A lot of my friends, on LiveJournal and elsewhere, are downright religious about food. I'm not just talking about diets predicated on a conventional religious belief system, such as keeping kosher. I have friends who are vegetarian, or even vegan, as part of an ethical belief system, although different friends have different motivations for their choices (concern for the conditions feed animals and fish are raised in, concern about the ecological impact of raising animals for food, a belief that it is simply wrong to eat previously-living flesh). And then there is the whole locavore movement, eating food from close to home. One of my LJ friends, sizztheseed, has written extensively about his efforts to grow what he can and supplement that with food raised close to his home, which is, apparently, fortuitously near the farmlands of southern Ontario. I admire his efforts, but can't imagine sticking to such a program myself.

On the other hand, I grow what I can. And I have gradually identified local sources for produce and eggs. Given a choice, I will, almost always buy local. Or local-ish, at any rate. For instance, I can get locally-made cheese and butter, but I honestly don't know where the raw materials come from. Likewise, there is a sausage producer in New Haven, but their meat surely comes from somewhere in the midwest.

And between the vegetable garden and my favorite local farmstand, I've been eating quite well lately. I stayed home from work today to do some errands. So, lunch was a large spinach salad. The spinach was purchased from the farmstand, and grown at a farm elsewhere in Connecticut. I have no idea where the red onion came from. The tomato was also purchased at the farmstand, and grown in southern Ontario. The cheeses on the salad were imported, as were the ingredients in my home-made dressing. For a mid-afternoon snack, I had strawberries from the farmstand—the first of the season, and the email from the farmstand Saturday night crowing about the harvest got me out of the house much earlier Sunday morning than is my usual habit; I needed these strawberries. (Of course, the cream on the strawberries wasn't local, but, dude! Strawberries! And cream!)

For dinner tonight, along with my chicken (supermarket all-natural brand), I had a salad of freshly-picked greens from the garden (lettuce, arugula, beets), some chopped scallion from the garden, and the first radishes of the season. When I picked the radishes, I noticed that the greens were in good shape, albeit fuzzy. And i remembered that last year, Norma of Now Norma Knits had had several posts on preparation of radish greens. So, I figured, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I treated the greens like spinach or chard. I washed them, spun them dry, and braised them in peanut oil with two sliced garlic cloves and a bit of scallion (I have lots of scallions!). I finished them with a bit of balsamic vinegar (also imported!). They were, in a word, OK. Not spectacular, but, on the whole, not bad. Next time, I'll season them with hot pepper flakes, I think. But, there will be a next time.