#4 Zingerman's Sandwich – the Dinty Moore: Corned beef, lettuce, tomato, Russian dressing on rye bread.

But it is a fact of life that others have deemed tomatoes to be a tasty treat. They’re included in various standard salads, soups, sauces and sandwiches. Take a sandwich from Zingerman’s Deli, for example, the Dinty Moore (#4):  Corned beef, lettuce, tomato, Russian dressing on rye bread.

I’m almost certain that a sandwich artist properly trained in the culture of Zingerman’s customer service would enthusiastically build me a tomato-less Dinty Moore.

But I do not want to be served such a sandwich.

I want that sandwich served to me the way the sandwich designer conceived it – with a tomato. I can then alter the sandwich to suit my individual taste by manually removing the tomato.

Why not just order a tomato-less sandwich and avoid the tomato traces that are inevitably left behind, no matter how aggressively the corned beef is blotted with a napkin? Because I want the option – up until the very last possible moment – of leaving the tomato on the sandwich, or restoring the tomato to its proper place atop the beef.

Those trace tomato flavors on my sandwich remind me that I still, apparently, dislike tomatoes. But maybe someday, it’ll occur to me that, Wow, that tastes terrific, I should put that tomato slice back on the sandwich!!

I’d like our readers to think of the public commentary we include in The Ann Arbor Chronicle’s meeting reports the same way I think of tomatoes. We include the public commentary, just in case you decide that you’d like to have a bite.

So let’s go back a year ago, to a tomato still preserved in The Chronicle’s archives as fresh as the day resident Jim Mogensen picked it. He was talking about video recording equipment to be installed in Ann Arbor police cars.

And yes, I’m going find a way, by the end of this column, to connect video recording equipment in police cars to Zingerman’s sandwiches.

June 2009

Back on June 15, 2009, the Ann Arbor city council was in the middle of approving a master plan for downtown and considering the matter-of-right version of City Place, a controversial development proposed on South Fifth Avenue. Less prominent on the same night’s agenda was an item to apply for, accept, approve and appropriate the 2009 Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

If Jim Mogensen had made no remarks at the public hearing on that U.S. Department of Justice grant, the topic would have likely received no mention at the meeting at all, and would have likely not received any mention in The Ann Arbor Chronicle, either.

But Mogensen did rise to speak, and here’s how The Chronicle’s report summarized his remarks made at that June 15, 2009 Ann Arbor city council meeting [emphasis added]:

Jim Mogensen: During the public hearing on a Department of Justice grant, Mogensen noted that every year the Department of Justice appropriates grants. He encouraged councilmembers to ask the question, “So what strings are attached?” He observed that last year’s grants were used to purchase bicycles and shotguns. This year he said, it’s digital video recorders to be installed in patrol cars with the provision of up to 30-50 terabytes of storage. The grant also provided for mobile license plate readers, he said, at a cost of $20,000 apiece. He suggested reflection on the probability that all of this information would be collected, including face recognition software together with the driver license photos, so that one could imagine a protest taking place at the Federal Building and being able to identify people participating in the protest.

The Department of Justice grant was for law enforcement policing equipment and technology for Ann Arbor police department’s Patrol Division. The $168,158 grant award requires no matching funds.

Digital video recorders in Ann Arbor police cars? Who knew? I think Mogensen was right to raise the question – one can imagine worst-case scenarios for inappropriate use of technology. And it was also worth raising the question of what, if any, strings are attached by the U.S. Department of Justice.

By raising those questions, Mogensen at least seared into my memory the fact that yes, Ann Arbor police cars would be equipped with video recording devices with a substantial amount of storage.

Fast Forward to July 2010

So when I recently received some correspondence from a Chronicle reader expressing her surprise that Ann Arbor patrol cars are video equipped, my reaction was, “Oh, yes, I remember Mogensen talked about that at a city council meeting.”

How did that reader find out about the video cameras? She had sent the following complaint to the AAPD:

Dear A2 police,

This evening I happened to take the same exit from westbound I-94 as police car [car number]. On my way to the Saline Road Meijers, I remained behind [car number] until it swerved to drive with one set of wheels 3 feet over a double yellow line for about 50 feet, then further drifted to being between two sets of double yellow lines, then turned from that position back onto I-94. If it hadn’t been a police car, I might have thought it was a drunk driver. I saw three turns (that last one would have been quite illegal for us civilians) and two very drifty lane changes, all without the use of turn signals. Besides being a bad example for the teens in the car, this kind of driving bothers me because my teens will soon be out driving on their own. Police officers should not feel compelled to provide young drivers with unnecessary unpredictability: especially at dusk.

I am sure it is boring to drive up and down the freeway as [car number] evidently was assigned Sunday night, and most of us experienced drivers know to look out for erratic moves by the police as they respond to calls. But as far as I could tell, there was nothing of an emergency nature going on.

I’d like you to remind your officers that it makes things safer for the rest of us when they acknowledge other drivers and drive responsibly.

Thank you,
[Name]
Ann Arbor Taxpayer

The response sent by the AAPD supervisor indicates that he used the stored images from the in-car video camera to verify the Ann Arbor taxpayer’s account [emphasis added]:

[Name],

I appreciate you taking the time to inform me of the inappropriate driving practice that you and your teenagers had to witness. It is fortunate that the majority of our patrol vehicles have in-car video. Therefore, armed with your valuable and very accurate information, I was quickly able to retrieve the alleged incident. Upon reviewing the video, it clearly showed the officer driving in a manner that is questionable to say the least. I have identified the person responsible in this incident and they will receive verbal counseling and the matter will be documented in the evaluation file. I apologize for this officer’s behavior and thank you for bringing this matter to their and our attention.

Lt. Myron D. Blackwell
Ann Arbor Police Department
Midnight Command Supervisor

Blackwell’s response reads like a textbook example of how to handle a complaint. Here’s how I’d break down the response:

1. He acknowledges the complaint by sending a response with a confirmation of the facts: “Upon reviewing the video, it clearly showed the officer driving in a manner that is questionable to say the least.”
2. He apologizes: “I apologize for this officer’s behavior …”
3. He indicates that he’s taking action: “… the person responsible in this incident and they will receive verbal counseling  …”
4. He thanks the person who complained: “I appreciate you taking the time [...] and thank you for bringing this matter to their and our attention.”
5. He indicates the complaint will be documented: “[...] and the matter will be documented in the evaluation file.”

Back to Zingerman’s

Which brings us back to Zingerman’s sandwiches. The five aspects I’ve analyzed in Lt. Blackwell’s response are exactly the five steps Zingerman’s advocates in its customer service training for how to handle a customer complaint:

1. Acknowledge
2. Sincerely apologize
3. Take action to make things right
4. Thank the guest
5. Document the complaint

In sum, leave the sandwich making to professionals – if they think a tomato should go on it, just take it as served. You might decide you want a bite after all. Or if you’re like me, you might be dining with a partner who likes tomatoes and will ask every single time, even though she knows the answer, “Can I have your tomato?”

So I’d ask readers to think of the public commentary included in The Chronicle’s meeting reports as just part of The Chronicle’s sandwich – you don’t have to eat every bit. But once it’s there in front of you, you might decide to give it a taste. Or pass it along to your dining companion.

Dave Askins is editor of The Ann Arbor Chronicle.

Marianne Rzepka

When Royer Held decides which tomatoes to plant in his garden each year, he doesn’t look through seed catalogs. He simply sorts through a collection of plastic bags that hold his own private stash of tomatoes-to-be.

He’s a seed-saver, cleaning and saving seeds from his own stock of plants and trading with others who have varieties he’d like to try. It’s his way of saving the flavorful tomatoes he loves and maybe even developing a new strain by working with generations of hybrids.

“Seed-saving is the ultimate source of local food,” says Held, a computer programmer who’s been involved in gardening since he was a child.

Held’s slightly disheveled garden at Greenview Park – one of the Project Grow gardens there – is a library of tomato genetics, but with wood-and-wire frames in the place of shelves, and instead of handing you a volume to read, he might give you a tomato to taste – maybe a Lollipop cherry tomato or a sausage-shaped Pirkstine Orange.

Held’s efforts go back to the time when farmers saved seeds from their gardens, developing regional varieties of tomatoes with resistance to local diseases. When seed companies began to sprout, representatives traveled around the country picking up promising tomato lines and developing new hybrids.

Royer Held, left, at a Sept. 12 HomeGrown Festival tomato tasting. (Photo by the writer.)

After years of saving and trading seeds, Held is growing genetically sturdy heirloom tomatoes – like Olga’s Yellow Round Chicken – in his 25-by-30-foot plot, as well as a number of hybrids that can result in any number of next-generation variations. A tomato that ripens as green one year, might produce seeds with recessive color genes that grow red or brown or yellow, white or pink fruit the next year. He’s even gotten all those colors from the same generation of tomatoes.

Held got started years ago when he and Marcella Trautmann started planting tomatoes in the Project Grow garden at Catholic Social Services at the corner of Packard Street and Golfside Drive. They must have put in about 200 tomatoes on their plot there, says Trautmann, who also is a walking encyclopedia of tomato information.

Currently, she has a vegetable garden at County Farm Park, along with a separate plot for her tomato crop, which this year includes 70 varieties.

Held is growing only 24 tomato varieties this year; last year, he had 46. One year, there were 100, he says, but he had to make some room for other vegetables, like potatoes – which developed into another seed-saving project.

Each season, Held tries to have a garden that includes tomatoes of every stripe, including cherry, beefsteak, oxheart and salad varieties, with all the shapes and colors that tomato leaves come in. This past season, with its wet weather and cool nights, hasn’t been the greatest for tomatoes. Held says the tomatoes that have done the best in his garden are from more northern climes, such as Manx Marvel, from the Isle of Man, which held up well.

Though the tomato is a New World vegetable, it’s become quite global. What would Italian cuisine be without the tomato?

But different cultures have developed their own tomato varieties – Held’s got a delicious Couer de Boeuf from France and a Canestrino DiLucca from Italy. Still, he’s seen American heirloom names pop up in a number of counties, including during a trip to France last year when he found one woman selling heirloom seeds like Brandywine and Green Zebra.

Besides saving seeds from his own garden, Held also trades with other gardeners through the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, a nonprofit group dedicated to the preservation of heirloom plant varieties.

Saving Seeds: A Tutorial

If you’ve run into some tasty tomatoes and want to try saving some of the seeds for next year, time is running out with the winding down of the season. Keep in mind that the seeds of hybrid tomatoes won’t produce the same fruits, so save the seeds of heirloom tomatoes, which will be genetically true to their parent plants.

Royer Held at his Project Grow garden, where he grows heirloom tomatoes. (Photo by the writer.)

Some experts recommend soaking the seeds in water, a method to help get rid of some plant diseases. This involves soaking the seeds in water until a smelly mold forms in two to four days. Scrape off the mold and rinse the seeds.

Held simply takes the seeds he wants to save and washes them through a screen to wash off the gel that encases them and inhibits germination.

In either method, when the seeds are clean, let them dry completely. Though Held stores them in plastic bags, he says paper is fine, too. He writes a description of the tomatoes on each bag, including the color and dimensions of the fruit, along with a description of the taste.

Held says he likes a tomato taste that balances the acids and sugars, as well as has a creamy texture. It’s tough for him to choose a favorite, though this year he’s partial to Orange Russian 117, a bicolor oxheart variety.

Trautmann also ponders the question of her favorite tomato. How a tomato tastes can change year to year depending on weather and soil, she says. In general, says Trautmann, “I like a tomato with flavor.”

Both she and Held are working on stabilizing a strain of the hybrid Old Brooks. Held is developing a yellow tomato called Gold Brooks; Trautmann is looking at a variety she calls Tropical Brooks that she says tastes a little salty.

Held is trying to see if he can develop a green oxheart tomato, but that requires time, patience and a working knowledge of botany. In an open air garden, it’s difficult to find the time and patience to pollinate tomato flowers with pollen from a specific plant.

The trick is all in the timing, Held says, and takes a skill that natural pollinators have perfected.

Says Held: “I’m a terrible bee.” 

About the writer: Marianne Rzepka, former reporter for the Ann Arbor News and Detroit Free Press, is a Master Gardener who lives in Ann Arbor and thinks it’s fun to turn the compost pile.