The Trouble With Spinach

We'll get back to fair food next week, but I had to address this issue this week.

Unless you've been under a rock for the last week, you know about the E. coli scare connected to fresh bagged spinach trucked out of California. Death and illness are not things one normally expects from one's salad greens, so there was understandably no small amount of hysteria involved.

What this points to is an inherent problem with our food system, and it's something that you can fight on your own.

The spinach involved, according to most evidence, comes from one area in California, where a lot of the nation's bagged spinach is grown, harvested and readied for consumers. The contamination vector is still unknown. Was it tainted irrigation water? Bad compost? Evil squirrels pooping in the fields? The CDC will no doubt find out soon enough. For now, though, three California counties known as "The Salad Bowl to the World" are reeling. Farmers are plowing under their spinach crops, convinced that it will be a while before anyone's wanting a wilted spinach salad.

Go back in time 75 years and tell a home cook in Kansas that he or she (OK, more likely she back then) would be making her salad with greens trucked in from California, and she would have laughed you out of her kitchen. If that didn't work, she'd use a rolling pin applied liberally to your head. Housewives back then didn't take kindly to strangers from the future asking about their salads.

The point I'm getting at, and I do have one, is that our food system is out of whack. Where our ancestors grew vegetables that were in season and adjusted their meal plans to compensate, today we demand to be able to get whatever vegetable we want whatever the time of year. We want our fresh broccoli with Christmas dinner, and you'd by all the gods better have us some fresh asparagus for our romantic Valentine's dinner.

We've grown spoiled, and we're paying for it.

Not to sound too self-righteous, but I didn't worry one whit about the E. coli scare. There haven't been bagged salad greens in my refrigerator in over two years. Thanks to the Gastonia and Charlotte farmer's markets, I have a steady supply of seasonal fresh vegetables to put on my table. It's all locally grown, with the exception of some fruits that are important in my diet, like bananas, that simply don't grow around here.

I'm not for an instant claiming that you'll never encounter E. coli at the farmer's market. It can show up anywhere. But what I can say with a fair degree of assurance is that the vegetables and fruit at your market are grown with more care and more attention to detail than average. For these folks, their reputation is their livelihood. It wouldn't take many cases of someone getting sick, or even suspecting they had gotten sick, for a farmer's stall to lose traffic and his income to vanish.

I know it's coming into fall, and you probably think the local produce supply has dried up. You couldn't be more wrong. There are a staggering variety of veggies and fruits available now at even the most humble market, and they're waiting for you. Oh, and you'll quite likely get them for a fair piece of change cheaper than at the grocery store or megamart.

And lest you think that the farmer's market is just for produce, take a gander at what was in my own shopping basket when I left my market on Saturday: butter, bacon, cheese, country ham, potatoes, broccoli, kale, cabbage and a loaf of cinnamon-raisin sourdough bread.

"Farmer's market" means ALL farmers, not just those who grow veggies and fruit. I've even seen some pretty incredible butcher shops set up inside big markets, where the guy selling you the steak is likely the guy who raised the cow.

Don't forget, also, that you can find awesome local delicacies like the ones from my pals Walt and Wendy at Imladris Farm. The selling of homemade jams, jellies, preserves and other yummy bits is a tradition that goes all the way back to medieval peasant markets and beyond.

So, in short, take control of your food supply. Live in greater harmony with the seasons. Take what they offer, instead of insisting on having everything all the time. Think how much more you'll appreciate that spinach salad when you've waited for the greens to come into season!

Got a question? Comment? Topic you'd like to see covered? Drop me a line, anytime!