from Grist Magazine's Gristmill blog:
Get thee to the farmers market
Now's the time for scapes and green garlicPosted by Tom Philpott at 4:04 PM on 20 Jun 2008
Food headlines hardly bring comfort these days: tales of lost harvests, hunger riots, agrichemical runoff, tainted pork and tomatoes.
A society's foodways surely reveal something about its quality of life. From studying the industrial-food system, as I do, it's easy to conclude that we live in a brutal culture: content to destroy the ecosystem, exploit labor, and torture animals to produce unhealthy but profitable food.
When such dark musings grip me, I try to remember to take pleasure and comfort in small things. Industrial agriculture has in many ways consolidated its grip over our land. Profits for agribiz giants like Monsanto, Cargill, Mosaic, and Potash of Saskatchewan have reached epochal levels.
And yet, people are fighting back -- starting small-scale farm operations, joining community gardens, turning over lawns to put in veggies patches, and going out of their way to buy directly from farmers whose practices they trust.
I find consolation for the brutalities of existence in the kitchen and at the table. Right now, nothing is soothing me more than the early-summer bounty of the garlic harvest. Across much of the country, now is when garlic plants are sending up the green flowering shoot called the scape. Farmers and gardeners snip it off to concentrate the plant's energy into its below-ground bulb. Turns out that scapes deliver great garlic flavor -- as well as an additional source of income for farmers.
Now's also the time for green garlic -- the immature bulb of the garlic plant, harvested before it . It's the lb before it has developed has fully developed cloves. To me, it's the purest, freshest way to experience garlic's blissful pungence. .....(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/20/154254/811
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