A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about our trip to a farmers’ market. Because we have signed up with a Community Supported Agriculture farm, we go back every week to get our basket. This week, Kim wasn’t feeling well, so Fiona and I went alone to the farmers’ market to pick up our box of produce.

Last time I was there, we picked up some fresh picked peas, which we ate on the grass surrounding the farmers market. The peas are gone now and string beans are in season. We got a nice bag of string beans in our box of produce and Fiona and I ate many of the string beans fresh, as we walked around the market. Later, we snacked on them at home. There were also four very fresh ears of corn, some nice tomatoes, more basil, and plenty of other great vegetables.

We signed up not only for the vegetable box, but also for fruit, and there was a basket of blueberries and several lodi apples. Lodi apples are one of the earliest apples to be available. King Orchards describes the lodi apple this way:

The earliest apple of the season, Lodi is an old-fashioned transparent-type apple. It is cross between Montgomery and Yellow Transparent, introduced by the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva in 1924. Green to light yellow in color.

Like our previous visits, we stopped and bought some locally raised meat. This time, I picked up a kielbasa which would be part of our dinner. There was a man selling lemon aide and brownies to raise money for Discovery to Cure, a program at Yale to help fight ovarian cancer. I picked up a magnet for the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition, as well as brownies and lemon aide for Fiona and I to have for our picnic on the grass.

Raspberries are starting to come in, but they were pretty expensive, so I skipped the raspberries. However, on the way home, we passed some wineberry bushes that were loaded with berries. I pulled over to the side of the road, and Fiona and I hopped out of the care and picked a bunch of berries. As we continued home, we passed a few other wineberry bushes and hopped out to pick those berries as well.

We didn’t get enough wineberries for a wineberry pie, but we did get enough to be used with the lodi apples to make an apple and berry pie.

So, for dinner, we had fresh corn on the cob, locally raised kielbasa, some pasta with the tomatoes and basil, and a little cheese thrown in, and ended off the meal with the apple and berry pie.

Like the previous trip to the farmers market, this ended off a close to idyllic day. After Fiona had gone to bed, I sat down and tried to get a little closer to catching up on all my unread emails. Over on a mailing list of folks interested in media education, there is a discussion of how U.S. media covers Food, Fashion, Fitness and Finance. One person wrote:

Food is intensely political... By political I mean it directly affects our lives, human decisions in centralized bureaucracies of corporations and government shape this effect, and above all: we can together take action that influences these decisions or even moves the decision-making power into our hands... Food, fitness, and finance, meanwhile, are important parts of health, sustainability, opportunity, independence, freedom, and justice.

In a different part of the email, the person wrote, “It's not that these four Fs are covered, it's how they're covered.” He’s right. We need more discussions about how our food relates to our health; how we can live more sustainable lifestyles be eating more locally. It would be good to see more people talking about this. Until then, I’ll probably keep putting up blog posts here and there about the importance of eating locally, not only in terms of health and sustainability, but also in terms of how wonderful it can be.