The Locavore's Dilemma

Right now I have the sublet of a CSA farm share, yes in NY you can even sublet a farm share. I am trading the fruit for guaranteed delivery because my sublet is on the other side of town, far, far from West Harlem. It is worth it. My sublet is provided by Stoneledge Farm.

While today's haul was meager, there was purple basil, purple peppers, a few zucchini, some potatoes, the largest spinach leaves I have ever seen, and an eggplant. This is what Community Supported Agriculture is about, you share the bounty, when there is bounty and you share the risk. The rains have been difficult for our local farmers and a lot of blight has been spread with some crops rotting on the vine.

Nonetheless I won't go hungry. I have food growing out my back window, including some of the best tomatoes on earth and great herbs and I have my local farmer's at the Green markets to count on for just about everything else I need. Other than olive oil from Greece, and dried pasta from Italy, most of what I eat in the summer comes from within miles of the city. That is the goal of the locavore, to consume what can be grown and sustained locally. (clearly I drink less wine, we have almost no good local wine and what we do have is priced out of my range).

The Dilemma? Winter. I am so grateful for Argentinian Farmer's and those glimpses of summer in another part of the world. I can only go so far on root vegetables. The solution to this has been used in Holland for Decades now, Green houses. We will pay through the nose to get those greenhouse tomatoes in the winter, but there are not many enterprising folks in this area who will take this one on.

Corporate American farming is evil and those profit graspers care nothing for my health, so I will care nothing for their bottom line and avoid them. Whole Foods and Dean Foods are at the center of this axis putting out 'natural' lines which are anything but and working very hard to lower the standards of organic certification so they can move more junk through.

Right now, this summer I am able to eat locally and am grateful to be able to do so.

3rd veg day.

Not surprising I woke up hungry. I had a big bowl of Asian noodles in a vegetable broth topped with poached egg. Then the heat did in my hunger for the rest of the day and I ate 8 zucchini that I had grilled and brushed with vinegar. I had them, warm at room temp and later cold. They are about 3 calories each. That, along with fruit and some cucumber and tomato was it until dinner. I felt completely justified in indulging in noodles yet again, this time with a tomato basil sauce and a generous portion of chopped green olives stirred in.

I still stayed under 1700 calories. My nutrition was good, but a bit low on calcium, but for one day I am not going to worry.