Last year, the pricey Hamlets were first to ripen evenly in late July and I started giving them away to friends and neighbors. “Those tomatoes are really hard and tough” said a neighbour. And I agreed. They were both “firm and dark red” as advertised. But firm and hard are not good adjectives for home-grown tomatoes.
I just think that nature is so beautiful on its own and incorporating that into your décor or celebrating the season in a more natural way with the rythyms of nature and the cycles that she brings and the different plants that we appreciate at different times of year is really important to me.
I am doing a test run for my new talk this year at the Nanoose Garden club and I met the good people of that club today when I dropped by their January meeting. My newest topic? “CHANGE YOUR WORLD: ONE CABBAGE AT A TIME”. It is a talk about improving your garden with three simple steps: Better Soil, Better Shelter, Better Schedule.
In the past, when SAIT instructors asked chef apprentices to get fresh vegetables from the school’s large walk-in coolers, they sometimes received blank stares. Names and appearances of vegetables were a mystery to many new apprentices. “The main reason we put so much extra time into the garden is to simply connect our students to the food. It’s one thing to teach them the skills of how to cook but a whole other thing to teach them about FOOD…”
