Chef, The Tomato Man was Darrell Merrell, a long-time seed saver from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who preached the gospel of growing heirloom plants and was a driving force behind the heirloom tomato movement in Oklahoma for many years. He passed away last year after a battle with cancer. He sold heirloom tomato plants every spring (and some other veggie varieties as well) from the old home place near Jenks where he'd grown up. A couple of years ago, Mr. Merrell's daughter, Lisa, returned home to Oklahoma and joined him in the family business. At that time they changed the business' name to The Tomato Man and Daughter. After Mr. Merrell's death last year, Lisa continued the business but has changed the name to The Tomato Man's Daughter to reflect reality. She continues the tradition of raising and selling heirloom varieties and is, in fact, hard at work on expanding the business. (I think her dad would be so proud of her.) Long before he became known as The Tomato Man, he also saved and shared heirloom varieties of garlic, which led to one of his nicknames "The Tomato Man With Garlic Breath". His mom's rocambole is one that he grew for decades and passed on to others to grow by generously sharing the garlic with them. If you visit the website Carol linked above, you can see the business location and hours. If you are interested in heirlooms, check out the Top Ten list. My favorite Darrell Merrell tomato is Royal Hillbilly. If I wasn't so far from the Tulsa area, I'd buy some of my plants from Lisa every year just out of appreciation for all her dad did to encourage folks to grow heirloom varieties. Since I'm way down south, though, I just raise my own but always recommend Lisa's business to anyone in that part of the state looking for heirloom tomatoes. I don't know if Lisa carries garlic in the fall, but I certainly hope she does. Dawn

It is more determinate in size but not in timing since it peaks but then keeps on going :-) Semi-determinate is a better description. IMO the confusion isn't simply a Burpee relabel, but because it is a Roma type of tomato, except more 'grande', and on one hand it was simply called a Roma Grande (a large Roma type generically), as well as a Roma Rio Grande as the type with the variety name, since Roma is so ubiquitious and used as a variety as well as generic. Expect 3 1/2 - 4 1/2 ounce fruits. PC

As long as everything is still hard I wouldn't worry about it (in the freezer) The fridge stuff probably is ok as long as you didn't open the doors too much. Does anything smell? I'd throuw that out. My power was off for about 4 days during our ice storm and I had to throw everything out. The neighbors dog ate pretty good during that time. I have gas heat powered by elec so I know what you went through. I'm glad it's back on for you.

Dumpsters are gone, beautiful new cedar siding is all in place, new window is in place, and the painter is coming out tomorrow. I've learned to schedule my friend when contractor's away, LOL. I'll post pictures when I can pry my kids off the home computer... The best story so far, the pressure wash guy was out the day the garage was supposed to come down, and I told him I'd call him in two weeks once I was ready to have the house painted. He showed up yesterday and drove right by the house. I'm standing out in the front yard watching him and his crew and his trailer go by thinking, what??? He gets to the end of the road, turns around, comes back, and stops in front of our house. He gets out and says "I didn't recognize your house!" I say "is that a good thing or a bad thing?" and he said, "No, it looks so good without the garage thingie!" It looks even better now that it's been gently (low pressure) washed, and all the concrete has been high pressure washed-you can barely see where the garage used to be and now it's a big flat perfect basketball sized playing slab (very hard to find in atlanta). It's exciting to see the diamond (which I KNEW was in here somewhere when I bought it) emerging from the rough...