Sweat and Satisfaction

It is an almost universally acknowledged fact that a man in possession of an item of food  is in want of its origin. One can barely bring up the topic of last night’s dinner without someone bemoaning the fact that people don’t know where their food comes from. What they mean to highlight when they say this is the industrialization of our food system. By and large, not only do we no longer know the farmer who grew our food, we can’t even be exactly certain as to its continent of origin. And that’s true. A quick look around the produce aisle proves that most apples and garlic are from China, the asparagus is from Chile, and the raspberries are from God-knows-where. We could all get to know our food better, whether that means stopping by a farmer’s market or finally figuring out what’s killing the squash.

The bone I do wish to pick, however, is with the shallowness of the statement. “People don’t know where their food comes from,” is, at its core, a statement of geography. Nothing else. Concepts of terroir aside, we must recognize that food is more than geography.  There is more than a where, there is also a how. People don’t know how their food comes to them. They have no idea the kind of effort, skill, and knowledge that goes into growing food.

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The Squash Blossom Eaters

Oh. My. Goodness.
Now I understand.
People always get this crazy glint in their eyes when they talk about squash blossoms. And then they shake their heads sadly at me when they realize I am one of the uninitiated squash blossom eaters. Feeling like I was either missing out on a great snack or a great opportunity to make fun of foodies crazier than myself, I fried up some squash blossoms last night. And . . .
Oh. My. Goodness. Gracious.

What, you mean you’ve never eaten squash blossoms before? (Eyes widen in surprise while shaking head.)

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The Ravishing Radish Challenge

On Friday, City Roots harvested over 80 pounds of beauty in the form of these Easter Egg Radishes. We grew them alongside the carrots as a companion crop. Fast growing radishes help the slow growing carrots by keeping the soil from crusting over before they germinate and shading out most weeds with their leaves. They also help mark rows as carrot tops can be hard to see.

As other volunteers brought in crate after crate of radishes for me to arrange, I began to feel like I was working in a candy shop. Such vibrant lollipop-like colors are usually confined to the air conditioned candy aisle at the supermarket, not a hot field. For awhile, I felt more like an artist than a farmer, lining the pearly white with the lipstick red and hanging the amethyst purple next to the blushed pink. A lady at the farmer’s market said the next day that they are pretty enough to put in a bowl as a centerpiece, forget about eating them. But I have to disagree. Something so beautiful deserves to eaten, not roll around in bowl till they’re old and wrinkly.

All of my previous experience with radishes has been of the bagged salad variety. So, spurred on by the current beauty and abundance, I rubbed the dirt off of one and took my first bite of a real radish. True to their siren song of colors, my radish began as cool and enticingly crunchy as a cucumber. But then, once I’d committed and swallowed, it threatened to drown my adventure seeking taste buds in a fiery wasabi-like spiciness. I was hooked.

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Arugula and Red Onion Soup

One of the snags people often get caught in when eating a local diet is the ebb and flow of specific foods. First, most foods are not in season year round. They come and go like the tide. They might be obtainable, but you have to travel far to get them. Second, when they are available, they are available in the same way that a tidal wave is available.

Lettuce is one of those foods.  Somewhere along the line, it acquired the status of poster child for healthy eating. People on diets opt for the salad bar instead of fried chicken. Health nuts get bragging rights based on how many salads they eat. Prewashed, mixed, and bagged lettuce is a staple of busy moms trying to feed their family more vegetables. And then there’s me. I think I eat fairly healthfully. And yet, for most of the year, salads (at least those made from lettuce) are conspicuously absent from my table. In the south, where I live, the lettuce season is very short- from about March to mid April, and then again in September. Lettuces thrive in cooler spring and fall temperatures. The intense heat that other sun bathing vegetables like tomatoes adore, exhausts lettuces. But in the spring, before the days get too hot, lettuce comes rolling in from the garden and crashes in waves over farmer’s market stands. It is vibrant green (or red, or purple), succulent, tender, and without a trace of bitterness.

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