Tomatoes on Food Channel

[TomatoDon]

Did you guys see the special on tomatoes and making paste earier on the Food Channel? Very neat. It showed mechanical pickers covering acres and acres of tomatoes, then loaded and hauling them in boxcars. Most tomatoes I ever saw in my life. They showed how they processed them, and it was amazing. Best tomato segment I ever say, and pretty lengthy.

I mention it here because I'm sure they will re-run it. Check your guide.

Don

[angelstiger]

I checked the program scedule for the whole day on foodnetwork.com. I couldn't find anything about tomatoes. Was it maybe another network??

[TomatoDon]

No, it was the food channel. Maybe it was listed under a different heading. I caught it mid-ways and don't really know how it was listed. They re-run that stuff all the time, so maybe you cant stumble onto it.

Don

[MtnMaters]

I know they have a series called "Unwrapped", which takes you start-to-finish on a food product, whether it's Tootsie Rolls, Nathan's Hot Dogs, or wax lips. Sounds likely to me that this may have been the series Don06 was watching.....

Don, was the host thin, reddish-blonde, wearing glasses and sorta The World's Worst "Comic"? If so, I'd bet a bushel of Brandywines Unwrapped is the actual show you watched.

[TomatoDon]

Oh, gosh, MtnMaters, I didn't pay attention to that. It was more like a documentray as I remember. Not sure, though. Don't even recall the face of whoever was doing it. Sorry.

But the format did fit what you described.

Don

[Dunkel]

Could have been the show "The secret life of ..." They explore one food topic for the whole half hour. I haven't seen it but will look for it. Thanks for the heads up Don.

[chilhuacle]

I think MtnMaters may have hit it. Does this sound like it Don?

Unwrapped

That's Italian
It's all things italian as we Tour the Chef Boyardee factory, relish how Ricotta is produced and get the "skinny" on Low Carb pasta. Visit a virtuoso turning noodles into works of art and see how garlic is prepped for packaging. Finally, cool off with Ciao Bella Gelato for dessert!

It'll be on again on Feb. 17th at 7:30 PM ET

[lightt]

I saw a show sometime back that sounds kind of like this but it was not on the Food network. It might have on The Learning Channel or Discovery. Maybe Modern Marvels or something.

Like you, I didn't see the entire show but the thing that stood out most to me was the size of the trailers they used for harvest. They must have been 8 feet deep filled with tomatoes. Hundreds (maybe thousands!) of pounds of tomatoes on top of each other. Made me understand exactly why store bought tomatoes are as hard as they are!

I would like to see the entire show if anyone figures it out.
Thanks,
Terry Light

[Pat_W]

Alton Brown's show "Good Eats" is on tonight at 10pm et and is about making sauces.

[Sorellina]

Ciao all,

kc, that makes sense that the Food Network would want to get on that Italian bandwagon with the Olympics grabbing most of the viewing population these days.

I grew up in California and after University, I lived for a few years in Davis, which is in the Sacramento Valley and is also home to most of the nation's Roma tomato supply. Driving any distance from Davis to anywhere, I'd have to pass by field after field of sprawling Roma plants. During the harvest season, driving would sometimes come to a crawl if I happened to be behind any of the transport trucks. People would sometimes stop their cars and pick up the tomatoes that would fall out of the trucks. I have no clue what the capacity of each truck was, but it was substantial.

In a climate like Davis, very hot and very dry, you can dry your tomatoes outside on screens the way my grandparents did in Sicily. I take heart that I don't have to make paste the way my Nonna did by spreading out thickened pressed tomatoes onto a slab outside, then constantly spreading it and re-spreading it over a fortnight until it would mound up and hardly a drop of water was contained in it.

Being the modern North American woman of Italian descent, I make it on the stove top, LOL.

Buon appetito

[coronabarb]

julianna,

How 'bout the I-5 freeway on and off ramps with tomatoes spilled all over the road, from the trucks making their turns? LOL I always wonder WHY they fill the trucks so full, when the ones on the top just end up on the road.