As our summer wraps up, local gardeners start hauling in the fruits of their labour. Digging up potatoes and onions is fun, but the tomato harvest is always a fraught one in our city—give the green tomatoes a chance to ripen on the vine, or play it safe and bring them inside before a hard frost damages them?
For there are a lot of us growing tomatoes here. We may be far away from Italy, but we still attempt to grow the juicy red fruit that is a key ingredient in Italian cuisine. Perhaps the first Italian immigrants looked at our cool landscape with a sinking heart, knowing that much of the produce abundant in their homeland wouldn’t grow here. Perhaps that’s why our Italian grocers have thrived and flourished over the decades.
Our cover story this month is dedicated to Italian food—the local producers and grocers who provide us with it, the many restaurants that serve it, and the food, the food, the food.
