What the hell did people do before oranges and lemons were consistently available in cold climates?
Cannot resist the family anecdote: My grandmother was a homesteader in rural Manitoba and she had at least one childhood winter where frost came before the harvest, and she ate nothing - NOTHING - but pickled fish and potatoes for eight months. She lived to 95 so I guess it didn't hurt her, but... **shudder** On the other hand, she got all her vitamin C needs met via those potatoes. And by the time my mother was born, the family ate homegrown, home-canned tomatoes, rhubarb and high-bush cranberries all winter long. It made for some funny food combinations; to this day, many Manitobans whose ancestors were Polish homesteaders douse their perogies with jam. But if jam is the only fruit you have, you're going to come up with some funny culinary traditions to reflect that.
Much as I love eating locally, I know what that means if you are strict about it, and it just isn't for me. The occasional orange or avocado will not kill the environment - the biggest environmental concern is packaged food, where the ingredients have been around the world several times being processed and assembled. I think it is possible to go a long, long way to minimising your footprint without being rigid about it. Packaged food, home heating, and cars are the biggies to keep low.
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Cannot resist the family anecdote: My grandmother was a homesteader in rural Manitoba and she had at least one childhood winter where frost came before the harvest, and she ate nothing - NOTHING - but pickled fish and potatoes for eight months. She lived to 95 so I guess it didn't hurt her, but... **shudder**
On the other hand, she got all her vitamin C needs met via those potatoes. And by the time my mother was born, the family ate homegrown, home-canned tomatoes, rhubarb and high-bush cranberries all winter long. It made for some funny food combinations; to this day, many Manitobans whose ancestors were Polish homesteaders douse their perogies with jam. But if jam is the only fruit you have, you're going to come up with some funny culinary traditions to reflect that.
Much as I love eating locally, I know what that means if you are strict about it, and it just isn't for me. The occasional orange or avocado will not kill the environment - the biggest environmental concern is packaged food, where the ingredients have been around the world several times being processed and assembled. I think it is possible to go a long, long way to minimising your footprint without being rigid about it. Packaged food, home heating, and cars are the biggies to keep low.