local vegetables

Sure, August is the hottest month, but the temperature's got nothing to do with it. For most backyard gardeners, these 31 days are the culmination of 11 months of waiting and wondering and breathlessly anticipating the climax of the entire year. The month of May is but a flirtatious glance, a mere glimpse of possibility, a hint of a romance that may or may not come to fruition. But in August, we experience the panting, sweating, throbbing, uninhibited consummation of a relationship that began a few months back when we pressed a few vegetable seeds or seedlings -- firmly, gently, probingly -- into the fertile earth.

I’m a morning person by nature; I’m often the first one in the office pounding out more work in the first few hours than I do later in the day. So last summer, when I ventured to Virginia to work on a farm, my tendency to wake up early helped me face the weekly, pre-dawn job of preparing for our weekly trip to the farmers’ markets.

Midwestern farmers' markets are the stuff of midwinter’s – and really, even midspring’s – dreams.  When we sit down and contemplate the changing weather, the growth potential, and the veritable expansion of our own resources, we tend to imagine gardens. Farms. Food production in a variety of levels – gardener or not. We just can’t help ourselves.

For years, I would see a vegetable like okra or mustard greens in a grocery store and imagine what it would be like to make a delicious meal with such exotic ingredients. I was constantly promising myself that next week I would find recipes to fulfill my culinary fantasies. But as the weeks passed, it became obvious that I needed something else to get my creativity going. Fortunately, my fiancé knows me incredibly well, and he gave me a CSA subscription as a gift.

My recent tour of Whole Foods has got me thinking about how true the company has stayed to its core values despite its size. Sure, there are problems. The buying decisions are made centrally, bakery items are shipped to local stores par-baked, there are only 5 local vegetables this month in the Minneapolis location, and - most troubling - a friend recently let me know that Whole Foods has been accused of union-busting. But all things considered, Whole Foods does an excellent job of walking the talk, and helping customers find the good stuff. This post highlights the extensive process Whole Foods uses to vet potential new partners.