My Dear Reader,
I originally composed this post at the end of May, a time when Massachusetts farms require one “to be sure of what [one] hopes for and certain of what [one] do[es] not see” (Heb 11:1 New International Version). Since then, exams, essays, and lack of communication with my editorial board (even though we were in the same state for two weeks!) led the post to be delayed. Despite the current seasonability of berries, I think the message of the post is perennial. So, grab a bowl of your local favorites and dig in!
L. E.
As the school year winds down, thoughts of summer begin to percolate in the minds of students and teachers alike. These idyllic musings include trips to camp, the beach, the lake, hours previously spent studying now freed up for whatever, and most important in the Eggleston household, luscious summer foods.
My own recollection of 'summer food' begins with Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken (never KFC at our house), complete with mashed potatoes, macaroni and three bean salads, and of course- biscuits. Or how about Grandpa's country ribs, with the tangy-sweet sauce to drench the meat, potato salad, and baked beans piled together on your plate? Or the bratwurst, kielbasa, and knackwurst on the grill for the Fourth, accompanied by a red, white, and blue Jello salad and Ruffles potato chips (a rare treat in our house). My mouth waters just thinking of these hot weather delicacies. But the best summer treat of all was the berries.
Our family had raspberry bushes that grew out back. One of the best ways to get rid of my brothers and me (for at least a little while) was to give us a bowl and send us out picking. The glittering jewels were ready off the vine, and we tended to eat just as many as we harvested, but I still remember fresh raspberries topping my Cheerios in the summer months.
I also remember the Michigan cherries. Every year we would spend time up at my Grandma Dorothy's cottage in northern Michigan. The snack menu did not include chips, cookies, or other manufactured goodies. Instead, my family was big on the natural grown, local produce: cherries. There is something almost sinfully indulgent about eating Michigan cherries while stretched out on a hammock in the woods, reading non-educational, non-edifying, junk. The deep, dark red flesh, evocative of newly spilled blood, that stains your fingers like those of some latter day Lady Macbeth, leads me to believe that a cherry was the real first sinful fruit of Eden. The lily-white flesh of an apple might tempt me to a tasty, well-balanced snack, but to defy the almighty, I need a cherry.
For me, the berries are wrapped up in the time, the experience. As transgressive as eating cherries might feel, the greater sin is to eat them out of their proper Michigan season. By accepting a pale substitute that has been tough enough to survive the cross-continental or even global journey, I feel that I dishonor my home state and its glorious fruit.
Yet people do this all the time and seem to think nothing of it. One woman I know readily feeds her grandchildren blueberries, not from Maine-though they are a native fruit- but from wherever one gets blueberries before the New England growing season affords them. Pale pink raspberries, cousins in shape only to the ruby gems of my childhood, plague our local supermarket in February. And strawberries, that quintessential harbinger of summer, can be found year round, for a price.
That last bit is what floors me. These delicate treats, fragile in their beauty, cost enough in the winter that one could practically feed a family of four a whole dinner for the price of a half-pint. This price factors in the cost of harvesting, transporting and storing these fickle delicacies- taking them from wherever summer is currently, to the place where people are too impatient for summer to arrive. Perhaps the berries are just another symptom of America's infamous culture of instant gratification. Why wait when I can get it now?
And yet, I think there is something more sinister at work, or at the very least, more selfish. Not only does the year round availability of berries reflect our impatience, but also Americans’ supreme selfishness, or perhaps ignorance. To ship such bruiseable fruit hundreds and thousands of miles requires an amount of petroleum disproportionate to the value of the product. The recent BP rig explosion and the continuously unfolding tragedy of the gulf spill certainly illustrates some of the risks we take getting oil out of the ground and perhaps calls into question how we use it. However, that is just the tip of the quickly melting iceberg. When you consider oil’s role in producing the greenhouse gases that lead to global warming, the havoc that continued dependence on foreign oil wreaks on our foreign policy, and the precipitously dwindling worldwide supply of oil, it seems an act of criminal selfishness to continue to use it to satisfy a personal desire for the fruit out of season.
True, much produce is delivered in the same way. And true, if one were to strictly eat what naturally comes in season in New England in the winter, one might be stuck eating a lot of meat, dairy, and deep fried tree bark (see first post). Yet, the trucked-in berries don't sit right. To me, they are such an obviously summery fruit, one that clearly requires special precautions to be consumed at other times, that they are beyond the pale of non-seasonal eating. A selfish, or at the very least, willfully ignorant, statement that one's own desires trump the greater good.
I think what bothers me most is the pride and ignorance with which people discuss their consumption of this ecological contraband. Many of my colleagues speak rapturously of blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries while at the same time condemning the prices as acts of extortion. Similarly, while eating a hearty winter breakfast, I overheard a man touting his healthy lifestyle centered around the berries he eats and how he would eat more if only they weren't so expensive or he made more money. What they fail to realize- or at the very least appreciate- is that it is their own decision to consume berries flown in from afar that leads to the hefty price tag. These are many of the same people who buy organic produce to help the environment, while ignoring the damaging impact of their dirty little year-round habit.
So, what should we do? Should we all revert to what Grandma did - can our own fruit so that we have local produce in the winter? I don't know the answer. Damien has pointed out that my job leaves me freer than most in the summer, so my epic nights of cooking, canning, and freezing may not be available to everyone.
So then what do I want? I guess what I want is a truly increased awareness. More real thinking on the part of the consumer public. Organic produce might be healthier for you (petro chemicals are scary, man!) but if it had to travel half a globe to get here, it won't necessarily be better for the environment. I want people to understand that the berries cost seven bucks for a reason - they had to come from some place where these things are in season. I guess what I really want is for people to understand that it is profoundly unnatural to eat strawberries in Massachusetts before anything comes out of the ground here; that what they are doing subverts the natural order of growing things, and to weigh that in their snack choice balance.
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