Oncoming winter of my food discontent
Living la vida locavore isn’t easy at this time of year, Cynthia R. Greenlee writes.
I have a peculiar and unrecognized form of seasonal affective disorder. I can tell it’s coming not by the turn of the calendar page but by the menu updates at my favourite café.
No longer available: that everything bagel smeared with chèvre from happy goats, justsalty-enough pesto and two slabs of blazingly colourful heirloom tomatoes. In its place is a biscuit with pumpkin spread. The fashionable farm egg atop it is a sad substitute for a sublimely sunripened tomato with that creamy spread.
My seasonal grumps come from the disappearance of summer’s cornucopia from groceries, restaurants and my table. Socially conscious eater that I strive to be, I know we’re supposed to follow the eat-local mantra and rejoice in the timesensitive diversity of all that our soil produces.
I should be revelling in gourds. Instead, I’m sneaking blackberries at the grocery store.
Let’s face it: Living la vida locavore ain’t easy, which is something advocates of responsible consumerism and diets tend to gloss over. It’s nearly impossible to feed myself solely on foodstuffs grown within an arbitrary radius set by food thinkers and theorists who don’t live where I do and whose confidence advocacy often fails to acknowledge that “local and seasonal” doesn’t mean affordable or accessible.
As for locally grown winter produce — are you going to eat kale without the benefit of heat, massage or dressing? Likely not.
Of course, I recognize the value of eating locally and seasonally. Fresher is better.
I want to support my neighbour-producers. And I appreciate that we leave smaller environmental footprints when our grapes don’t have to have a passport or take a cross-country ride to a local market.
“Woke” eating brings me a sense of virtue, but then the community sustainable agriculture boxes arrive, with their dully predictable collections of cruciferous vegetables.
A person cannot live on root vegetables and leafy greens alone, no matter the late crazes for broccoli rabe, kale and rainbow chard. And indeed, there is such a thing as too much roughage.
Unpopular opinion though this might be among virtuous foodies, I cannot summon the same excitement over kohlrabi and curly kale that I feel for squash blossoms and a perfectly ripe plum. The transition to autumn bruises me.
So I cheat. My pantry is stuffed with canned delectables that hold the memory of summerveggie excitement. My fridge is packed with enough jams to enliven oatmeal and survive nuclear meltdown; my freezer runneth over with icy produce. I break out my stovetop or outdoor grill to render rock-hard peaches softer, or to cook corn in the cob in husk.
To be sure, fall has its gustatory pleasures: pumpkin seeds and pumpkin flesh; crisp nights and crackling bonfires; apple butter and cider.
And there are those seasonal straddling treats that blend the summer’s waning fruits and the ascendance of fall, such as the cherry-pumpkin jam I recently sampled.
Meanwhile, I will be eating organic strawberries from California or Mexico, and dreaming of when I can enjoy local ones guilt-free next July.