Say what you will about the smog and traffic in Los Angeles, but it's pretty darn fantastic to be able to pedal on over to my local farmer's market year-round. That's one of the advantages of living in sun-soaked California, the nation's breadbasket. San Joaquin Valley, to the north, produces nearly half of all the fruits, nuts, and vegetables sold in the United States (though that number has declined in the past three years due to drought); San Diego County, to the south, has more farms than any other county in the country.Of course you can also grow your own and store your turnips, rutabagas, carrots, squash. Freeze some turnip and beet greens. Leave the kale in the garden, mulch your beets...
These agricultural tidbits went largely unnoticed by me until a trip to Boston in the dead of winter a few years back, after I had already moved out West, when I realized that it was only in LA that grocery stores offered almost entirely local produce; even the Beantown Whole Foods I visited featured -- you guessed it -- California's finest fruitage.
Believe it or not, you don't have to live in the Golden State to enjoy farm-fresh food 365 days a year; there are winters farmers markets, even in some darn-cold areas of the country...
Want to know how to procure farm-fresh, local food even in a four-foot snowstorm? The answer is as simple as C-S-A...
I did a survey of CSAs around the country and found that surprisingly, winter offerings can be quite diverse: Garden of Eve's farm share on the East End of Long Island includes stored vegetables like beets, rutabagas, and winter squash, as well as organic eggs; Laughing Stock Farm in Freeport, Maine, offers fresh salad greens and baby carrots from its greenhouse (which is heated with a renewable fuel, of course)...
A perfect way to enjoy your vegetables? A great soup that includes potatoes, rutabagas, squash, parsnips, carrots, kale and turnip greens. That's my dinner for two or three nights this week.
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