DON'T BRING ME DOWN

I like grocery shopping. I know it’s weird but, since I like to cook, wandering the aisles puts me in a creative mood. Start with produce….what looks good? What can I make from it? What goes with? Mind you, I’m no foodie…no gourmet. I just like to cook and I cook from scratch because I fear the stuff on labels I can’t pronounce. I read labels because I’m afraid NOT to. Think I’m exaggerating? Humor me and compare the labels on sour cream….any brand…whatever you have in the frig. Then read the Daisy Sour Cream label. Yeah I know, the one with the llame commercial “ . a dollop of Daisy….” Work with me here. I’ll save you the trouble. There’s ONE ingredient – grade A cultured cream…that’s it … compared to a LIST of unpronounceable gelatins and preservatives in the others. Scary no?! Well it is to me.

Anyway, I have peeves…things that flat PISS ME OFF and threaten to ruin my shopping experience: First, the G-damn intercom system in Winco and the checkers’ insistence on hitting that additional (unnecessary) SQUAWK button when they page. I shop with my iPod, happy music in my ears to cover most of it up and to keep from getting grumpy but still it leaks through. Second, people who change their flipping mind and set their abandoned item on a random shelf, especially when it’s a perishable. What kind of brain dead idiot doesn’t think that costs us all when they say…”Oh I don’t want this cheese…I’ll just leave it here with ….the Cheerios”. ? Third, people who are unwilling to put shopping carts away in the corrals in the parking lot. They have just done a half-marathon, wandering around a freakin’acre of food and assorted obstacles and they can’t manage a FEW MORE FEET to put the cart away to keep it from planting itself in the side of a car! Don’t get me started on the unsupervised little urchins allowed to put their fingers in the bulk bins and taste the generic jello or drink mix or whatever. I wouldn’t buy that stuff but, if I were in charge of the bulk bins, I’d put the pinto beans down low and the pretty candies and fruity flavored ANYTHING up too high for the oompaloompahs to reach. Where is the couth and decorum? Where is Miss Manners?

OK … better now. Ommmmmmmmmmmmm…

BUY LOCAL = BUY FRESH

You call it summer….I call it Farmer’s Market season. Thank goodness for the availability of fresh picked, local produce. Although many people frequent the farmers markets for organic fruits and veggies, for me the draw is FRESH. Often, the fruits and vegetables are picked the same day they are sold at market and you couldn’t get much fresher than that unless you have a veggie patch of your own. Honestly, though, I’ve been a hit or miss visitor to the Saturday market in Arcata. My two sides pull at me – my healthy, cook-from-scratch side is thrilled with the options, especially when Japanese eggplant and lilac bell peppers arrive. However, my thrifty side winces at the cost of a $6 bag of wax beans I bought for a bean salad. You can blow $20 with no effort at all.

This year, that all changes. I’ve had an epiphany of sorts. I shop happily at Winco every week. I love their variety and just shopping there is an adventure. At certain points in the month, it CAN be overwhelming -- families with unruly kids in tow doing their month’s shopping -- and I’ve learned that if I shop with my iPod in my ears, the infernal squawking of the store intercom isn’t half as annoying. The prices on produce have always been reasonable but I’ve found the quality has become marginal of late. Bananas bought green ripen into inedible bruised fruit; the same with cantaloupes and nectarines. The last straw was two “clamshells” of strawberries purchased on Thursday night that were a mass of black fuzz by Saturday morning when I hoped to make a fruit salad. Those went to my hens along with two of the four “on the vine” tomatoes. When you factor in waste, the low prices are not so low.

I decided I would start hitting the farmer’s market more regularly to supplement my CSA farm share box I get each week from the College of the Redwoods farm. The produce there is a little more expensive but SO tasty. Fresh greens for salad along with lemon cucumbers. Little baskets of sweet cherry tomatoes in a variety of colors. None of it will go to waste. I wish I didn’t have to go all the way to Arcata for the big market but the one in Henderson Center is over before I get off work.

The upshot of this is a new word added to my vocabulary – locavore. It’s a word coined to identify those who choose to eat food grown or made in their area. eatlocalchallenge I’ve always supported local businesses -- the fact that our local breweries produce an awesome product makes THAT particular decision pretty easy and there’s something very cool about buying fish directly from the docks and the people that caught it. Soon I'll be picking fresh berries on the roadside to make jam. Choosing locally grown vegetables and fruit assure that my family is eating a food that was picked within days if not hours of sale. It wasn’t picked green somewhere before being shipped vast distances. I’m sure that the intension is that green pit-fruit and tomatoes will be tough enough to withstand the violent bouncing they will receive in transit but they still bruise and the damage isn’t seen until AFTER it ripens which is generally also AFTER I’ve paid good money for it. I've already stopped buying apples in the stores choosing, instead, to limit my apple purchases to local apples during apple season. That may mean a trip to the orchards of Wrigley, Clendenen or Arrington or maybe to Myrtle Avenue Market where I can count on them to have local apples but no longer to I buy autumn apples in the off-season only to be faced with a handful of mealy, flavorless, OLD apple.

My CSA farm share boxes have just started…greens and kohl crops mostly but a little basil thrown in to give me the promise of pesto season. Before long, the boxes will be overflowing with tomatoes and peppers, melons and squash. Maybe a few too many beets for my taste though but, thanks to included recipes, I’ve learned that borscht is not so bad. My fingers are crossed for figs that we were tantalized with two years ago. So here’s to a season of flavor and getting my moneys worth.