanessa Richins
Even if your tomato plants are healthy, they sometimes fall prey to diseases from bacteria.
In a new study published in Current Biology, scientists show how a certain bacteria gets past a tomato’s defenses and infects the plant with bacterial speck disease, leaving black lesions on leaves and fruits.
They hope to use the results to study ways to protect plants without pesticides.
In order to study the way that the bacteria invaded the tomato, European scientists used a plant called Arabidopsis, which is also affected by the bacterial speck disease and works well in experimental studies.
When they studied the infection process, they found that Read the rest of this entry »
