I now wear better shoes when I head down to the beach, (or always intend
to), and keep checking for buried turtles. And yes, there keep being eyes
looking back at me!
Hmmmm....not such an innocent little beach any more!
v
Cabbage. Check. Could have been a semi-local cabbage. I was already in line
at the checkout when I remembered I hadn't even looked to see if it said.
I'd been looking at price, and whether it was PER cabbage or per pound/kg.
And picking the more inexpensive breed of cabbage. (We're both starving
artists, there's a non-existent budget to cling precariously to.)
But then, after I'd looked up the recipe(s), I realized it would be far
trickier. Even foodstuffs that are raised locally, don't necessarily get
into the supermarket food chain. Such is life. And having a tiny town be the
closest source of groceries, means that even mainstream grocery store
foodstuffs might be a challenge to find...(Parsley is an occasionally wicked
secret in our town. Yes, they often carry some now, but it's often hidden in
the back, and obtained by a whispered furtive conversation with a grocery
clerk.) Fresh herbs? Ha! Fresh local herbs and greens? Ha! Ha!
Anyway, one of the key ingredients in cabbage rolls, apart from the
cabbage, is rice.
Whoops. I'm betting there's not a big traffic in locally-grown rice.
(Hmmm....wonder what they'd be like with wild rice? Expensive.)
Barley? Well, checking my bag of barley only tells me it was packed in
Canada. And pretty much, I'd assume that unless a foodstuff came primarily
from the same location always, packaging is going to default to the basic
repeatable information. My Basmati rice says "product of India", even though
it's packaged in Ontario.
Actually, browsing through my shelves tells me that "packaged in Canada"
and occasionally "product of Canada" seems to be about the most info I'm
going to get on major store brand packaging.
***There was a comment on the radio a week or so ago. Someone had phoned in
to ask 'why didn't they ever find Ontario lamb in grocery stores', and the
reply had to do with grocery stores needing products that have been
federally inspected so they could cross provincial boundaries, and lamb not
using that system. But Canada has trade arrangements with New Zealand which
grant NZ inspection systems an equivalent status to our federal ones.
Hmmmm.....
But, back to the cabbage rolls. I eventually decided that they might work
with bulgur wheat, the same stuff one uses in tabouleh. Except for the fact
I can't get bulgur wheat up here (really does sound like I live at the end
of the world, doesn't it?) and when I make tabouleh, I now substitute
barley! Oh well.
Tomato juice, if I play my cards right, might come from the
Blenheim/Ridgetown area of Ontario. They are major tomato producers.
But for all my pride in homemade cabbage rolls, I guess they're not really
going to qualify as a "local" dinner.
Now my perogies from last night....they did use potatoes grown in
Shelburne... but the flour, yoghurt, bacon, cheese, onions... they all came
out of fridge and cupboard, and don't say, or no longer have labels, and
were all bought in town from the small selection of products, and
occasionally, on sale(which often tips my hand towards choice-making.)
I suppose my "eating local" challenge is to be able to make meals out of
whatever I can get at the local grocery, and to not have to travel further
afield Maybe I'll keep *my* carbon footprint smaller by not driving to the
bigger towns for the better choices.
Hmmmm....perplexing.
Anti-V, in uffish thought.
