which_chick | (no subject)

I want it to be apple season already. Tomatoes are mostly gone, cucumbers and squash a distant memory. It was thirty-nine last night. The air is crisp and cooler. Definitely a fall sort of vibe going on around here. Damn it, I want apples.

I realize that the September apples are, in fact, available right now. The late-August apples have BEEN available for a while. Thing is, I really only like one kind of apples and that kind gets ripe, on average, in the middle of October. It is not time yet for apples, but it will be soon.

There's a lot of talk about eating with the seasons and blah blah rhythm of nature and yadda yadda local, fresh produce. I actually agree with this sort of talk, up to a point (not living through the winter on cabbage and root-cellar veggies no matter how good for the environment it is) and I do try to eat in season when possible. There are some things that I do not enjoy out of season, do not purchase out of season, and do not eat out of season... largely because the quality difference between "local, in-season" and "storage, shipped, or otherwise provided out-of-season" is so bloody huge.

Tomatoes are a big one. I do not buy tomatoes. I pick them. When I cannot pick them, I do not eat them. Tomato season, for me, runs from about August to the middle of September. During that time, I eat an unbelieveable amount of tomatoes. It's tomatoes at nearly every meal. (Some meals are peaches, which are in season in early- to mid-August.) I adore tomatoes. I eat lots of them. Yay tomatoes! But when the season is over, it is over. I do not eat "fresh" tomatoes again until the following year. (Canned ones are OK.) The store offerings are disappointing and tasteless, so I do not buy them.

Cucumbers are waxy and disappointing when they're out of season. I pick cucumbers. When I can't pick them, I don't eat them.

I buy peaches by the half bushel box, from a local orchard. I only buy them in season and I eat them in huge quantity (generally two boxes per year, an early and a mid-season variety, so a full bushel of peaches for one person) until they are gone and then I have no more peaches until the following year. I pay attention to peach season and I am *on* it because it's short and you don't want to miss out.

And then there are apples. I will sometimes buy "crappy apples" from the grocery store when nothing else is even close to seasonal, but honestly, since I live in some of the best apple growing territory in the damn country, it behooves me to get to an orchard (actually, I send my cousin, who drives by it every day to take her kid to school) and buy proper apples when they are in season. Typically I go though a bushel of those, as well, in two half-bushel boxes. (They keep better at the orchard than they do at my house, so I buy them one-by-each.) When it is time for apples, there is apple pie. There are sliced apples every night for dinner. There are apples at work-lunch. Apples, apples, apples. But when they're gone, they're gone.

Because seasonal produce is so MUCH better than the out-of-season produce, it's worth anticipating the season (that's the part I'm doing vis a vis apples right now) and then you can fully enjoy the season (during same) and then, well, wait for next year and move on to the next thing. It's hard to mourn apples when you're eating peaches or tomatoes or fresh cucumbers. The full-on assault of in-season produce keeps you distracted from longing. (Right now tomatoes have wound up but apples are not here yet... I'm in a dead zone on the produce front.) The seasonal changes of diet lend a rhythm to the days and (I feel) make you appreciate the passage of time in an organic and local sort of way, even though that sounds kind of hippy-ish.