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.