Whether it is avarai uttakka - local beans cooked with potato, tomato, onions, garlic and tempered with mustard seeds, or sandagai - roasted tomato sauteed with small onion, garlic and coconut ground to a fine paste - the "masala made carefully after dry-roasting 17 spices and not bought off the shops" is the key, Indira says.

BBC: India's homemakers recruited as hotel chefs

Chef Tetsuya Wakuda, who dazzles eaters Down Under with creative Asian dishes, has a surprisingly simple tomato sorbet that calls for throwing tomato skins, seeds and all into a blender with a few other ingredients.

NPR: Cranking Up Savory Sorbet

The Seed Savers Exchange is a 850-acre farm that saves and shares heirloom seeds like Strawberry Crown Squash, Lemon Drop Tomato, Stone Mountain Watermelon and Champion of England Pea for future generations.

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