By Danny Thompson

My ancestry is 75% Irish and 25% British.

I have to like potatoes and black-eyed peas and leeks, or my family will disown me.

Shame will follow my children’s’ children through eternity.

Irish and British food is hearty and rib-sticking (it has to be, the islands are damp, cold, miserable places to live—at least they were up until the advent of modern indoor climate control systems).

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By Danny Thompson

Imagine, a single genetic line guarded closely, it’s secret passed quietly from generation to generation while the masses are blissfully unaware of the simple yet profound truth.

No, it’s not a best-selling novel or blockbuster movie.

It’s the history of the Heirloom Tomato.

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By Danny Thompson

How do you grow great tomatoes?

Well, in order to really get a feel for the perfect environment, let’s take a trip back in history, to the origins of the Tomato.

Because to grow a successful tomato, we must think like a tomato.

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By Tomato Queen

You would think that the tomato would have been lustily embraced by my people, the Jews, since they first popped them into their mouths.

And in a way, this is true.

Now a thriving staple of Israel’s diet, economy and food culture, the tomato was once considered so bloody a fruit that it was deemed unkosher.

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By Michelle Fabio

We know tomatoes as juicy, tasty, and simply delicious, but it wasn’t always this way.

The tomato is said to have been around since as early as 700 A.D. growing wild in the Andes of South America and cultivated by Incas and Aztecs; somehow tomatoes eventually ended up in Central America, and when the Spanish began colonizing America, they took red, seedy fruit to the Caribbean, the Philippines, Asia, and, of course, Europe.

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