Ah, blueberries with whipped cream. One of the world’s simplest and best desserts. Maybe we should cut up a few strawberries, too. They explode with ripe, juicy, tangy sweetness in your mouth . . .
Whoa. Wait a minute. What exactly is going on here? It’s February. Residents of most of the continental United States trudge to work and school across tundra-like expanses of frozen ground and slippery sidewalks. But in their grocery stores, berries wait on the shelves, luscious and succulent.
Residents of the southern hemisphere, and of southern California, indulge the rest of us for a moment. This is a cultural artifact well worth pondering. Our food—not just our berries but pretty much all of it, this time of year—arrives from far away, making us the beneficiaries of a vast network of cultural processes all the more powerful for their invisibility. What exactly does fresh fruit in February make of the world?
It assumes that fossil fuels are cheap and plentiful.
—Paul GrantSorry to be a little sarcastic, but that we’re surprised to discover that the whole world isn’t North America, Europe, or Russia? The tropics and Southern Hemisphere have fresh fruit because it isn’t winter.
—Christine Add your own comment . . .The assumption is that local flavor is bad for business; that all grocery stores, from Arizona to Wyoming, should look the same.
—Paul Grant Add your own comment . . .Fresh fruit in February makes blueberry pancakes at Sunday brunch in Three Hills, Alberta, Canada possible.
—BJ Smith Add your own comment . . .I’d say it makes it more difficult to mark the passage of time by what we’re eating. Not only are the more boring seasonal and long-storing forms of produce tantaizingly easy to ignore (here’s lookin’ at you, turnips!), but the possibility of blueberries all the time, ironically, makes the joy and novelty of the first blueberries of the season impossible or at least irrelevant (“woo-hoo! they’re ... a bit cheaper!!”).
—NateQuite frankly, ‘fresh fruit’ in central PA which has been imported from warmer climates makes it more difficult to eat healthy. While at the grocery store on Monday, Theresa passed up the South American grapes that were on sale because she learned at a seminar how soft, fragile fruits retain the most pesticides. We’re likewise not buying imported blueberries, which (along with strawberries) never approach the taste of fresh picked, in-season berries in the supermarket. We opt instead to stock the freezer with strawberries, blueberries, and peaches when they are local and in-season during the summer months.
Our family is trying to make small steps toward more in-season, local foods and canning some of our own foods for year round. Even if we’re not always successful, we’re conscious of it. Theresa did buy the Mexican avocados that were on sale this week. And bananas are a staple at our house. But we’re trying to make small steps toward change, living more simply, more connected to the seasons, and with greater health.
—Thomas & Theresa Grosh Add your own comment . . .A new culture is created in which 8-year old children (and sometimes 18-year old adults) don’t know where their food comes from, and believe that fruits and vegetables grow from the shelves of huge, fluorescent-lighted supermarkets. In this new culture, we eat what we want when we want it instead of practicing healthy self-denial by looking outside our window and realizing the strawberries are still a long few months away and that they’ll taste better right off the vine!
—Sarah Add your own comment . . .