In Season

About two weeks back I walked into Andronico’s down here in the Sunset to find something to make for dinner. I had the apartment to myself and wanted to cook, and, as is always the case in California, I had my pick of the fruits and vegetables of my choosing.

I did not have my pick of the fish.

One of the strangest things that I have had to get used to here is that back in the States you went to the grocery store and bought the seasonal fruits and vegetables, and here you can buy those same fruits and vegetables year around. The new seasons to memorize are what fish/seafood are around here in certain times of the year.

I spent 30 years memorizing the fruits/vegetables list. Suppose it will be another 30 to get the fish down?

I was craving salmon fillet, though, and took home one of the measly ones in the case for $21 a pound. (The fillet I purchased was 8 oz, so I didn’t pay $21, but still…) When I got home and shared this purchase with my brother, he laughed. “That thing wasn’t from around here.”

“Where is it from? Washington? Oregon?”

He laughed harder. “The Atlantic.”

*******

Not too long ago I wrote a blog on the Irish and their lack of plastic bags. Shortly after getting my laptop back, the NPR radio program Fresh Air featured an interview with Michael Specter (a science writer for a London publicaton) about the “carbon content” of our food. For those of you who don’t know (and I can’t imagine that number to be large—my readers are oftentimes smarter than I am), “carbon content” in any consumable is shorthand for how bad that consumable is for the environment when consumers buy it. The general rule in the past is that the further the product has to travel to get to you, the worse for the environment it is, based on all the fuel and packaging it took to get there. But Specter insists that this isn’t always the case—you alsohave to think of how many fertilizers and treatments an irrigation energies were spent in getting this product to your table, local or no.

So maybe I saved some carbons with that salmon.

God, I hope so. This isn’t just about walking and the plastic bottles/bags anymore. This is getting complicated.

No wonder people don’t do it.