July 14, 2010
Not ready
I was a bit overzealous in the locavore department yesterday. I bought organic new potatoes and two grassfed steaks at the Woodstock Farmer's market. Along with lettuce and peas harvested, very proudly I might add, from my own garden and a few cherry tomatoes pilfered from the back garden, I made the best potato salad ever. Chief additive? Chives, and a couple of sprigs of parsley and dill, also harvested by my hand. With ingredients like this who can fail?
Except of course the carrots. A week ago I bought some carrots at the farmers market only to toss them in the frig. They didn't look so good so I tossed them in the compost pile. The guilt was terrible. So I tried harvesting my own carrots. The leaves were tall, the carrots tiny, but the flavour was intense. We used them as toothpicks.
Eating this way really requires new habits, which I fully expected when I started this project. To get the full benefit of good fresh produce, you need to eat it, cook it, preserve it immediately. Not when you feel like it. It also requires that you actually cook, not nuke, the ingredients you have on hand. That really requires a repertoire of cooking techniques and recipes, which I'm learning. It also requires a whole new approach to time, which I'm also learning. I'm open to it because I suspect the time saving approach to food (procuring, preparation, consuming) is flawed. What I've been saving in food time I've been losing in family time. Jim and I really enjoyed yesterday's meal. He's a wonderful cook of course but coming together, in the preparation and then enjoyment of it, was really special.