First of all, a very Happy New Year to anyone reading this. I sincerely hope this new year brings abundance in every aspect of your life!
One of the highlights for me at the end of 2009 was a speaking engagement at the Edgar Cayce / A.R.E. in Virginia Beach for their New Year's Conference. I spoke about the importance of buying locally-grown, in-season and organic foods not only to support local farmers but also to enable your body to acclimate to its environment. There are so many logical reasons to buy locally but so many people have forgotten why it is important. This is the first time I have spoken publically and was actually paid for it. As well as speaking, I did a small cooking demo and showed bits of the film, "Fresh". There were approximately 50 people there, who were very sweet and very interested to learn about food in this modern era.
Growing up in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, we did not have the luxury of eating strawberries in February, or quite frankly, anything else out of season. When I was a young girl, we had a very small grocery store in our village named "Sobey's" plus an old-fashioned meat/cheese and penny candy store named "Diggles" which was run by a lovely old English man named Mr. Diggle and his sister. Mr. Diggle had a handlebar moustache and silvery white hair. He was tall with a rather portly tummy and always wore a perfeclty starched white apron. Diggle's was similar to an old store in a Hollywood movie. We loved going there to buy penny candies such as hard-to-find English sponge toffee or licorice. Mr. Diggle had the best aged cheddar around. Of course, these stores were within walking distance, so we did not drive unless it was for a large amount of food. Actually, as kids, we walked everywhere and people do to this day!
Fresh milk was delivered to our house from a local dairy farm and there were no antibiotics or hormones injected into the cows because they were free-range and not cramped together in "factory farms" as is the norm today. The reason cows and animals are so heavily injected with pharmaceuticals is that they would become ill as they are up to their knees in their own feces instead of being allowed to roam freely. My Uncle Joe Steele had a very large farm of 1,000 acres in Hammond River with 100 milking cows. I even learned how to milk a cow the old-fashioned way as a kid!
"Caldwell's" sold grass-fed, free-range hormone-free chicken, meats and eggs. The meat was cut in front of you by Mr. Caldwell or you could order a Sunday roast for pickup. There was a rapport between the grocer and the customers and the former knew your likes and would telephone your home if there was something he knew you loved.
Fish was from the Kennebecasis River or the nearby Bay of Fundy. In winter, many friends went smelt fishing on the frozen river and what a treat that was. Shadroe was common in our household for breakfast or dinner. I often crave both of these. Salmon is abundant in New Brunswick and the Miramichee River is famous for this. Many U.S. Presidents have made their way to the famous lodges on this river to hunt salmon. Wild game was another wonderful treat that was hunted seasonally. And of course, I canont forget the tons of fresh lobster, scallops, oysters, perriwinkles and mussels I consumed, which was all fished locally.
And, I was lucky to grow up near the city of Saint John where there is the S.J. City Market which is the oldest city market in North America! It is still operating out of the same building, built in 1876. It has a unique roof structure that resembles an inverted ship's keel. Made of wooden trusses, the structure was reportedly built by unemployed ship carpenters of the day. Also, the floor slopes with the natural grade of the land. The architecture is in the Second Empire style.
Some of the businesses in the market have been operating continuously there for more than 100 years. The market was designated a National Historic Site in 1986. I still love going there on visits home to buy my beloved "dulce", which is a local sea vegetable and actually wonderful for everyone, especially if you are low in iodine.
Growing up, we always had an abundance of fresh vegetables on our dinner plates. Squash, carrots, potatoes (one of New Brunswick's largest crops), asparagus, broccoli, May peas, green beans, artichoke, summer sweet corn, and my very favourite fiddleheads. For those of you who do not know this wonderful vegetable, they are harvested in spring and are from the fern family. They are ferns before they open and are great steamed with freshly-squeezed lemon juice, sea salt and black pepper! Yummy! My nanny always had a small vegetable garden, as did most people I grew up with. Fresh berries were a must-have item in gardens.
Living in Europe for most of my adult life afforded me the same luxury as growing up in rural Canada - i.e. fresh food eaten in season and bought at wonderful farm stands and markets! Ditto for my 4 years in Saudi Arabia where people put great emphasis on the food they eat.
Returning to America has been a "trip" so to speak in terms of finding fresh fruits and vegetables. Alas, there is a huge trend to return to the old way of buying food from local farmers and farm markets. Basically, that is all we eat in this household. We travel to a wonderful local farm in Suffolk called "Full Quiver" where we buy grass-fed, hormone-free, free-range chickens, eggs that have orange yolks and meat that does not even ressemble that sold in grocery stores. The colour is beet red while those from factory farms does not even resemble real meat in the slightest.
We eat lots of local collard greens, watercress, kale and leafy greens at this time of year and cook them every which way but loose. They can even be made into pies for a special occasion, like the ones made in Italy for Easter. We buy our milk from a fairly local dairy where the cows are treated humanely and the milk tastes like milk should. Next year, we hope to own a share in a local cow and receive unpasturized milk from Full Quiver Farms.
It is not difficult to eat how our grandparents did - which means nothing out of a package and seasonal foods. It just takes a bit of training and readjusting. But, I guarantee you that wherever you live, there are wonderful farmers just waiting for you to show up at their stands to buy the bounties of food they have toiled so diligently for you. Once you actually adapt to eating "real" food, you will never return to microwaved packaged food. Why would you?
If I have said it once, I have said it a million times -- support your local farmers and eat in-season food! If you don't support them, then they will disappear and you might go hungry one day. Or, rip up the grass in your lawn and plant a sustainable organic garden for your family (a "victory garden"). Teach your children where food comes from. Make a weekly drive to your local farms and markets to buy your produce. Get the whole family involved with cooking/baking and make this a true familly experience. Turn off the TV and return to the warmth of the most wonderful room in the whole house -- the kitchen! Have fun laughing, talking and dancing in the kitchen and be joyous when you eat your home cooked meal!
Bon appetit!
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