I bought into it, lock, stock and barrel. Organic, Free-range, Local. Turns out, I LOVE FOOD. Food is great. It tastes good, it's good for you, and it turns out, food makes a house a home. I think I always knew all of these things... but it took going to San Francisco (and growing up) to really understand. We always ate dinner as a family growing up. We sometimes had a garden. My mother canned food for winter.
When it was finally my turn to feed myself, I realized I wanted to do more than just fill my belly to make the hunger feeling go away. And honestly, it also turned out that cooking is a lot like doing science experiments in the lab. Only, after you've had a crap day in the lab, experiment-wise, you can pretty much always come home and cook something that is edible. It may not be Michelin Star worthy, but it's pretty rare that I make something that has to go straight into the trash. This was not the case with science experiments in the lab. I'll admit that in the dark days of grad school, it's cooking that reminded me that I was capable of following a "protocol" and tweaking it to make it work for me. Eventually, this was true of my science as well. But in cooking... it's way more reliable...
Me, with a baby chick at the farm in California...
So I bought into a local farm. It's called CSA (community supported agriculture). You pre-pay a particular farmer for a given amount of produce. Once a week, there is a delivery of fresh veggies to a central location. In exchange, the farmer has piece of mind knowing some of their product has already sold (instead of taking out bank loans against likely product) and you know that your money is staying local and helping support a local family. Plus, all your food is fresh. Whatever gets picked the day before is probably what will end up in your box. What an easy way to see a quick turn around from field to plate.. minimal loss of nutrients and produce is often picked ripe, rather than the "green" stuff you find in supermarkets (the ideal fruit for shipping is the baseball-like peach, picked green and shipped across the country, "bruise-free," in crates).
Four years later, I nearly cried when I had to tell my California farmer I couldn't buy his produce anymore. After my move to the East Coast, in December 2011, when he was diagnosed with spinal cancer, I bought a ticket to a benefit dinner even though I couldn't attend. I miss that farm. But as soon as I landed on the East Coast, I found my new local local farm.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love my new farm too. I love having fresh vegetables. I no longer understand how to plan meals without first having a grab-bag of produce delivered to my door. I inherently plan meals based on what I need to use up in the fridge. I can't stand planning meals and realizing I have to go out and buy nearly all the ingredients.
But this new farm is proving challenging. Whereas my wonderful California Farm gave me lots of items and could nearly promise weekly strawberries from April to November and weekly tomatoes from July-September, this new farm is limited by East Coast growing seasons. Gone are weekly strawberries. Apparently strawberry season is over... in mid-June. And here is the reality of produce that is prime for picking one week and nearly gone the next.
Strawberry season has been replaced.... by CORN SEASON. Now, California Farm sent me some corn from time to time, but this was not a staple crop. It was used as a "special treat"... I am used to boxes of tomatoes, green garlic, some new potatoes and more types of greens than you ever thought possible. And sometimes a few ears of corn.
Now, flash forward to the East Coast. We had a few weeks of small boxes of strawberries... many weeks of lettuce, chard and beets... and suddenly... CORN. The first week of corn gave us a reasonable 4 ears. J and I ate it two nights in a row and were happy. The second week (last week) provided us with a nice variety of veggies (onions, collards, lettuce, green beans)... and 10 ears of corn. What is even more difficult with this arrangement is that these 10 ears of corn also arrived with 2 lbs of new potatoes. Um... that's a lot of starch for two people.
"Nevermind," I said, "Surely this is peak season time. I shall freeze some of this corn for the winter when I will surely want it for stews and soups and cornbread galore." And I did. 6 ears. At least 4 cups of corn kernels.
And lo and behold, when j came home with the weekly box of veggies this week, she mentioned "Seems heavy." And I opened it to reveal... an additional DOZEN ears of corn... and all I could think was: "Corn... You are offensive to me."
12 ears of fresh corn... alongside the bag of frozen corn from the week before...
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