NUTRITION TIPS TO KEEP YOU HEALTHY

Lynx Links to the Farm – Tomato Time

By Haruko Ruggiero, Midwest Food Connection

Banana Legs. Cherokee Purple. Camp Joy. Gold Currant. Aunt Ruby’s Yellow Cherry. Pink Ping Pong. Snow White.

What are these wacky names? Are they nicknames for a pet? Are they what you might call your little brother or sister? Actually, these are names people have come up with for different types of tomatoes! For hundreds and hundreds of years, since before the tomato began traveling around the world with explorers - going from South America to Europe, to Asia, to the Caribbean, and around again to North America – the tomato has been a food treasured by millions of people. These nick-names are used with tomatoes the way people often use nick-names for each other: They are used because they are well-liked.

You probably know that tomatoes are in all kinds of foods, some quite healthy, some not-so-healthy. Let’s see….pizza of course, in the sauce; spaghetti, in the sauce as well; catsup has tomatoes in it (but it also has lots of sugar in it, so watch out for that). Filled with lycopene (which scientists say reduces the risk for diseases like heart disease and asthma), tomatoes are in many dishes, and below you will find some recipes that really allow the flavor of tomatoes to work its magic.

Speaking of flavor, have you noticed that tomatoes can really vary in their taste? In the winter, when you buy a tomato from the grocery store, you take it home and you might use it in a salad or put it in a sauce. But if you eat it just plain you are probably going to find that the flavor and texture is really not so good. This is because when you buy tomatoes in the middle of winter, they are shipped from a faraway warm place to cold Minnesota and they typically don’t have much going for them in the flavor department. They are picked while they are still green and are not able to develop a good flavor by ripening naturally. A certain gas called ethylene is sometimes used to make them ripe. If they are shipped to us in Minnesota while they are ripe, they would probably get damaged because when they are ripe, they are soft and easily bruised.

Most of the tomatoes grown for shipping around the world are called hybrids. Hybrids are plants grown from seeds that have been changed by scientists who know techniques that can control how a plant grows and what it produces. There are many advantages to growing hybrid tomato plants such as being sure that the tomato will last long and will have a certain shape that people like to see and have come to expect. But sometimes the hybrid seeds can grow into plants that do a great job of making nice round tomatoes that can last a long time, but they miss out on the delicious flavor of other types of tomatoes.

Like night and day, summer tomatoes are very different from winter tomatoes. Summer tomatoes can be local in Minnesota! And there is absolutely nothing like the flavor of a ripe, local tomato from farms and gardens in our own state. They are often so juicy, delicious and the flavor is incomparable. All you have to do is cut them up into slices or chunks and add maybe a teeny bit of fresh herbs and salt and you are set! The flavor of the local tomatoes is what inspires people to come up with cute nick-names for them. The names usually come from the amazing variety of colors and shapes that the tomatoes can be (there are even yellow, pink, brown, purple and striped tomatoes). What would you name a tomato?

The tomatoes people in Minnesota grow can be tasty hybrids, but they can also be heirlooms. Heirlooms are the tomatoes that are grown from seeds that have not been changed by scientists. Seeds from heirloom tomatoes are seeds that you can save from summer to summer and you can expect the same flavor to return in the tomato from the new plant (if you save the seeds from hybrid tomato plants, the new plant that you grow will not produce the same type of tomato as the plant you saved the seeds from ….this is a complicated subject, and hopefully you will learn about it as you move ahead in school when you study botany and a type of science called genetics).

Saving seeds is a wonderful hobby to start. One tomato can have many, many seeds. Not every seed will start a new plant (some are “duds”) but if you save the seeds correctly, and it isn’t hard to do, most of the seeds will make a brand new plant! And remember, each plant can grow many new tomatoes for you to pick in the summer.

If you save seeds from an heirloom tomato plant that gave you tomatoes you absolutely loved, you will be able to keep those tomato seeds for years to come and you won’t have to buy seeds for that type of tomato again (the same is true for other heirloom seeds like cucumbers, green beans and melons). The labels on the first plant or seed packet that you buy should clearly say “heirloom” on the front.

With a handful of saved seeds, you can start several of your own tomato plants inside in the early spring. Once it gets warm out, you can plant them outside and give any left-over plants to family and friends. They will surely appreciate the plant because once they have it, all they will need to do is gather the dirt, water and a sunny place. You don’t even need a garden to grow a tomato plant- you just need a big enough pot! There really are few things as enjoyable around meal time as going to your own plant, picking your own food and putting it on a plate for yourself, your friends and your family. If you haven’t done this already, you’ll see.

Lynx Links to the Farm – The Cucurbit Family

By Haruko Ruggiero, Midwest Food Connection

Do you like summertime barbeques? If you were having one next weekend, who would you invite over? You probably would invite friends, family or both, right? Well why don’t you get a guest list started, and in the next few paragraphs, you will find some tips about tasty and healthy foods you can offer your guests at your special event. For an added twist, you can joke with your guests, when they ask who else you’ve invited, that you’ll also be having over an exceptional family called, the Cucurbits. People may ask, “ Where are they from?” “ How many members are in this family?” You can reply that this is an international family you are having over and it has many members. It is a family that only likes to be out in the summertime. In fact, its members basically disappear when the cold weather arrives. You can add that, interestingly, some of the family members hardly look related at all. Your barbeque guests are going to become intrigued. Are you?

So…… Who are the cucurbits? Alas, here is an introduction: The cucurbits are welcomed “ guests” at many barbeques around the world not because they are known for being easy-to-please guests that love anything you put on the menu, but because they are on the menu. The cucurbits (or cucurbitaceae for long) is the family of fruits (some of which we call vegetables) that includes melons, squashes, cucumbers and many more.

The cucurbits are vining plants that produce flowers – usually yellow or white, and they need their dust-like pollen to be moved around the flowers in order for a fruit to form. The pollination is usually done by bugs – thanks guys! Because they hold the seeds, the parts of these types of plants that we eat are indeed technically fruits. However, even though most of us wouldn’t call a squash or a pumpkin a fruit, it really doesn’t matter to us in the end- as the eaters - because the cucurbits taste good whether or not we call them fruits or vegetables! But it is fun to get “ technical” once in a while, like a botanist (hmmm…what do botanists study?).

The cucurbits are annual plants that grow and die in one growing season. They don’t come back every spring like perennials (a strawberry is an example of a perennial). Cucurbits use their amazing tendrils to climb, curl and wrap themselves around things. As you identify and look closely at plants from this family in the gardens around your community, or perhaps in your own garden, you will notice that they grow impressive amounts literally over night. One day you will see a leaf or two just above the ground, and within the next few days, you will see that there are four, five, perhaps six or more leaves that have appeared and attached themselves to a fence, pole or even other (unlucky) plants!

The cucurbits grow well in Minnesota, but they aren’t all ripe and ready to pick at the same time. Right about now, the zucchini and the cucumbers are starting to be picked on farms and gardens across the state. But the hard-skinned melons and winter squashes won’t be ready until the end of the summer because they take at least three months of warm weather to mature. So as you look around in the grocery stores for the ingredients to the following cucurbit-family recipes, you will find that some of the cucurbits will be local (the zucchini and cucumbers) and some will come from farms further away (you can read the stickers on the squashes and melons to see which warm places they came from).

With the following recipes at hand, and maybe some meat, seafood or tofu to grill, you will be well on your way to a wonderful and easy summertime barbeque, complete with several quick, delicious and nutritious dishes. Have fun with the Cucurbit Family!*

*Be sure to have adult supervision before preparing these recipes