Spoiled by Freshness

We’ve been the unwilling victims in our recent travels of normal, average American food–vegetables and fruits breed for many things other than taste or even nutritional content, picked before ripe, shipped boxed, canned or frozen for a couple of thousand miles and prepared by indifferent and often unskilled hands and served with no pretense at anything more than making a profit. We had a meal at TGIFriday’s that was to die from.

It made us realize how much of what we eat these days comes from nearby–not everything, but a lot. And it costs to pay the real investment by local beef and produce growers to get their local products into local markets.

And once you get used to fresh, flavorful, responsibly-produced and local foods, it’s mighty hard to eat road food. It’s mighty easy to be spoiled by freshness.

It’s been a tough gardening year here; once again yesterday we drove through rain puddled on the roads until we were within a mile of the house, where the dirt road was dusty under the trees and only moist elsewhere. Roanoke and Blacksburg got record rainfall amounts yesterday for the date.

We are in a terrible rain shadow I cannot account for. But the creek–for now–still flows, and our garden, always later than most others as it is situated in this cold, shaded valley, will make beans, chard, tomatoes (at least Romas and tommie-toes), a few peppers and some hubbards and yellow squash. Meanwhile, we’ll stop often at Sweet Providence. If you haven’t visited the Houston’s place, you really should next pass down 221 east of town.

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