Doesn't take much, just a little homegrown lettuce, to make me want to create beautiful salads for friends and family. Friends are coming this weekend and I plan to treat them to a big bowl of greens from the garden.
The more we read about tainted food from China, bad spinach from California and who knows what else, the more appealing the idea of growing our own becomes. You know exactly where it came from - the back yard. It's inexpensive - a few dollars for seed. And it tastes fantastic.
At this point, I'm a splintered shopper when it comes to food. Some comes from the food co-op. Some comes from the Reading Terminal or Whole Foods near work. And some, what I can't avoid, comes from the ghastly supermarkets that plague Northwest Philadelphia.
Often when I go to the suburbs, I marvel at the markets. There are shopping carts whose wheels go in the right direction when you push. Imagine! The people who work there are pleasant and helpful. Some even say hello before you do.
Not long ago, I asked in my neighborhood supermarket where to find something and the young man shrugged. "I have no idea. They keep changing things around." And that was that.
This was a few months after the Great Pineapple Showdown. Looking through the prepared pineapples, I noticed an expiration date of that very day. I asked the produce worker if he had any pineapples with a farther-away expiration date. He said these pineapples were fine. But might you have others? I asked. "I'm tryin' to help you, lady," he boomed, "but you won't let me." And he turned and walked away from me.
Almost every trip to the supermarket for me is an exercise in frustration and disgust. Lousy corn. Blueberries and tomatoes, in prime season, that aren't from New Jersey! Rotten service. What's the matter with these people? And what's wrong with shoppers that they don't complain?
So I'm making changes this year. I'm going to the supermarket as little as possible. I'll support Weavers Way food co-op in Mount Airy and the merchants at the terminal. And I'll grow as much as I can out back.
I'm feeling better already!
