Fourteen years ago, when I was young and footloose, fancy free and all sorts of other clichés, I moved overseas. I spent 6 years living on 3 different continents and was fortunate enough to see the world through a constantly shifting set of parameters. Now, having been back in Canada for 8 years, those experiences seem further away, dulled somehow by the realities of time and kilometers and a busy life in the present. And then, suddenly, some event, some sensory moment will bring that buried past hurtling quickly and sharply in front of my eyes. And for a moment I will hold hands with my old self and bridge a wide divide.
Yesterday, I stood in a local grocery store, the one I shop in every weekend, and groused an internal dialogue (at least I hope it was in my head), "Good god, I am so sick of eating the same fruits and vegetables. I wish there were more choices in winter. Oh great, and there aren't even any organic pears. Just Bosc ones and Jakey will only eat the Bartlett. And look at the bananas. Could they be any greener? They'll go straight to brown like that and then no one will want them." I think I continued on in this vein until I was holding a (somewhat unripe) Roma tomato in my hand and suddenly, I was no longer in North Vancouver leaning over a four varieties of tomatoes.
Tunisia, 1996. In Tunisia, you bought what grew locally according to the season. In the winter, that mkæm k÷eant that you could buy tomatoes, potatoes, some onions, and that was about it. They were small with flawed flesh that marked a growth unhampered by tons of chemicals, pesticides and hot house attention. Flour routinely had bugs. The local store sold one kind of cheese. One kind of cereal. Bread consisted of loaves of white French bread. The 100 mile diet wasn't some kind of fashionable environmental trend. It was a way of life for everyone.
When I returned from Tunisia to visit Ontario that summer, I was in a bit of reverse culture shock, standing in (what would be considered a small to mid-sized) local grocery store with seemingly tons of variety, hundreds of fruit and vegetables to choose from. And I vowed I would never complain about the “lack of variety” in North America again.
How quickly we forget, indeed.
My goal this month is to avoid buying produce from Chile, Mexico, California. I am going to try to stay local to see if I can do it. Just for a month. Just to see what we can come up with from our own sources. Surely if I did it for an entire year, I can do it for a month. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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