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The link to the "Foodie Food Storage" article got me wishing I had more info about a few things. Sharon Astyk writes:
[I]t is worth remembering that the peasant cuisines that we base much of our best food upon never contained meat, milk and eggs in the quantities we have them now, never ate them all year round. That is, no one ever ate osso buco ( Read more... )
[I]t is worth remembering that the peasant cuisines that we base much of our best food upon never contained meat, milk and eggs in the quantities we have them now, never ate them all year round. That is, no one ever ate osso buco ( Read more... )
I'm really becoming less and less a fan of Sharon Astyk, which makes me really sad because I used to have a blog-crush on her.
But as far as storing eggs and butter and cheese, I think she's out of her mind. My experience is that first, these are things that store exceedingly well as long as you store them correctly even without refrigeration -- cheese, for instance, would HAVE to store well since it's an aged product! -- and that second, they continue to be available all year round. For instance, my friends with city chickens still get eggs in the winter and while winter milk isn't as rich and creamy it's certainly still available.
Don't get me wrong, I think her point is a good one -- we've got to give up the idea that we can eat pasta margarita in the winter or make pesto in the spring. But the local cuisine that is available to people who live in the north in the winter is by necessity going to run high toward meat (frozen or preserved), root veggies, dried beans, pickled/canned food, cheese, and beer because you cannot grow anything under 3-4 feet of snow. And that's OKAY. You can be a foodie eating that sort of thing 3 months out of the year. People have been doing it for years.
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And yes, I agree that Astyk's argument is a bit... questionable at times. It was more that she--like so many others--was going "blah blah blah traditions," which prompted me to start poking around to see whether there were actually any reliable, comprehensive sources for said traditions. So far, nothing comprehensive, but lots of reliable-looking interesting tidbits.
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Even some of our supposedly "traditional" ways of eating don't always follow seasonal patterns. When, for example, did green beans become a traditional part of a Thanksgiving feast? I would be very surprised to learn that the Pilgrims were able to grow fresh beans in late November!
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