Monday, December 21, 2009
WHEN I WAS A KID
Today I was arranging the new red grapes in a dish and remembered that when I was a kid, red grapes were a winter holiday event. And they were not seedless.
I worked in the A&P that my Dad managed and every year, probably from the Coachella Valley where I live, there were boxes and boxes (wood) of red grapes for sale.
No other time of the year that I recall.
So we gorged on grapes. Spit out the seeds.
There isn't a whole lot to the story except to underline the obvious. We now have, year round, a whole lot of produce that used to be seasonal.
In the "olden days" we had sparagus in the spring, blueberries in late summer, strawberries hardly at all in the store, all local at road side stands. It goes on and on.
We did have lettuce, iceberg, the tasteless kind. But no other. The iceberg came in big (wood) crates, packed in ice from the central valley of California.
The ice lasted just about long enough for the lettuce to get to our store.
Tomatoes? We had hot house and then, in season, more local tomatoes from New Jersey. The old fashioned tasty ones.
The price we pay to have all this stuff all year round (in addition to the price we pay) is that it is all "shippable" now and therefore often tasteless.
One of the things about moving out here is that all the produce we buy is local except when it is not (blueberries, asparagus, some other stuff) and it lasts longer and tastes better.
We get it before the folks back east do. And we also get some breeds that are not "shippable" over flavorfull.
OK. That is enough nostalgia for today. The thoughts spun off of a bunch of grapes. And these came from just down our valley!
