Cauliflower shock

Wi th apologies to those of you who are already tired of hearing about the skyrocketing price of cauliflower, I have to admit that I didn’t realize how much I liked the stuff until I couldn’t afford it anymore. This is human nature, of course, and I hate myself for even admitting to it.

I chopped up my last head of cauliflower last night — a sad little thing, half the size of cauliflowers past. I had been afraid to touch it over the past week even as I looked up gourmet recipes for cauliflower in fancy magazines — roast cauliflower with whipped goat cheese, cauliflower tacos.

Finally, I had to do something with it before it turned. I made a soup, so I could freeze it.

You have to understand, I always took cauliflower for granted. It was a throwaway food, the sort of thing I would buy to put in the fridge just so that I could have the option of eating it if I wanted to. If it went off, well, who cares? It was just cauliflower.

I am very lucky, being born when and where I was. For most of my life, essentials have been cheap. The truly impoverished would look at my grocery budget with envy, but most middleclass Canadians will, I think, share my experience here. Relative to historic norms, food has been relatively inexpensive for the past few decades. I could afford to let some of the food in my basket go to waste.

Now, suddenly, I can’t. A month ago, I could fill my fridge with a week’s worth of food for two for $100, and today I’m weighing every cucumber. And if this comfort can be taken away from me so quickly, what else could I be about to lose?

I think there is a reason cauliflower is the word on the lips. Through a sudden and unexpected scarcity for a population spoiled by abundance, cauliflower has become the single most potent symbol of the low dollar and California drought — a generational moment. We’re on the verge of a cauliflower awakening.

I now plan my meals down to the garnish. Do I really need four tomatoes, or will two do? Strawberries, in January? Ha! Check out the frozen section.

This invariably leads me to search for local produce in the hopes that it will be less expensive — it often is, but it’s also winter in Canada so there’s a limit to what we have to work with. The cost of running the greenhouses in frigid temperatures is often prohibitive ... or, it was. I am instinctively imagining how my own grandmother would have handled all this. What kinds of foods did she cook? Have any of those old recipes survived?

My grandparents’ yard was more than just a place to play. They kept a tidy Lshaped vegetable garden and grew string beans and lettuce. They even had a plum, cherry and apple tree. My grandfather kept a grapevine — although, even in B.C., the grapes always turned out tart and tiny.

My grandmother canned religiously. When I was a child, her basement was filled with rows of fruit and vegetable preserves stacked on dark wooden shelves. How does one can, anyway? I remember my own family’s weird food tics, passed down through generations. Don’t you leave food on that plate, not a speck. Food is too precious.

My grandmother stopped canning in the ’ 80s. As I grew up, I watched the last of the preserves dwindle, to be replaced by bulk goods from Costco and chest freezers.

Truth be told, that was the smart choice. It didn’t make sense to grow your own beans and brussels sprouts when you could buy them for pennies a bag — in fact, it’s downright foolish to evade a perfectly efficient supply chain. The time and cost of growing food in your own backyard is often prohibitively high and usually done more as a display of disposable wealth, leisure time and eco- credentials than as a serious and sus- tainable way to produce calories.

That said, if the price of staples continues to stay this high — or, God forbid, to rise — that may not always be the case. There may once again be an economic argument growing and preserving our own vegetables — although this would be an enormous setback for our economy and welfare as a whole.

All of this could change for the better again in a week. The dollar goes up and the dollar goes down. Droughts end. We think. I hope.

What may emerge from all of this is an opportunity for local farmers and gardening centres seeking to cater to people like me, people whose sense of faith in the world economy’s ability to feed the first- world well and abundantly has been just a touch shaken. People who don’t want to be caught off guard again.

THROUGH A SUDDEN AND UNEXPECTED SCARCITY FOR A POPULATION SPOILED BY ABUNDANCE, CAULIFLOWER HAS BECOME A POTENT SYMBOL. — GERSON A MONTH AGO, $100 COVERED GROCERIES FOR A WEEK. TODAY, I WEIGH EVERY CUCUMBER. I WONDER WHAT ELSE CAN I LOSE SO QUICKLY?