Re: Tomato Tasting Festival ideas

**N* S* <s*@earthlink.net>**

I did a blind tomato tasting several years ago that was attended by
On Aug 5, 2008, at 3:00 PM, yarrow@sfo.com wrote:

> At 11:41 AM -0400 8/5/08, WGardenermag@aol.com wrote:
>> We are hosting a Tomato Tasting Festival at a local urban  
>> farmer's  market in
>> a few weeks.
>>
>> I'm trying to brainstorm fun activities for this, but besides  
>> cutting  up
>> tomatoes and putting them out for folks to taste and vote on, I'm  
>> stuck.
>> Clearly, tomato throwing will not be tolerated by TPTB, though I'm
>> game and open  for
>> outside-the-box ideas -- even if a bit messy
>>
>> Anyone else host one of these regularly or attend them?
>
> I went to a tomato tasting at a nursery last weekend. It was basic --
> tomato pieces on plates, a clipboard to record ratings (1-5 scale),
> and then an assortment of "cool season" tomato plants to plant now
> and harvest starting in October (I've wondered if this really works
> here in northern Calif., so I'm trying it this year).
>
> One thing that I'd love to see at tomato tastings is a running total
> of ratings. Ideally you could see it after you'd made your own
> choices, not before, so as not to skew the ratings. It could be on a
> portable chalkboard or whiteboard.
>
> It would also be fun to have a blind tomato tasting, maybe 5 or 10
> selected varieties. At the tomato tasting, I found that knowing the
> name of the tomato, whether from its reputation or because I'd grown
> it, influenced my rating. I had very high expectations of, say,
> Marianna's Peace (it was so-so), and very low of Early Girl.
>
> Can you get bakeries to donate bread? Maybe a 10-minute tomato quiz
> show: each hour or half-hour, 3 volunteers at a time, each with a
> bell, compete to answer questions about growing and eating tomatoes.
> To encourage people to volunteer, each of the 3 gets a simple tomato
> sandwich, maybe with basil and garlic, after they're done. I'd do it
> improv style: any answer is encouraged, the emcee (ideal person would
> be actor/entertainer who knows a lot about tomatoes) offers clues.
> The hard part would be coming up with a few hundred questions
> beforehand, so that you don't have to repeat the same ones each time.
> But you could ask open-ended questions such as "what tomato has the
> most unusual name?" Or it could be more of an interview format: one
> person at time is interviewed for 3 minutes about their tomato
> preferences. The whole point of this would be gathering a crowd and
> entertaining them. Or you could put together a fact sheet on tomatoes
> (growing, varieties, cooking with) and pull questions from that.
>
> Tanya Kucak
>
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Nancy Szerlag
Columnist for Detroit News
szerlag@earthlink.net
Check blog at www.gardeneryardener.blogspot.com

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