By Vanessa Richins

Next time you grab a ketchup packet, check out the art.

After success with a promotion involving holiday themed packets, Heinz North American Foodservice decided to sponsor a contest for children in Grades 1-12.

Their task was to design art based around a Heinz ketchup bottle to be used on single serve ketchup packets. Schools were sent a packet with submission forms, lesson plans about tomatoes, and fact sheets. The contest ran for nine months, and was also open to homeschooled children.

Out of over 15,000 entries, twelve students - one from each grade - were chosen as the winners. Their schools received $750 worth of ketchup and Read the rest of this entry »

By Michelle Fabio

Although many of you are just getting your tomato plants going, if you happen to be in Florida, you can pick your own tomatoes at Sandy Biggar’s 53-acre U-Pick Farms in Fort Myers.

For 99 cents a pound, the choice is yours.

“The tomatoes will be around for a while, but once the tourists leave, picking really slows down,” Biggar said. “Locals don’t pick many tomatoes.”

All the more reason for you to head over and have your pick of the litter, so to speak—Biggar says the tomatoes should continue to ripen well into Read the rest of this entry »

By Michelle Fabio

The Arab Times has reported that farmers are finally able to get back into their fields in Iraq—great news for tomato lovers as well as the country as a whole.

The return to farming signifies that Iraq, particularly in the Sunni Arab rural patch about 15 mile south of Baghdad, is on its way up after the devastation of war.

“It’s the first time in three years I am able to work in my lands,” said Ammar Wadi, a 30-year-old vegetable and dairy farmer on the banks of the Read the rest of this entry »

By Kira Hamman

I have been following this whole Burger King tomato thing with a mixture of interest and despair.

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, tomato pickers in Florida are asking Burger King to pay a little more for tomatoes so that they can raise wages and work under better conditions.

The workers, who currently labor under pretty awful conditions for a below-poverty-level wage, are asking for one cent more per pound, and Burger King is claiming that it can’t possibly afford to pay that.

Now, I’m a mathematician, so let’s do a little math. Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Nolan

It seems like a travesty that I live a mere 3-4 miles from the restaurant that inspired Fanny Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes and I have yet to even mention it here.

Go on, I know you all want to throw something . . . just make sure it isn’t tomatoes.

As a Southerner who adores just about any type of Southern cooking, and a man who has seen the film quite a few times over the years, it wasn’t until I moved back to Alabama in 2002 that I even realized I was so close to the famed Irondale Café, and made it a point to plan a visit. Read the rest of this entry »

By Michelle Fabio

If you’re reading this, chances are that you are passionate about tomatoes.

So how far would you go to defend your beloved tomato’s right to sit atop one of your country’s signature dishes?

Michael and John Garvin, two brothers from England, came to blows over just this question regarding Shepherd’s Pie after a day of drinking. Michael, a chef, didn’t take too kindly to his brother’s suggestion of topping the dish with a layer of sliced tomatoes—in fact, he responded by hitting John over the head with a shovel.

According to Michael’s lawyer, a threat by John to torch his brother’s flat followed Read the rest of this entry »