Taste the Rainbow

After harvesting veggies from our gardening earlier this week, I peeked in my bag and thought, wow, it’s like a picture perfect rainbow – bet it tastes just as good.

This thought then led me to think, it’s like you can ”Taste the rainbow”… mmmm.

Sure, maybe I borrowed the tagline from a famous candy, but similar to the original Skittles® pack, the only color missing from my bag was blue, which is pretty impressive considering we’re talking Mother Nature’s coloring au naturel versus something made in a chem lab by the folks at Wrigley.

I think one of the most rewarding things about growing your own food is the immense variety you quickly discover exists out there compared with the minimal choices we actually have in the grocery store. I suppose if you walk down the processed food aisles at your average big box grocer, the appearance of variety and choice is impressive (never mind there are just a few huge companies that make all that “food” and most list high fructose corn syrup among the top three ingredients – that’s a discussion for another day). But when you really examine the options for fresh fruits and veggies, what we get in the store is pretty pathetic.

If you want to talk variety, just open a seed catalog from the great growers at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Their catalog boasts over 1,300 varieties of heirloom veggies, fruits and flowers. That’s right, THIRTEEN HUNDRED.

In my own garden this year I’m proud to boast green eggplant, as well as several orange and yellow tomato varieties. One cherry tomato (Helsing Junction Blues) starts out green and blue and ripens to red and an almost blackish purple. In the past, I grew Gretel eggplant, which are a dazzling white. And have you ever seen Purple Dragon Carrots? It almost sounds like a fairytale.

This time of year especially, as the harvest peeks, it’s an unbelievable treat each time I enter the garden and know I am part of something bigger. An effort to remember and actualize the diversity of flavor, hardiness and beauty in our food system. A way of life that recognizes the importance of saving seed and making it available to all, not just those who reach the patent office first. And something that reminds us you don’t have to be perfectly round and red to be called a tomato.

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