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In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the food columnist in the author's local paper who always featured out-of-season ingredients or canned ingredients that were in season and could have been bought fresh locally. My local paper, Buffalo News, isn't usually quite as bad as to instruct the use of canned pumpkin in dishes during late fall, and in the last couple of years has even started to run occasional articles about eating locally. However, I was quite annoyed with an article in the food section on Wednesday was about using organic strawberries for strawberry pie. Strawberry pie! It's early April here, not late June! It's time for a little Q&A session here.
Q: What fresh food is harvested in Buffalo before Easter.
A: Nothing.
Let's see, "nothing" includes (gasp!) strawberries. The article was advocating eating organic strawberries, but the only organic strawberries, or strawberries of any kind, for that matter, to be found in Buffalo in April are ones from faraway places like California. One idea originally associated with organic is sustainable farming. It is not sustainable to bring strawberries all the way across a continent just for people for the northeast who are too impatient to wait until the much better local strawberries available in June. One more way big/industrial organic betrays the true intent of the organic movement.
