Home Food

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Now that events have forced us to think globally. those of us who know how food grows must demonstrate to our neighbors and our leaders that it is possible and delicious to eat locally, and that we can feed ourselves even though we don't. Teaching folks how will not be easy. Most are presently clueless about what's grown on nearby farms. or what's in season when.

At the moment it's spring, a surprisingly challenging season, as all self-provisioners know. Nongardening friends you hope to lead to local eating will expect you to put succulent fresh produce on the table. You sort of expect it yourself, but nature isn't ready, and it's a little late to dig parsnips. There are flowers, of course, but in most of our growing regions, trying to think fresh in April will test your ingenuity.

While planning for this column, which will be a regular department in MOTHER EARTH NEWS I enlisted a group of friends in different parts of the country to consider the seasons where they live, and to help me avoid being too mid-Atlantic in my thinking. Four of them, I confess, are former students who picked up some passion about local eating from me; one is a new friend who came to it all by herself. Their ideas will be a regular part of future columns.

They are Gail Feenstra, food systems analyst in the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, Davis, California; Mary Anselmino, school garden consultant, St. Joseph, Michigan; Toni Liquori, assistant director of food and nutrition programs at a nongovernmental policy agency in New York City; Jennifer Wilkins, faculty member in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; and covering the South, both west and east, Barbara Kingsolver, who grows a winter garden in Tucson and a summer one in Virginia. Her impassioned, popular writing about humans and other natural things makes further introduction unnecessary.

When we got together by phone to discuss April, only Gail in California had more than storage crops to actually fill up the plate. For those in mild climates like Gail's, spring means lots of greens, tame and otherwise, fall-planted spinach and various other hardy leaves. Wild ones in the mountain South include "Creasy Greens," "poke salad" and knotweed (Though only the shoots of the latter two are safe to eat!) Later in the month there are asparagus shoots (roadside and other) and, once May arrives, peas. Gail in California's Central Valley says one of her favorite early dishes is a spring risoto with asparagus and sugar snaps (Fields of Greens: New Vegetarian Recipes from the Celebrated Greens Restaurant, by Annie Somerville). Gail adds a sliced radish or two to the recipe.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print