don't hate me because my food is beautiful

Localvores will cringe at this, but I was halfway through chopping up some red, orange, and yellow peppers this evening before I realized that these veggies probably came here on a truck from Mexico.

I wasn't thinking about this earlier, when I wanted to make my latest favorite thing, jambalaya (Zatarain's brand, low-sodium variety) with a lot of chopped ham added (my sister's family has given up meat for Lent, and passed off all their ham on to me), a plate of chopped-up shrimp (Gulf shrimp, at least, not from Thailand), and chopped up peppers, red, orange, and yellow. I had a craving for some food from a region of the rainbow spectrum that I don't normally get here in Chicago in February. A vitamin deficiency? I don't know. At the time, when I was in the store, I had such a craving for some fresh colored vegetables that I didn't even care - as I normally would - that they cost $3.99 a pound.

In hindsight -- and foresight -- I suppose the thing to do is to buy peppers of various colors in the summer, when they're cheap and plentiful, and chop them up and freeze them. I did do this, but went through the last of the frozen red pepper supply a few weeks ago.

So, I'm thinking, this should be a part of being a localvore in the Chicago area: buy and freeze a lot of things in the summer, to get you through the winter. I need to be better at this, this coming summer. I am nowhere near qualified to do canning, but freezing, I think I can handle. I just need to do more planning ahead this coming year.

Great idea -- though freezer burn might be setting in by late February.

Besides, what's the point of living in the 21st century if you can't enjoy a bit of exotica mid-winter?

Just eat as local as possible, and when you get the culinary form of seasonal affective disorder, go for those bright peppers.

That is why I'll never be a localvore. I would like to have veggies in these months that are not parsnips and potatoes.

Katie wrote: I am nowhere near qualified to do canning, but freezing, I think I can handle.

Canning is not difficult at all. You need a little bit of equipment and a good set of instructions to get started.

See http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=147301
http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=13195
http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=3587

AngrySarah wrote:That is why I'll never be a localvore. I would like to have veggies in these months that are not parsnips and potatoes.

Though it used to be (around the turn of the century) summer fruits & veg were grown in a greenhouse, and thus still local. I suppose you could be a localvore if you had 10-20 Aerogardens...

Darren72 wrote:Canning is not difficult at all. You need a little bit of equipment and a good set of instructions to get started.

Thanks for the links, Darren72. I guess I'm afraid of canning. Afraid of doing it wrong and killing myself or others. But this coming summer I think I need to get over that and give it a try.

Cynthia wrote:Great idea -- though freezer burn might be setting in by late February.

That's a good question: how long can you count on chopped frozen vegetables to last, if the air is squeezed out as much as possible?

Just eat as local as possible, and when you get the culinary form of seasonal affective disorder, go for those bright peppers.

HA! Exactly!

Moral of the story (?): The farther north you live, the more you have to plan for winter while it's still summer. Make hay while the sun shines.

I definitely think I'll be joining the canning brigade this summer - I read Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable Miracle" a few weeks ago, and it just made me ache for my childhood in the country, and summer afternoons spent canning everything under the sun with my mom and aunt.

I miss the family ritual as much as the food, I think. And so I'm planning to head to my mom's house late summer to revive the family tradition, and learn from the wise women in our family.

I'm diving into the last bags of summer fruits in my freezer now, and indeed, they are just a touch freezer burned, but still a welcome taste in these frozen days.