Homegrown Alabama is hosting its third Annual Bama Loves Tomatoes Festival July 5 from 3-6 p.m. on the lawn of Canterbury Episcopal Church. The festival will include a salsa competition, in which participants can enter their own recipes to be judged, a kid’s crafts table, a live concert and a chef who will be doing demonstrations.
Lindsay Turner, Homegrown Alabama’s market manager, said the salsa competition is always the most popular part of the festival.
“We find that — or have found in the past — people just go nuts for tomatoes,” Turner said. “I think part of that is also because during the BLT, we give out free tomato sandwiches and folks just love tomato sandwiches.”
To enter, participants must come between 2 and 3:30 p.m., with a pint of their homemade salsa. The entry should be labeled with the person’s name, phone number and email address as well as the instructions for the recipe.
While it’s not required, Turner encourages participants in the salsa competition to purchase tomatoes and other ingredients from Homegrown Alabama or another local farmers market in order to support their business. Once the judges finish ranking the entries, the public may sample the salsa starting at 4:30 p.m.
Mo Fiorella, Homegrown Alabama’s upcoming market manager and graduate student, is also a fan of the BLT Festival. In 2011 she attended the Festival as a vendor and has been working with Homegrown since her freshman year at the University of Alabama.
“I think developing smart food relationships is really important to me,” Fiorella said.
She said knowing where your food comes from and supporting the local economy is the main reason she became more involved with Homegrown Alabama.
In addition to her personal involvement with Homegrown, Fiorella has received much positive feedback from people who have decided to start shopping locally.
“I’ve met a lot of people who have started going to farmer’s markets and said to me as a vendor, ‘I’ve lost all this weight’ or ‘I’ve started eating fresh produce and all of these vegetables, and I feel so much better just in general,’” Fiorella said. “Health impact is really huge for a lot of people who never would have thought it was so important to eat fresh produce.”
Homegrown Alabama is a non-profit, student-run organization at UA. Its mission is to educate students about the benefits of eating local produce and to serve the Tuscaloosa community by fostering relationships between local farmers and the University. The market runs every year from the beginning of April to end of October.
Students can become more involved in Homegrown Alabama by volunteering at the market, attending Homegrown meetings, plan markets of their own or donating to the organization on their website.
