I’ve been back from Arizona a week now, and much of that time I was separated from my computer. It was good for both of us. Since I’ve been back, I have felt such gratitude for the cornucopia of local food available to me. Yesterday I visited the farm stand on the Ridge and for less than $30 bought 80% of my food for the week. My local eggs and goat milk together with the veggies from my garden and the farm stand will meet my needs with more ease than going to a grocery store!
I appreciate this especially after watching the burgeoning local foods movement in the desert of Arizona. Not only are we a bit ahead of them movement-wise, we have a climate that smiles on our ambitions. Realizing this makes me want to roll in the grass like a kid. (Too many stickers, though.)
I don’t think this month would be half as do-able if it weren’t for the bumper crop of fruit our community is enjoying. Local peaches, blueberries, and blackberries as well as cherry tomatoes are my grazing foods these days. I’ve been making vegetable pies with polenta crust and carmelized vegetables. I use pesto to line the baked polenta crust, and top the carmelized vegetables with mozzarella and sliced tomato–making a mock lattice crust with the tomato. I top that with a little parmesan. (Polenta and cheeses not local, but I’ll get there in time.) (And this recipe is drawn from Mollie Katzen’s “Polenta Pizza” in Moosewood Cookbook.)
We were eating that pie last night along with a salad. Lettuce from our garden, radishes from a friend’s garden, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers from the farm stand. What struck me about the dinner, besides the fact that it was delicious, was that it tasted fresh. That dinner is what fresh tastes like. Do you know what I mean? I can still taste the garden in the food, if you will. I guess that’s the feeling Greg Brown was getting at in “Canned Goods”.
I’m continuing my policy of not purchasing non local food for my own consumption (and as little as possible for the boys). I am using this opportunity to clean out my cupboards and make more room for local or sustainably purchased food. In an interview that aired on KQED about his book Deep Economy, Bill McKibben reminds us that of all our potential efforts, conservation is by far the most important and effective. Minimizing waste is key in conservation, of course, and good for our bank accounts, too. Remember the way our grandmothers could make “a meal out of nothing”? I am trying to channel my grandmas, I guess, and am doing things like making my own veggie and meat broths from kitchen scraps. I try to continually ask myself: Do I need this in the first place? Can I reuse it in the second place? Do I need to buy it again? How can I create it at home? This is more or less my practice with food right now. The Eat Local challenge has helped clarify this for me.
Now it’s time for breakfast: peaches and blueberries with goat milk. Yum!
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