Chattanooga Pulse

Written by Mary Duffy
Monday, 19 January 2009 19:23

Yesterday morning I made breakfast. The coffee was from Brazil, the oranges from California, the eggs were laid in Massachusetts, the maple syrup sapped in Vermont, but the bread for the French toast was at least baked in Chattanooga. Later in the day, as I munched on Finnish crackers with French cheese, I contemplated a 19th-century farming existence for myself in Hamilton County.

I imagine a diet consisting of eggs, salt pork, squirrel, possum, the occasional chicken, and whatever vegetables I can scratch up from the ground. I would forage in the woods for wild plums, scuppernongs, hickory nuts, mushrooms, dock, ramp, purslane and other greens. My coffee would really be roasted chicory and dandelion roots, and my tea would be chamomile and spearmint rather than Darjeeling. Plentiful and local, but different than what I’m used to.

The pendulum of culinary fashion in 21st century has swung firmly in the direction of a local, peasant-like diet-and with good reason. Locally grown foods are more nutritious-although given the recent ash spill disaster, this may no longer be true-because you have the chance to eat them as soon as they are picked, before they begin to lose their nutrients. There’s evidence that eating local honey can help people with pollen allergies.

Eating locally also means eating in season, something urbanite and suburbanite alike are usually loath to do. When there are lovely avocados from South America available in December, what imperative is there to not buy them? Setting aside the fact that until recently humans did not regularly eat food grown on other continents, imported produce is usually more expensive, and always means that more fossil fuels were used getting it into your hands.

Seasonal eating and local eating are two different things. Thanks to the global economy, oranges are available year round. They are in season in December, but are not grown in Hamilton County. If you choose to eat seasonally, you’ll wait December before you buy oranges. Local eating I think of in a broader sense. To my mind, eating bread baked locally, or coffee roasted locally is a kind of local eating, even though the wheat came from Nebraska, or the beans from Ethiopia. Buying locally grown produce means you must eat in season. This is optimal for fresh and nutritionally rich food, but it’s not easy, and it’s not for everyone.

The no-hassle way to eat local is to participate in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), where you buy a subscription: a weekly delivery of fruits, vegetables, and herbs from a local farm for several months. Every week you get enough food for two-to-four people, and the price and length of the program varies by farm. If you supplement a weekly CSA box with a trip to the farmers’ market or to individual farms that don’t have a CSA program, this can fill out your fridge. And obviously, you can grow your own food if you have the time and inclination.

But what can I eat in winter? How do you get through winter months when there are no CSA deliveries, it’s freezing cold, and almost nothing is in season? If you’re anything like me (or your grandma), back in summer and fall you might have “put up” tomatoes, green beans, summer squash, figs, and different pickles and relishes. Apples, apricots, peaches, and such, you might have dried. Vegetables that you’ve stored, like potatoes, carrots, shallots, onions, garlic, will keep through the winter. But unless you already practice seasonal/local eating, you probably didn’t.

That leaves the supermarket. What will be fresh in winter? Not much. Just beets, brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, clementines, celery and celery root, fennel, kale, kiwifruit, leeks, lemons, oranges, parsnips, rutabaga, tangerines, sweet potatoes and squash. That’s for a start. Obviously this is where you choose to eat what’s local or what’s in season, since tangerines and clementines don’t grow on trees here.

Seasonal eating in winter forces you to plan what you’re eating more carefully, but I find that having limited choices for ingredients make for more creative and flavorful dishes. If you’ve never picked up a parsnip, this is your chance to try something new. If you’ve never tasted fennel or celeriac you’re in for an awesome surprise. These veggies are no more difficult to prepare than potatoes, and have a lot more personality. I can gauge the market saturation of rutabagas and leeks by the number of times grocery cashiers know what I’ve put on the belt. Parsnips often stump them. (They were once more widely eaten than carrots, and have an unusual peppery-buttery flavor that you’ll find addictive.)

However you stock your fridge, the CSA is the cornerstone of local, seasonal eating. There are several CSA box programs in the county. For the closest, Crabtree Farms is the winner, being right in town, but their website lists more than 10 other CSAs in the area. Most programs begin in the spring, and the number of boxes available is limited, so right now is the time to decide what works for you and reserve your spot.