One month til MAGTAG!
 

NOW I'm nervous. Time to refine some of our plans and figure out who's bringing what (besides tomatoes, of course).

Despite my successful 36.2 lb weight loss, I will handle the BLT bar, as I did last year. I may need some help with extra tomatoes (Greg?) since I'm not sure what my harvest will be like by that point. Things have not been going that great, with the drought. Thank goodness we got some rain last night in my neighborhood. I'll see if I can convince DH (Dave) to man the grill again.

I also have plenty of party plates, cups, napkins, utensils, etc. from various "cooking club" events I've been involved in over the past year. We'll probably need more plastic plates for the actual tomato varieties (and lots of Sharpies!)

I will bring some vino for those of us who aren't teetotalers but aren't into homebrew, either.

Kim (Bluekat) emailed me a while ago and asked whether we should try the method of judging used by the SETTFest folks - take a look at their photos on this site. She even sent me a copy of the form that they used - Morgan Feldon created it in Adobe Illustrator, but luckily my DH has a copy of that software, so we can edit it for MAGTAG. I've saved the file in PDF format in case anybody would like to view it.
(Mischka, is there any way I can attach it to a message? If not, email me and I'll send you a copy.)

OK, so what other brilliant ideas does everybody have, and what do you plan to bring along this year (besides tomatoes)?

Cecilia,

Last year I brought a bunch of hamburgers and hotdogs but I don't they there were really needed. People brought so much other food that it wasn't really necessary. On the other hand I will bring modest quantities of ground beef patted into burgers and some chicken for the grill.

I of course will have extras of utensils and some aluminum foil for the grill and cups and plates.

Also it seemed that everyone brought beer wine ecetera such that we enough to get a civil war reenactment brigade drunk enough to try and re-fight the civil war. I don't think we will have much problem there :-)

The big hits were the tomato dishes that folks brought and that should be encouraged.

Judging the tomatoes:

I will look at the Setifest site but I haven't yet. A method that I thought would be slick and would avoid you or I having to do a bunch of work is the penny method.

I could bring a bunch of pennies in jars and leave them around for people to take. We could put named cups behind the tomato plates and tape them to the table. When folks tasted the tomatoes they could put pennies in the cups depending on how much they liked them.

0 pennies - Bland or Bad
1 penny - Good
2 Pennies - Superiour
3 Pennies - one of the 3 best I have tasted.

When the judging is over I could bring my scale and we could weigh the cups. This would make it so you or I wouldn't have to tally the votes in the end.

Just a thought. I will look at the SetiFest method now.

Greg

Cecilia, to attach files, go to [COLOR=Blue]Additional Options[/COLOR] below the posting window. Next, [COLOR=Blue]Attach Files[/COLOR], [COLOR=Blue]Manage Attachments[/COLOR]. Then browse for the file and attach. Can be directly uploaded from your computer, or a URL.

I think Morgan was/is willing to assist the MAGTAGers in designing a logo in Adobe Illustrator. Completely up to you; if you want help, just get in touch with him soon so he has the time to do it.

I was planning on stopping at the Italian Market in South Philly on my way out of town that Saturday to get what I believe is some of the best Italian bread around--Sarcones. I was figuring on six to eight long loafs and say three dozen steak rolls. Does this sound like enough? Please let me know.

Reminds me that I got to find a hotel nearby the park--any suggestions?

Thanks for the info, Suze!

OK, here are two attachments - the original SETT scorecard (now in PDF format), and a PDF file of my MAGTAG version of it. Let me know what you think.

[quote=Cecilia_MD7a;67707]OK, here are two attachments - the original SETT scorecard (now in PDF format), and a PDF file of my MAGTAG version of it. Let me know what you think.[/quote]

Very nice scorecard!

Ceceila,

Very nice! This will be much easier to grade then way we did it last year.

Nice going.

Greg

Great scorecard...

Mark, to answer your earlier question, the closest hotel to to the park is a Quality Inn that is just off the I-95 exit. It's only a couple miles from the park. Donna and her friend stayed there last year and weren't impressed, though.

If it's within your budget, I would suggest investigating hotels in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. It's only a 10-minute to the park from there, and if you're not bringing along a ton of tomatoes, you could probably ride the light rail down to the park!

That's right, Mark, you said you were bringing bread - I think you could safely carry that on the light rail!

So what about Itinerary? Last year it didn't really seem like we needed one. Things just kind of moved along at their on pace however this is sort of what we did last year:

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]9:30-10:30 Setup (I'll meet you there)[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3] [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]10:30-11:30 Wait for people to show up and instruct them on how to enter their tomato in the tasting. This means put a name on a plate and place it on the table in alphabetical order (or not in that order ;-). Show folks where the name tags are so they can put them on.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3] [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]11:00 – 12:00 Start grills and Cecilia gives an inspiring introduction.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3] [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]11:00 – 1:30 Taste testing would already have begun and would continue indefinitely :-)[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3] [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]1:30 – 2:00 tabulate tasting results and begin recipe taste testing and lunch.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3] [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]1:30 – 2:00 Contests? Last year we skipped this but we did have best tomato. I could get my kids to make prizes. They would like that![/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3] [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]1:00 – 2:30 Seed swap[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3] [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]1:00 – 3:30 Demos[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3] [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]This time let me help you with the tablulating! I didn't realize you were doing it all until I saw the pictures. This time it will be easier with your new scorecards anyway :-)[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]Greg[/SIZE][/FONT]

Hey, Greg - my SIL Suzy helped with the tabulating last year, so it wasn't just me.

Somewhere in the itinerary we need to make a place for cake and a rousing round of "Happy Birthday" for my Dad.

Cake is dessert. Let's do it around 1:00 to 1:30?

Thanks for the advice...I did not know I was that close to the park from the inner harbor...and could use the light rail. I was down in Baltimore a couple of years ago and stayed at one of the Tremonts...and liked the hotel. Will check it out...thanks again.

Scoresheet looks good. Livingston would be proud. ;)

I wish you a successful tomato tasting. :)