07/18/2026
Mocking Crow Farm won the Flavors Of Freedom contest in the appetizer category on the Fourth of July at the Durango Farmers Market I made "A Farmer Gets Fancy Tomato Toasts".
A favorite thing around our house is a good piece of bread, with a nice slice of cheddar, and a big slice of one of our delicious tomatoes popped in the toaster oven. Simple and so good. For the competition I made three different toasts and fancied them up a bit: the base was toasted Pugliese bread from https://www.facebook.com/Serious.Delights/ with a layer of ricotta cheese from Breen Mesa Farm Creamery and then three different combos of tomatoes, herbs, and olive oil: Red Cosmonaut Volkov with tarragon, Pineapple and Afghan Orange with red vein sorrel, and Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye and Cherokee Purple with basil. These are all tomatoes we have for sale at the market. I wanted to offer up an alternative to the perfect round red tomato with basil on a slice of mozzarella (which is indeed wonderful), so I used the tomatoes that were not perfect in appearance but still great in flavor and chopped them up to make something mighty fine.
Do a web search to learn more about the tomato varieties...Cosmonaut Volkov is a bit of an awkward name at market, but a great tomato and interesting story. http://plantswithstories.com/tomatoes/cosmonaut-volkov
Here's a link that shows all the contestants. https://www.instagram.com/reel/Da5z5gakrQm/
