The Totally Tomato Show

Yesterday we decided to visit the Totally Tomato Show held in the grounds of West Dean College in West Sussex. The weather was sunny and though some rather dark clouds came over, it stayed dry for us. I was a little disappointed with the number of stalls and was told by another visitor that the better show is the Chilli Festival earlier in the year. Must go to that next year.

First thing we saw was a cooking demonstration by Rosemary Moon of MoonBites. She was making a Totally Tomato Sausage Butty and Greek style Sausage and Tomato Salad. It looked really good and free recipes were available. We lost interest when the talk turned to what wine to drink with it!

Next was the tomato tasting by the Tomato Growers Association. The best by far was a beef tomato from France, name forgotten of course, apart from the fact that it starts with ‘de’.

It was not exactly heaving with people, so just as we like it. Dave hates crowds and soon wants to go home if there are too many people, so this was just right.

There were also stalls within the walled garden.

This one just had to have it’s photo taken.

There were a few catering stands too, but queues were quite long for this one.

Next stall was organic teas and coffees, then a stand with smoothies. Next came an organic burger stall which is where Dave went to get himself a bacon butty and me a lamb and mint burger. Lovely! The last tent in this row had bread and other baked items plus a variety of rural craft items.

On the other side were stalls selling various ‘homemade/grown’ items.

Garlic, chillies, cheese, jam, jelly , curd etc.

So what did I come home with?

Some sweet yellow cherry tomatoes

A piece of ‘Stinking Bishop’ cheese (of Wallace and Gromit fame)

A tub of the greatest tasting preserved tomatoes

another nice cheese

A furry tomato (for Ben, this way he couldn’t complain that we didn’t get him anything)

Garlic bulbs for planting in the garden, from left to right the varieties are (as far as I remember) Purple Early, Provance and Iberian White.

a freebie magnetic shopping list holder, with pad

another freebie, this time basil seeds

and lastly, but by no means least,

some tomato seeds for next year. Unfortunately, we could not get seeds of the variety we really wanted, ‘Tangidel’ as they did not have enough seeds this year, but it should be available next year.

So all in all a nice day out.