8. You forgot to get your mom a gift for Mother's Day. Or you want to get her a very early gift for next Mother's Day. Or someone has a birthday, anniversary, or some other special event to commemorate. The point is, tickets to the South Philly Garden Tour make a great gift and are a great way to spend the day with someone OR send them off to spend the day with us while you watch baseball. Twenty (twenty!) gardens all throughout South Philadelphia have signed on to be on the Tour which goes from 11am to 3pm on Saturday, September 10. Gardens range from individual backyards to community gardens to parks. You can visit all the gardens or just target a few since they’re all in a 5-mile radius (perfect for walking or biking). Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 on the day of, and can be purchased now at:

• Urban Jungle, 1526 E. Passyunk Avenue
• Grindcore House, 1515 S. 4th Street
• Ultimo Coffee Bar, 1900 S. 15th Street
• Online by clicking here.

Following the Tour, participants are invited to the Cantina (East Passyunk Ave and Morris St.) for an after party from 3pm to 5pm. Anyone with their Garden Tour ticket will receive 20 percent off food and drinks. We’ll see you on the Tour!

7. Seriously, have you ever heard of someone having a kiwi vine in South Philly?  One of the gardens on our tour does. Find out what other crazy (but perfectly legal!) things are being cultivated in the fertile soil south of Washington Avenue. We're not just talkin' tomatoes here. Twenty (twenty!) gardens all throughout South Philadelphia have signed on to be on the Tour which goes from 11am to 3pm on Saturday, September 10. Gardens range from individual backyards to community gardens to parks. You can visit all the gardens or just target a few since they’re all in a 5-mile radius (perfect for walking or biking). Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 on the day of, and can be purchased now at:

• Urban Jungle, 1526 E. Passyunk Avenue
• Grindcore House, 1515 S. 4th Street
• Ultimo Coffee Bar, 1900 S. 15th Street
• Online by clicking here.

Following the Tour, participants are invited to the Cantina (East Passyunk Ave and Morris St.) for an after party from 3pm to 5pm. Anyone with their Garden Tour ticket will receive 20 percent off food and drinks. We’ll see you on the Tour!

I had a lot of tomatoes. Not like, a lot of tomatoes, but several. Enough that I needed to take action before they went to waste, but not so many that I wanted to blanch and seed them and spend serious time fussing over them. I had like a pound and half of all sorts of tomatoes.

I also had time. We had a bit of a storm here, you may have heard, and had prepared to not have power or water on Sunday. But we had power and water, and I had done all of the laundry and cleaned out the fridge and everything in advance of the storm so once it passed, I had nothing but time.

Slow roasted tomato time.

Slow roasted tomato sauce is rich and a little bit smoky. The vegetables caramelize a bit. It's a great sauce to freeze up for winter or a rainy fall day. Or the day after a hurricane. I use pretty much the same ingredients as I do for regular sauce, but in the oven, mostly.

I dialed my oven up to 300 and spritzed a rimmed baking sheet with olive oil. Then I laid out my tomatoes.



I had all sorts. Plums and cherries and grapes and funky looking heirlooms and such. The bigger ones got sliced, the smaller ones got halved. Skin on. Seeds in.

 And I gathered the other stuff I add to sauce. Carrots, onions, garlic.



Two onions, about one carrot (my carrots were illegitimate), and five cloves of garlic.



Sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Into the oven at 300 for a while. Like, definitely go do other things. Two hours? Three? Until things start to turn black around the edges.





Then I put them into the blender with some water. How much water? How much do you need? Start with a little, and if it's too thick, keep going. I might have had a cup and a half of roasted veggies and used a quarter cup of water. Aim for fairly thick, this is a nice hearty sauce and it coats well.



Put it in a saucepan to simmer for about as long as it takes to boil water and make pasta. I added the things I add to other sauces. Basil and a cheese rind.*



Oregano and a little less than a quarter cup of Zinfandel.

Stir together and simmer on low until the pasta is ready. Remove the cheese rind and you're all set.

My pan of tomatoes made four hearty servings of sauce. Excellent on pizza or as a dipping sauce!

*you know, the edge of the cheese that you cut off and save in a baggie in your freezer.

 This recipe is cross-posted at Saturday’s Mouse, where I’m working on making food out of food.  Stay tuned - tomorrow I'll post outtakes from today's recipe.

Ingredients

• 1.5 pounds tomatoes, mixed

 

• 2 onions, sliced

 

• 1 carrots, chunked or sliced

 

• 5 garlic cloves

 

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

 

• salt to taste

 

• black pepper to taste

 

• 1/4 cup red wine

 

• 1 cheese rind (optional)

 

• 2 tablespoons basil

 

• 1 tablespoon oregano

Instructions

• Cut tomatoes. For big ones, into thick slices (1/2 inch) and for cherries and grapes, just cut in half.

 

• Heat oven to 300. Spritz or drizzle a baking sheet with olive oil (1 tbsp max)

 

• Arrange tomatoes on baking sheet in a single layer (or close). Top with sliced onion and wedge in garlic and carrot here and there.

 

• Drizzle or spritz top with olive oil, and sprinkle on salt and pepper.

 

• Cook in 300 degree oven 2-3 hours or until edges begin to blacken.

 

• Puree roasted vegetables (I used a stick blender, but you can use a regular blender or food processor) adding enough water to get the desired consistency. Go for thick sauce. Maybe 1/4 cup water?

 

• Put sauce in a saucepan with basil, oregano, wine and cheese rind (optional). Simmer low, 10-30 minutes, until ready to eat.

Details

• Prep time: 10 mins

 

• Cook time: 3 hour 20 mins

 

• Total time: 3 hour 30 mins

 

• Yield: 4 servings

 

Editor's Note: Anna has also been instrumental in organizing the South Philly Garden Tour. Through her efforts and the hard work of many others, the tour is up to 20 different gardens and is on track to be a great event and a unique experience. So for that, Anna becomes Reason #6 to do the South Philly Garden Tour... a lot of great, talented people have put in a lot of time to make this happen so you know it's going to be a good time. Click here for more info and a link to buy your tickets online.

On which committee do you serve?

Outreach

What do you do for a living?

I am currently the Volunteer and Internship Coordinator at WHYY, but will soon be a full time graduate student at UPenn focusing on urban greening efforts and non-profit management.

How did you get involved with the food co-op?

I heard about the effort through a few different grape vines, and was just thrilled to pieces.  I immediately wanted to contribute my time and knowledge to help in making the co-op a reality.

Why do you want a food co-op in South Philly?

I've been a co-op member in various places I've lived and have loved the whole experience - the food options as well as the people. Although Philadelphia as a whole is not devoid of co-ops, South Philly is definitely lacking. When I imagine South Philly having the stronger community that a co-op brings, as well as the local and organically grown produce and other products that it will stock, I get happy.

Why should people join a food co-op?

It's an investment in the overall health and vibrancy of our community and supports the local economy; with that, it combines two of my favorite things!  Food and people.

What is your favorite meal to cook and why?

Its summer time so beets and greens! Beets and greens!

Beet and rainbow chard lasagne (smash up some sweet potatoes into that ricotta!)

Also, less of a meal and more of a side but delicious all the same:
Roasted Beet (red, golden and candy-striped beets) and herbed goat cheese tart).

Holy delicious!

5. You can see the fig tree that Mayor Nutter planted. It's actually bearing fruit that is a much healthier snack than the stuff preferred by a certain previous Philadelphia mayor. (Though, to Rendell's credit, he has lost a lot of weight since leaving office.) Twenty (twenty!) gardens all throughout South Philadelphia have signed on to be on the Tour which goes from 11am to 3pm on Saturday, September 10. Gardens range from individual backyards to community gardens to parks. You can visit all the gardens or just target a few since they’re all in a 5-mile radius (perfect for walking or biking). Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 on the day of, and can be purchased now at:

• Urban Jungle, 1526 E. Passyunk Avenue
• Grindcore House, 1515 S. 4th Street
• Ultimo Coffee Bar, 1900 S. 15th Street
• Online by clicking here.

Following the Tour, participants are invited to the Cantina (East Passyunk Ave and Morris St.) for an after party from 3pm to 5pm. Anyone with their Garden Tour ticket will receive 20 percent off food and drinks. We’ll see you on the Tour!

(Editor's Note: Sarah's Garden is one of the 20 featured gardens on our 1st Annual South Philly Garden Tour on Saturday, September 10 from 11am to 3pm. It is also Reason #4 to do the Tour: Because you want to see Sarah's Garden in person! 20 AWESOME gardens. Food and drink specials at several local establishments. An after party at the Cantina from 3pm to 5pm. And all of this fun supports our efforts to bring a co-op to South Philly. Click here for information on where to buy tickets... including a link to buy online if you're into that. Thanks!)

Hi, friends!  We've had a lot of rain!  In fact, this has been the wettest August on record (what, you don't read the NOAA National Weather Service website?  you're missing out!)  And while lots of rain means less work watering for me (yay!  social life!) it also means that my tomatoes are getting overwatered and the skins have started splitting.

Here's one particularly cute example:

For some reason this reminds me of the cartoon version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" that I used to watch as a kid.  Remember how his ears (antennae?) used to curl up when he had an idea or got angry?  Somehow I couldn't find a picture of that.

But the rest of my little tomatoes don't look nearly as adorable.  They mostly look like this:

and this:

Luckily they still taste good even if they look weird.  A few days ago I picked all the red ones and made tomato sauce since that doesn't require perfect-looking tomatoes.  Also I parboil my tomatoes to get the skins off before making the sauce so I think the split skins actually helped with that part.  Nevertheless I'm looking forward to a little less rain and some pretty tomatoes again.

But you know what likes lots of rain?  Seedlings!  The time for fall planting is now (or last week for me) and I planted some kale:

and some chard:

The chard is Rainbow Swiss Chard (I kind of thought that Swiss Chard was the kind with the white stems and Rainbow Chard was the one with the, well, rainbow stems but what do I know?) and you can already see the little bright red stems!

[Sidenote:  last summer the South Philly Review published an article in the police report section about someone stabbing someone with a "chard" of glass...it's since been corrected in the online version but luckily I found it funny enough to take a blurry picture which I will now share with you all - check out the sub-head.]

Another thing that seems to be enjoying all this rain is my eggplant.  Check out all these flowers:

Now if only I could get some fruit...But hey!  Speaking of fruit, I have the smallest fig!

There's that one tiny one and the larger one is a little bigger than an acorn.  Cute!  To tell you the truth, I don't even think I like figs that much but I am determined to eat some figs from this plant because the other one died and made me sad.  And if I end up having to give away figs that wouldn't be the worst thing, either.

That's all for this week!  And don't forget to sign up for the garden tour if you want to see all these plants in person.  They love visitors!

3. You want to know more about the great people in your community and the work they are doing to protect green space.  One of the gardens on the tour is on its way to becoming a community-owned land co-op in order to preserve it from development! Cooperative grocery store meets cooperative land trust in South Philadelphia. Twenty (twenty!) gardens all throughout South Philadelphia have signed on to be on the Tour which goes from 11am to 3pm on Saturday, September 10. Gardens range from individual backyards to community gardens to parks. You can visit all the gardens or just target a few since they’re all in a 5-mile radius (perfect for walking or biking). Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 on the day of, and can be purchased now at:

• Urban Jungle, 1526 E. Passyunk Avenue
• Grindcore House, 1515 S. 4th Street
• Ultimo Coffee Bar, 1900 S. 15th Street
• Online by clicking here.

Following the Tour, participants are invited to the Cantina (East Passyunk Ave and Morris St.) for an after party from 3pm to 5pm. Anyone with their Garden Tour ticket will receive 20 percent off food and drinks. We’ll see you on the Tour!

It has been a while since I shared a Mark Bittman piece on this blog. It's not that they haven't been worth sharing but I wanted to avoid the trap of simply linking every week to the inestimable Mr. Bittman. Come to think of it, might not be a bad idea. His latest is a piece about a new organization under the arm of the AmeriCorps program called the FoodCorps:

50 new foot soldiers in the war against ignorance in food. The service members, most of them in their 20s, just went to work at 41 sites in 10 states, from Maine to Oregon and Michigan to Mississippi. (FoodCorps concentrates on communities with high rates of childhood obesity or limited access to healthy food, though these days every state has communities like that.)

For a total budget of less than $2 million (mostly from foundations), this crew will be out there teaching kids about nutrition, showing them how to create gardens and generally connecting them with their food so that maybe they start think of food as something that comes from the ground, not from a box. It's a great program considering how moribund and underfunded nutrition education is AND how much cash is poured into anti-nutritious marketing. ($2 million is what McDonald's probably pays for one spot during the NFL's big game.) So where could a co-op fit into this? Time to engage in the "vision" thing for a second. But first, this would be a good time to remind ourselves of the mission of the South Philly Food Co-op:

To open a member-owned cooperative grocery store that provides nutritious food to all residents of South Philadelphia while empowering the local community through sustainable practices, food-centric education, outreach, and community building.

That's the difference with a cooperatively owned grocery store. When the profits stay in the community, the member-owners can decide to put some it towards, say, "adopt a Food Corps" and helping to subsidize part of their $15k annual salary. In exchange, the Co-op would be the base of operations for this foot foot soldier (or squad of them) and become a working classroom where parents and children learn how to find the best food at the fairest prices and what to do with it once they get home. End result: a healthier, fitter community; healthy, active kids whose brains are on full power. Together, we will own not just a food store but a social club, a place to learn, and the best kind of health care facility: one that helps prevent bad health from happening in the first place. Oh yeah... and buy your Garden Tour tickets.

2. You want to feel inspired. The Garden Tour features several urban oases that have murals, mosaics and all kinds of other unique features. One in particular takes the idea of a classic "English Garden" and transports it right to the heart of South Philly. Twenty (twenty!) gardens all throughout South Philadelphia have signed on to be on the Tour which goes from 11am to 3pm on Saturday, September 10. Gardens range from individual backyards to community gardens to parks. You can visit all the gardens or just target a few since they’re all in a 5-mile radius (perfect for walking or biking). Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 on the day of, and can be purchased now at:

• Urban Jungle, 1526 E. Passyunk Avenue
• Grindcore House, 1515 S. 4th Street
• Ultimo Coffee Bar, 1900 S. 15th Street
• Online by clicking here.

Following the Tour, participants are invited to the Cantina (East Passyunk Ave and Morris St.) for an after party from 3pm to 5pm. Anyone with their Garden Tour ticket will receive 20 percent off food and drinks. We’ll see you on the Tour!

1. You are nosy like us and wonder what your neighbor's backyards look like.  One of the gardens on the tour uses an old porcelain toilet tank as a planter! (And no, it's not mine thanks to a survey of Facebook friends that didn't go my way.) Find out which garden on September 10, 2011! Twenty (twenty!) gardens all throughout South Philadelphia have signed on to be on the Tour. Gardens range from individual backyards to community gardens to parks. You can visit all the gardens or just target a few since they're all in a 5-mile radius (perfect for walking or biking). Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 on the day of, and can be purchased now at:

• Urban Jungle, 1526 E. Passyunk Avenue
• Grindcore House, 1515 S. 4th Street
• Ultimo Coffee Bar, 1900 S. 15th Street
• Online by clicking here.

Following the Tour, participants are invited to the Cantina (East Passyunk Ave and Morris St.) for an after party featuring drink and food specials. We'll see you on the Tour!