Filling the Cupboards

Over the past few weeks, I have been keeping long hours at work followed by long evenings with other stuff to do. Jon has been keeping up the preparations for the long winter to come. I found myself flat out last weekend with some kind of bug that kep me sleeping all day Saturday. Jon was up and out to the market -- he was determined to get tomatoes to begin canning them for the coming months. And so he has. He has made tomato paste and tomato sauce. In the past we would have said we don't eat many things with tomato, but this year will be different. We figure a jar of tomato sauce will be good on just about anything in the cold of winter when fresh foods are sparse.

Every evening as we sit down to eat, one or the other of us comments on how much better the food we are eating this summer is than our usual fare of the past several years. One of the things we decided was that if I was having a lunch meeting at work, the local rules would not apply. I had several of those last week, just before I caught whatever bug I caught. I blamed part of my ill feeling on the food I had been eating. Not as fresh, more processed, nowhere near as nurturing.

We have now had local chicken -- pasture raised, and local beef. They are so good. At first we think about the cost, $3 - $12 per pound, and think it is impossible. Then we think about what we would spend eating out, which we would do, and how much better what we are eating tastes than what we would get while we were out, and we know we are on to something for ourselves and all the people we can convince to eat this way.

We bought a 1/2 bushel of peaches a couple of weeks ago. I think they were the best peaches I have ever had. They were juicy and sweet. So much better than most we get at the grocery store. We are so fortunate in living where we do. We may not have bananas or citrus fruit, but the food we do have is amazing.

Dog Days of Summer

The humid days of August have arrived. These are the days when the fruits and vegetables are ripe and plentiful and it is too hot to cook anything. I think about a raw diet rather than a local diet. But we are committed to local this year. Last week the Massachusetts Avenue Project sponsored "Be Vocal, Eat Local," a campaign to encourage folk to eat locally grown and produced foods. I am not sure what effect they had, but it was a good effort on their part.

This past Sunday, the New York Times had an article about local eating that questioned whether local really was better for the environment. If one lives in a place where growing food and raising livestock is challenging, it is probably better to eat food produced elsewhere. Buffalo has no such problem. I suspect people in Western New York could get all of their nutritional needs met by eating food from within 100 to 150 miles. We are fortunate with the lakes providing the perfect climate for all of the things we could want -- well, there is coffee and chocolate and bananas. Almost everything we could want.

The farmers' markets are bursting now with peaches and plums, tomatoes are starting to be plentiful, potatoes, onions, peppers. Anything we need we can find. Jon tried his hand at some raspberry jelly using homemade pectin, peach butter, zucchini pickles. He has plans for more jellies and butters as well as plenty of tomato sauce and salsa. It is amazing to see what we can do, when we determine to eat foods that we know are fresh.