Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Greening Amenia, One Step at a Time

My friend Karl just finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; like me, he also found it inspirational, eye opening, and well written. (No, I don't know Barbara Kingsolver personally, and I am not receiving royalties for this book!) It changed the way he thought about food. He called me and said: "I thought it would be easy. I thought I could just stroll the aisles of the supermarket and choose the things that come from within 200 miles. But there's nothing. Even the granola let me down." (Why is it near impossible to find produce that is grown anywhere but California? We are literally SURROUNDED by farms. I'll tell you why...the farms are producing corn to feed the cows that we eat as beef...and so on. Most of what we grow in this country is corn, and most of it is used for animal feed...)

I told Karl to take heart, go to Daisi Hill farm for squash, and make pear sauce from Diana King's home grown, organic pears. We can walk to Diana's house. You can't get much greener than that. The best thing that came out our shared literary and gustatory experience is that Karl and I are talking about sharing a subscription to the (sort of) local CSA, the Chubby Bunny Farm. Karl also admitted that he's tempted to try making his own cheese. Maybe we can have a cheese making party. I'm excited to have a new partner in my green adventures. Today, I ordered a food mill to facilitate the sauce making (this way I don't have to peel or core), and when it arrives, I'll make a huge batch of pear sauce and more apple sauce. I harvested all the green tomatoes from our garden (nothing ripened, but we decided we should pick them before we get hit with frost) and am ready to make a chutney. It's not easy, but we'll take one green step at a time.

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