Pictures and reports from Buffalo-Niagara 2008!
 

Well home from this year's Taste Fest, and very tired, I still have to post a couple of pictures before I go to sleep!

Thank you to all who came - it was great to see you all, it was a lot of fun and there were a lot of great tasting varieties of tomatoes to try, and a lot of other food too.

To those who were not able to come this year: you were greatly missed!

I will just post the group picture and a picture of people tasting tomatoes tonight. Pictures of individual varieties, pictures of the prize winners and an alfabetical list of all the varieties will come as soon as I have time!

I hope many of you will post soon!

Good night and good luck! ;)

Hilde

Hilde,
While Remy, Duane and Julianna were helping me scoop up all the cut up toms I wanted for seed, and cleaning up, we commented along the lines that we bet you'd go home and post picks tonight....even though it was your birthday and you were supposed to be going home to share a bday cake with your visiting relatives from Norway! In fact I think Mark said the same thing! You're getting predictable in your old age!

But seriously thanks for taking all the pics. And helping Remy set up such a great day.

To Remy, Gary, Sheryll and family, wow, the hosts with the mosts!!!!!! You're definitely right, Remy - you DO know how to throw a party. But not just throw a party....throw a FABULOUS NO HOLDS BARRED PARTY!!!! Once again, thank you thank you thank you. Grazie, Mille Grazie! Thank God for not serving up the scorching weather of last year, but holding off on the rain too.

Julianna, Duane and Tristan and I detoured to TAR-JAY(Target) and TOPS before crossing the border. We had a very easy crossing. I dropped them off at their car in Burlington about midnight and got home myself just before 0100.

A long but fabulously memorable day. Great to see old friends from last year, meet new friends and sad to miss others that we all hoped would turn up. I've unloaded the car, put the left over baklava in the fridge - after giving Dad some, put the groceries away and am just checking threads and email before calling it a night.

Although I can't wait til next year's bash, I'm making a note to self - don't bring a live plant across the border for Remy!

Zana
who's plum tomato-tuckered out and going to bed now

Sounds like a great time. Congats on such a sucessful event! These regional
gatherings are so much fun from tasting great tomatoes and meeting so many
great folks. I look forward to seeing more pix and hearing about the tasting
results.

Thanks for sharing,

Lee

P.S. Did someone say Baklava?!? Yummmmmo.

Hahaha, Zana, that's funny! I was so tired that I really struggled to write last night, but I just had to post those pictures before I went to bed! I came home to a beautiful and delicious Norwegian cream cake with blackberries from the garden, strawberries and bananas, and most importantly: trick candles on top. My two 4-year-old girls LOVE to blow out candles, and trick candles are the best, since they reignite again and again.

Thank you so much Remy for once again hosting Buffalo-Niagara! You are a GREAT hostess!

Lee, that baklava was DIVINE! It was Armenian baklava, not greek baklava. I probably should have had a fraction of one, but I think I had four pieces, it was by far the best baklava I had ever had, and it was really addictive! Zana, do you by any chance have the recipe? (Please!) Is it very difficult to make?

We had what seemed to be 94 unique Tomato varieties at this year's Buffalo-Niagara! (Assuming that the mystery varieties were unique varieties)

I will post images of the prize winners now, and hopefully I can post the individual pictures of the varieties tonight, if my visitors from Norway will allow me! :)

Hilde

Hi All,
I'm so glad everything went so well! I had a great time and am already looking forward to next year:D.

Hilde,
I can't believe I forgot it was your birthday! I'm glad you got such a yummy cake from your family, and that is too funny about the candles.
I also have a few pics to post, but I still need to put them on Photobucket.
Thanks for your help again!

Zana,
I'm so happy you made it again and brought Julianna and family along too! Thanks for all the wonderful food and seeds!! But don't ever bring me a plant again:lol:!

Lee,
You missed some yummy food:D.
I'm so glad I decided to go with Mark's idea and hold these parties!

I'm going to post a separate prize winner thread so it is easy to find.
Remy

Last night's prize winners were (pictures attached):

Sweetest tomato: Sungold, grown by Richard Price
Smallest tomato: Mexico Midget, grown by Mark Korney
Largest tomato: Mexico, 2lbs 2.2 oz, grown by Mark Korney
Ugliest tomato: Voyage, grown by Tristan Morris
Tangiest tomato: White Rabbit, grown by Julianna Morris
Prettiest tomato: Eva Purple Ball, grown by Hilde Reineck
Craziest tomatohead (the one travelling the farthest distance): Sonja Braathen
Best Tasting tomato: Stump of the world, grown by Mark Korney

Remy had found a lot of really good and funny prizes for the prize winners!

We also had a raffle at the party, with lots of prizes, so that Remy could get some of her expenses covered. Thank you to all of you who bought raffle tickets!

On a personal note, I am having a lot of fun with the fact that all my mom have to do is to show up, and immediately she gets the award for the craziest person of the bunch! :lol:

Hilde

Prize Winners from the 2008 Party
 

Best Tomato went to Stump of the World!
It was grown by Mark Korney. Hilde also grew it, but I made the executive decision that Mark's tasted better yesterday.
Second place went to:
Tie between Earl's Faux and Dice's Mystery Black.

Sweetest Tomato went to Sungold.
It was grown by Richard Price.
Second place was a tie between Hugh's and Rinaldo.
Rinaldo was grown by me. This one also got a vote for Best Tasting. This is surprising since it is a paste that I and many others got from Bully a couple years ago!

Tangiest Tomato went to White Rabbit.
It was grown by Julianna Morris(Sorellina.)
No second place, the rest were all single votes.

Prettiest Tomato went to Eva Purple Ball.
It was grown by Hilde.
Second place went to Plum Tigress.

Ugliest went to Voyage.
It was grown by Tristan Morris our youngest tomato grower there!
Second place went to an ugly cat-faced bumpy unknown.
It was grown by Ginny Barber.

Biggest went to Mexico at 2lbs 2.2 oz.!
It was grown by Mark Korney.
There were quite a few other big ones like Tom's Yellow Wonder and Rose Beauty, but I didn't record who's actually came in second.

Smallest went to Mexico Midget.
It was grown by Mark Korney.
Second place went to Remy Rouge.
It was grown by me.

Craziest Tomato Lover went to Hilde's mom.
She came all the way from Norway!

Remy

Ooops, I didn't see your post before I posted mine, Remy. I was glad you forgot it was my birthday! I wasn't going to say anything, but when I had to leave, I had to explain why I left and didn't stay until the end to clean up. Did you have enough help? Next year I will stay until the end for sure!

One thing I regret, was not taking some of the cut up Byche's Serdste Orangevoe to save the seeds, I really liked that tomato. Mmmm.

Hilde

I am sorry, Remy, I posted the pictures of the prize winners on the other thread!

Hilde

Morning all...not sure if I'm awake or not yet...let alone coherent enuff to type something, but here goes.

I'm saving seeds from everything that I took that was already cut up from yesterday. That's on the agenda for today. So if you pm with your snail mail addy, I'll make sure that you get some, Hilde. That goes for pretty much anybody else. I probably took home something of almost 2/3's of what was there...so many "new" ones to me...but I'm a neophyte when it comes to collecting varieties. Last years collecting doubled my collection to about 60 varieties...lol. This year I came prepared with baggies and a sharpie...heeheehee. And I think I can say I've doubled my collection again. LOL Thanks one and all.

As for the Baklava recipe....well....do you really want to go to the hassle of making the dough, Hilde? LOL Actually you can buy phyllo dough fairly easily in grocery stores up here, would assume its the same in the States, these days. Before you get shocked, that tray took 3 lbs of unsalted butter and about 1.5 lbs of walnut crumbs (make sure they're fresh with no black pieces - tastes better) and about 5lbs of phyllo dough. And that was before baking.

The syrup is made from spring water, granulated white sugar, honey. I forgot to put cinnamon in the syrup, but as you can see it was still good without it.

Make sure that you precut the layered baklava before you bake it. It would be nigh on impossible to do after baking. It helps considerably if your knife is extremely sharp - less tearing of the delicate dough.

After baking until brown in a 350F oven. Remove from oven and remove 2 corner pieces and tilt the tray gently to allow excess butter to drain out. The more you remove the better and less greasy tasting the baklava will be.

Now self critiquing the batch from yesterday, I'd say I put way too much syrup on it. You need to make the syrup while the baklava is in the oven, so that its ready when you've finished draining the butter. While both the syrup and baklava are still hot, pour the syrup over the baklava and let sit for about 5-10 minutes and then drain off the excess. Yesterday I was loading the car while that was sitting, and when I came back the baklava had wicked up all the syrup - even if it was too much syrup. Too much syrup equates to soggy phyllo. Still tastes good, but not as "crispy".

I suppose I could run a "baklava" class at next year's event. LOL

I'm thinking I need to go back to bed. When I got home, my father informed me that my bro had broken down on his way to his gig near Milton last night and had called me for help. I obviously was still on Grand Island about 8pm, so was unable to do so. So he got my other bro to come and meet him and take him to the gig. He called just as I was going to bed to tell me that he was wrapping up the gig and little bro was on his way with a can of gas, incase that was the prob. But if it wasn't, would I be on tap with the CAA (AAA for those in the States - just the Canadian version) if it needed to be towed back to KW. Thankfully he called to say all seemed to be ok, and he was on his way home, but might still need assistance if something else happened, as little bro was headed back to Toronto in the other direction. Told me to sleep light....sheeeeesh....just what I needed. So I think now that I've fed the dog, read my email, posted the basis of the baklava recipe, I'm going to crawl back into bed. My sinuses seem to have become stuffed overnight. So I hope I didn't spread that to everybody yesterday.

Once again, thanks for all everybody did yesterday. I wish I'd been able to get over to Mark's place to swap some more seeds too, but Tar-jay and Tops were on the agenda.

I think the amazing thing to little ol' moi is that the vast majority of the varieties this year were different than last year. I'll post a full list of the seeds as I finish processing them later today. I'll be doing the oxyclean thing. Ciao a tutti!

Oh yeah....before I forget. Remy you need to confirm that the weekend of the 17th/18th of October is okay for your crew to join us for Oktoberfest. Mark, you still weren't sure, but you have yr tix, so let me know. Marcia, you had to do some checking I believe, and Remy knows where and how to get ahold of me so that I can set tix aside for you. Anybody else wanting tix, let me know. However, both those nights tend to be sold out at our "little" Festhalle. We usually end up processing about 2300 people through the gate each of those nights, so don't wait too long to make up your minds. For those that need reminding Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest runs from Friday, October 10th to Saturday, October 18th, 2008. Hope to see you there!

Here's a link to my pics:
[url]http://s65.photobucket.com/albums/h234/Remyo_2006/garden%202008/Buff-Niag%20Tomato%20Tastefest/[/url]
Ok, I got to get off the computer go put all the tables and stuff away on Grand Island.
Remy

It seems everyone had a great time at this year's party. I'll start looking for my next tomato based recipe to share with you all next year. Thanks for coming!!!!

Welcome to the madness of TV Sheryl!!!!! Looking forward to seeing you and Remy in KW for Oktoberfest.

Hope the seeds work out well for you too.

[QUOTE=SherylA;109206]It seems everyone had a great time at this year's party. I'll start looking for my next tomato based recipe to share with you all next year. Thanks for coming!!!![/QUOTE]

Hi Sheryl, welcome to Tomatoville!!!!

Your tomato bread was great! Thank you so much for making it!

Here is an image of the recipe you so graciously added. I must have had a brain collapse, because I didn't take a picture of the tomato breads themselves, only the recipe!

Hilde

Zana, you have a PM! :)

Hilde