Locavoure: Not that there's anything wrong with local

The following mini-rant was brought to you thanks to a post up at Instapundit:

WHEN YOU GET RID OF THE PRETENSION BEHIND THE LOCAVORE MOVEMENT, THERE’S STILL SOMETHING: It can save you money.

Here’s what the Raeses have grown this spring, summer, and fall: turnips, black beans, purple hull peas, cranberry beans, Flossy Powell beans, Delicata squash, zucchini, horseradish, onions, potatoes, kale, rhubarb, sweet potatoes, beets, broccoli, blueberries, umpteen kinds of tomatoes, and almost every herb you can name. (Note: This is an incomplete list.)

The Raeses also belong to a CSA (community supported agriculture) share from a local farm. What they can’t eat fresh, they freeze or can—Kat has an entire pantry filled with brightly colored mason jars. She pickles turnips and cans lentil soup and makes jam and even her own ketchup.

Raese said she got into canning because she couldn’t land a full-time job after finishing her Master’s in English at UT. Matt was (and is) still working on his Ph.D. in English, which meant their income was next to nothing—and Kat had nothing to do with her time. Once she discovered canning and then gardening, she says she found a way to channel her frustration at being underemployed into something productive.

Maybe someone should drop by the #Occupy protests and pass out copies of Square Foot Gardening.

 I skimmed through the whole article. (IMHO, it needs some serious editing, but who am I?)

What irritates me-- wait, there are a lot of things that irritate me about food fads. One thing I hate about them is the waste. From the article where "I" is the author, Cari Wade Gervin:

I have grown tomatoes the past two summers (in containers, from seedlings that I bought). This summer I also grew one pot of sweet red peppers.

An admission: I have never once cooked anything with the tomatoes I have grown, unless you count slicing them up and making a tomato sandwich or caprese salad. Half the peppers I grew this year rotted on the plant because I had too many to eat. And that was from just one single sweet pepper plant.

Another admission: I have stopped going to the farmers’ market most weekends. Why? Because every time I go I spend $40 on produce that I then inevitably never have the time to cook. And I end up tossing those $4 oyster mushrooms and $3 arugula and $10 peaches in the trash. (Yes, I could freeze the peaches, but I’ve done that before, and I never eat them either. I don’t like frozen peaches, and I don’t like smoothies.) And every time I throw that rotten produce in the trash, I hate myself for not being more like Alice Waters. Or for not being more like Kat Raese. [My emphases]

1. If I were a vendor at The Market Square Farmers' Market in Knoxville, and I knew you had thrown away produce I grew, I would be pissed. I know that once we make the exchange you are free to do what ever you want with your produce, and I am free to do what ever I want with my money, but that wouldn't stop me from being pissed. If I had foreknowledge about who would be throwing my produce in the trash, I would refuse to sell it to you. 

2. ARE YOU KIDDING ME [banging my head on the desk...]? Miss Cari, what a wasteful person you are. For shame!! Shame on you. Don't you know there are starving children in Knoxville? You're so busy writing for an "alt-weekly" that you can't be bothered to pick peppers to give away? And you don't have time to cook. Do NOT get me started. If Mr. Big Food, and The Chick Who Writes Mississippiveggie have time to plan meals, and to cook, every one has time to cook.

She "hates herself." What poppycock. As I mentioned in another context, 

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. Aristotle

Miss Cari needs to develop some better habits. 

Again, they are her tomatoes and peppers, not mine. She needs no one's permission to do with them as she pleases. They are the fruits of her labor. And because of this, I am left to conclude Miss Cari does not value her own time and efforts. 

The produce she buys at the market are the fruits of others' labor. I must conclude  she does not value Mr. and Mrs. Farmer's work product. And although I am not yet prepared to extend this argument, I suspect she does not value Mr. And Mrs. Farmer, either.

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This morning, before Miss Jackie took off, we put out some melons out to nibble on while Mr. Big Food was preparing a Real Big Breakfast. One was that French melon that doesn't travel well. If you want it, you have to grow it yourself or find someone-- dare I say it? local-- to grow them for you. 

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Real the whole article and get back to me with your thoughts.