Food; Weeks 5 & 6

I've been remiss in my culinary reportage the past two weeks and will attempt to make amends here. Although, truth be told, I have not done a whole lot of original cooking the past 10 days or so. I've been grabbing some of the recipes I tried in weeks 1-3 and pairing them with some new, easy-to-make sides, like avocado salads, vegetable combos, bruschetta, etc. My goal was to broaden my repertoire of "go-to" dinners--e.g. meals I could make fairly quickly using foods I usually have lying around--and, for the most part, I think I have done that so far.

Tonight (or, rather, this afternoon) I made a bean chili using a recipe that Natalia has been using for a couple years. She has mastered it, but this was my first time making it in a while. It was pretty good...a little watery (I substituted water for wine in the recipe), and I added some tomato and fresh oregano from the garden. Next time I will spice it up a bit more and use less water; I could probably add some more vegetables too.

Though I haven't been cooking anything too outlandish, I have been thinking more about where I get my food. I've noted in other posts that I've been relying a lot more on stores like Trader Joe's and Russo's for my shopping. This means that I don't head to Stop and Shop that much anymore, and if I do go, it's a quick trip. I feel pretty good about this trend as it means I am buying much less processed food and making more of what I eat.

However, I'm beginning to wonder how much of an improvement a modern produce market, like Russo's, is over a big supermarket chain. It hit me the other day as I was circling the aisles for (seemingly) the 100th time in the past few weeks...I knew where everything was. The bosc pears, the navel oranges, plantains, extra sweet mangoes. Even things that I don't normally eat--yucca, swiss chard, ugli fruit, escarole. Walking around the store I did not find anything that I had not seen before.

And while this is certainly convenient, it made me realize that Russo's is not the same as a farmer's market. It is a produce store, and its produce comes from all over the world, shipped in via plane and rail and truck, just like at Stop and Shop or any other chain. Regional growing seasons do not have any impact on the type of fruits or vegetables that are available on any given day. I bought strawberries at Russo's on Sunday, but I also bought them in December, November, and September, when they were clearly not in season here. The prices may change depending on local availability of some foods, but for the most part selection does not change.

In some perverse way, I miss the inability to get fresh blueberries in the winter months. And I wonder if you begin to value fruits and vegetables less when you can buy them at any time during the year. (I have noticed that off-season fruits do not taste nearly as good as local, on-season ones, but I can't break the habit of buying them.)

The logical resolution to this issue is to change where I shop, again...but this time move to actual farmers markets or Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs). This type of a shift would certainly be inconvenient and potentially more expensive, and I would have to pay attention to the whole notion of growing seasons once again.

In the short term, it doesn't make sense to stop shopping at Russo's entirely--and it does boast a number of locally-made and locally-grown items that you cannot find at other stores. But perhaps I will make an effort to start frequenting the weekend farmers markets that pop up in Newton and Waltham too. If nothing else, knowing what fruits and vegetables are actually in season would be a good way to begin.