Who needs gluten? Heirloom Expo's Bounty

Yesterday was National Celiac Awareness Day (who knew?!). This day was formally designated by the Senate to be on September 13 to commemorate the birthday of Samuel Gee, the first physician to publish a "modern description" about Celiac Disease and theorize that diet may be related to controlling symptoms. In 1888! Took long enough for all of us to catch on... 

September 13 also happened to be the last day of the Annual National Heirloom Exposition in Santa Rosa. I was lucky enough to go this year, and the sheer abundance and variety you can get within each fruit and vegetable category is amazing. There were dozens of pepper varieties, mountains of squash, and little red-orange fruits that looked like a pepper/tomato cross but turned out to be eggplant. There were even showcases of heirloom chickens, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, and all manner of livestock. And it all got me thinking - it's easy to get hung up on what you can't eat, be that sugar, milk, brownies, cheesecake, peanuts, meat, or even gluten. Sometimes it helps to put it all in perspective and realize that in the grand sceme of things, there is so much more at your disposal to taste, smell, and experience. Seriously, I'm pretty sure I counted 100 varieties of tomatoes alone.

I wanted to share some photos of the bounty. Heirloom fruits and vegetables are incredibly important to sustainable agriculture. Heirloom varieties are fruits and vegetables that were commonly grown prior to the advent of modern agriculture, and have quickly declined in use. They can sometimes be identified by open pollination methods (like in potatoes). Their importance is threefold: they are often more nutritious than modern varieties, they have more diversity which helps protect against all manner of agricultural ailments, and they often (always) taste better (or at least give you more taste options, since there are so many varieties). Seriously, for anyone who says they don't like tomatoes, I have 100 varieties for them to try before they can truly stick to that statement. Actually, here's a list of 600. The expo was definitely worth going to, if only to remind yourself that the earth is always providing interesting things to eat.

So how many varieties of pepper can you name?