This is how dinner goes these days. I walk out back to the garden and pick an ear of corn, a tomato, a green pepper, a small crookneck squash, a couple of leaves of basil, and a sprig of parsley. Back in the kitchen a handfull of stew meat goes in the skillet to brown while I cut the corn from the cob and slice the squash, pepper, and tomato. Salt and pepper the meat, add corn, garlic, basil, parsley, and a bit of water and let simmer a few minutes. Add peppers and squash, simmer a minute more, add tomatoes, stir, and cover with good Diamond aged chedder. When the cheese melts, turn off the flame and let it cool a bit. Serve to self with a glass of wine and a tumbler of water. Yum, yum.
Everything the cookbooks say about fresh veggies is true. There is absolutely no comparison with store bought, especially for tomatoes and crisp peppers and sweet peas. But you have to grow your own to get them.
12 comments:
Chuck,
I won't debate you either. I would only ask if there is a chance that a such a sufficiency exists that it might allow for someone else to experience what you describe? 'Cause I might know someone willing to set aside DT's points should the occasion present itself.
Said person might even be willing to engage in some pickin' and washin'. And I, I mean 'he' ain't no damn yuppie either.
Nonetheless, your way will inadvertently guarantee the deaths of most human beings on this planet.
Excuse me, David, but what is "my way." Are you saying veggies are manufactured, not grown? Are you saying growing veggies is an expensive rich man's hobby? What would my grandparents say, who sharecropped and picked berries back during the depression. Little did they know they were wealthy. And yet my eighty-nine year old uncle, retired from the post office all these years and living in Shafter, half an hour from Bakersfield, still grows tomatoes and grapefruit in his back yard. Of course he shops at the market, everyone does. Who wants to spend hours canning all the produce for winter? Nevertheless, freshly grown veggies and fruit are a great supplement in season and can be enjoyed by anyone with with access to water, sun, and soil.
Chuck—
Rick beat me to it. I'm salivating.
Best.
My goodness, I don't think it's a matter of either/or.
I had a book called the Apartment Gardner. No, wait, that was for flowers and stuff.
The apropos book was The Postage Stamp Farmer (I think) and showed how to grow vegetables in your closet even!
Not everyone has even a yard, and those who do often live in communities with strict restrictions on what you can do on your own piece of dirt.
But, more importantly, everyone has their own priorities and not everyone wishes to have to eat all those cherry tomatoes before they rot. A few, fine. But not hundreds of them.
So the local grocery is fine for them when you wish to indulge.
I don't think there's much danger from individuals doing what they wish vis-a-vis growing their own veggies. Even attempts at forming a movement of homegrowers won't get very far--and there are certainly attempts. We're way beyond that.
Heh, Knuck.
There are several immigrants from Russia just down the block. Their little community has a communal garden. Oh, the goodies Joe has gotten from them because we live in a wee apartment with no dirt. :)
'I'm hungry' says Joe as he dons windbreaker and heads on a neighborly walk. :)
Oh, I had the book titles mixed up I think.
The Apartment Farmer and The Postage Stamp Gardener. Probably both out of print.
DT, during WWII urbanites (and I'm not saying Chuck is one) were engouraged to grow "victory gardens" - there's a lot of unused space, even in the city. Call it Yuppie or call in survival, neither impinges much on serious farming.
This year, my brother wanted to grow some pumpkins for the kids for Hallowe'en. Not having much space, he grew them the other side of the back fence in the little green space beofre the lane way. The other day, he discovered that someone had stolen his three pumpkins, still green. Kids impatient to do their pumpkin smashin'? - no sign of that around. So maybe a hungry person came along, in which case there is an argument for the backyard gardener saving lives :)
Once, driving theough Pennsylvania we stopped at a farm stand and bought fresh picked Gravensteins which I made into several deep, deep apple pies. I can still taste them. Those are hard to find here, but are the best cooking apples ever.
BTW I think anyone who sells "delicious" apples should be sued for fraud in marketing.
...were engouraged to grow "victory gardens" - there's a lot of unused space, even in the city.
In Berlin after the war folks grew veggies on park land. I don't suppose these were called defeat gardens, but that surely is what they were.
Kids impatient to do their pumpkin smashin'?
There were produce stands when I was growing up and feuds to go along with them. I remember the kids in the farming family who lived down the street standing guard with shotguns one Halloween because of threats from another family further down the road.
They also foisted a puppy off on me which I carried home under my shirt. I bet my parents just loved that ;)
Skook
I lived in Tacoma (decades and decades ago) and we had several apple (gravenstein!) and cherry trees out back.
And rhubarb!
Skook, maybe it was raccs, but I would expect them to rip apart and eat on site, leaving evidence behind. Yes, you can still see older houses with fruit trees out back - especially in places like Burnaby or South Vancouver where the land was cheaper and the lots bigger than in Vancouver proper - though they are disappearing with the land values encouraging the end of double lots. From what you say about hydro projects, it sounds like there wasn't much fruit farming in Washington State in the early part of the 20thC. But the BC Okanagan was opened up at the end of the 19th, with irrigation systems. So there would have been a lot of cheap (it took a while for the farmers to force co-operative marketing on everyone and keep the price controlled) local fruit on the market by 1910; still, some people evidently grew their own.
Skook, it's been a long time since I was reading on the history of fruit farming, so i can't tell you off hand. I imagine the first systems would have been pretty primitive means of slightly re-directing water off the hills.
As for coons, I doubt they have either the means or the temper to carry their food far away; i've seen what they can do to squash - an ugly mess that leaves "finger prints".
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