Celebrating the tomato and East Nashville’s Tomato Art Fest

Thousands of revelers crowded East Nashville’s Five Points area over the weekend for the annual Tomato Art Fest. It’s also peak tomato season in Tennessee. Restaurants are dreaming up new treatments, home cooks are concocting everything from simple sandwiches to cabinets full of canned tomatoes to keep the flavor going through the winter. From farms to backyard gardens, everyone’s favorite fruit that’s really a vegetable (or is it the other way around?) is popping up everywhere. So let’s talk about it! We’ll meet a chef who just finished “tomato week” at his restaurant, an avid cook who enters the tomato recipe contest every year and takes it very seriously, and a master gardener who knows how to get your backyard crop just right. But first, WPLN News Director Emily Siner talks about her upcoming Fulbright research on media coverage of abortion rights in Ireland. Guests: Emily Siner, WPLN News Director Meg MacFadyen, Tomato Art Fest co-founder Christopher De Jesus, chef at Butcher and Bee Lance Dupre, tomato recipe contest participant Joan Clayton-Davis, master gardener Dr. Kaushalya G. Amarasekare, associate professor at Tennessee State University