Friends, I know everything about the vegetable soup in my freezer - I grew all of the spices, the pole beans carrots and peppers in it, swapped tomatoes last season with my neighbor who grew the garlic, and shook hands with the farmer from upstate who brought the potatoes and parsnips into town. The sweet potatoes came from another greenmarket farmer from 60 miles away in New Jersey . Honestly, they didn't look as good as the plumped up Louisiana yams that are all over the place, organic or the other kind - but when I can I buy local. He wanted me to buy more, but I only had so much room in my small kitchen, and then I would have been tempted to mash up a mess and bake 'em with marshmallows - the waistline doesn't need that. I always have veggie stock on hand, so it was pretty easy last Saturday afternoon ( there are some good stock recipes in Deborah Madison's "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone", a cookbook a friend gave me as a gift.) Turned on the Met Opera broadcast ( only good thing an oil company ever did) and started cooking down this week's spaghetti sauce with some dried basil from last summer, some of that bartered garlic and organic olive oil, canned tomato paste and plum tomatoes which alas, come from far away California. The tomatoes I grew last summer were real - the kind in the grocery markets now are like Potamkin villages...all skin, color, water and no tomato - fakes. We ate or shared all of ours last summer, alas - there being no room to put them up in our small apartment.
OK, ok the Clementines. My folks, Middle European immigrants, used to buy Florida tangerines (lovely oily skins, a fragrance that would fill the kitchen) and later, when the tangerines were grown with thicker skins and less fragrance, the Spanish Clementines that they remembered as holiday treats as children. They still come to New York, using G-d knows how much oil, via container ships from Nules in Spain. They even have the same old time balsa wood boxes ( kept baseball cards in one as a kid, my box from last year is filled with drying jalapenos). The peels will go into my compost can, vastly improving the aroma and will end up in the community garden compost. A query for someone who understands agricultural policy better that I do - the box bears this legend, " Not for distribution in AZ, CA, FL, LA, TX, Puerto Rico or any US Territory." I can guess why, in citrus growing states, but the other areas are a mystery to me. Does someone know the answer to this question, and why we don't grow clementines this good in the USA? The mind game I play is that, at least, because of EEC rules against GMOs, that they are still real and that in Spain, the farm workers have some medical benefits and are not as poisoned by pesticides as our Mexican braseros - but I can't know for sure. No rain forest was depleted for these babies, but I worry about the trucks and the ozone layer. But with the opera playing, the soup and pasta sauce simmering, with a cup of tea and a good book, the very peeling of the clementine, its' oil and intensely citric aroma fills the room with the very essence of summer - a pleasure, however guilty. Best wishes, Adam Honigman ______________________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden
