Mourning the Passing of the Berries

I've gone and done it.

Sunday night, I was packing my lunch for Monday, and I let out a long, sad groan--eliciting a "what?!" from the next room.

"I'm packing the last of the raspberries for my lunch tomorrow," I replied, sadly scooping the frozen fruit into their rightful place in my bento box. There were still black raspberries and golden raspberries, as well as the red raspberries you can find in any supermarket at any time of the year.

"I'm so sorry, honey," came the response--and it was actually quite heartfelt. I am the only berry junkie (the more fools them!) in the house, but I'm pretty loud about it, so the end of the summer berries is sort of a big deal.

The thing is, I didn't have to run out of berries this week. I mean, I could have bought more berries this summer. I complained about the price and the trouble of sorting, soaking, rinsing, drying, freezing, and storing them. I complained about the space they took up in my freezer (two huge plastic tubs of perfect, wonderful berries by the end of the summer growing season). I complained about the trouble of carrying tupperwares to work at least once a week to go to the market and get the berries.

And now, I'm going to complain about having to go to Trader Joe's (and only Trader Joe's--no one else carries them!) to pay about the same amount of money for frozen black raspberries that were grown somewhere in California or somewhere. They come in a non-reusable plastic bag and they're not as good as the ones grown in southern Michigan.

Don't get me wrong--they are very fine black raspberries, but they're just not as good. I don't think that's because black raspberries in California taste any worse or any different than those in Michigan, but there's something about the taste of raspberries that you had so much to do with before they ever got frozen. My farmer picks her berries in the morning, usually before dawn, and drives into the city with the berries in huge flats. She parcels out a pint or so for me and I dump it in my tupperware (she always reuses the paper pint she weighs them in). When I get home that day, I do all those things I complained about: sort, soak, rinse, dry, freeze, store...

And when I pull out a cup of them in the dark of winter, they're my berries.

There are people in the slow food movement who believe that, in part, the obesity epidemic comes from our lack of connection to our food. I'm not sure I believe that so much (I mean, I'd eat a couple of pounds of raspberries a day if I could, and that's hardly healthy for you!), but I do think that the food I cook that comes from food I know does indeed taste better. The lamb farmer who's 75 miles away and has a few acres of land where he rotates his lambs in and out of different organically-grown grass fields; the organic farmer whose heirloom tomatoes are so perfectly sweet that the salads I make with them need nothing more than a drizzle of vinegar; the apple farmer whose apples are so good that the first year I moved here and bought them, I gorged myself sick on them--twice...

The food they give me--the food I make with their help? It tastes better.

So this year, I guess I'm going to have stop whining about the cost of buying twice the berries I need, and instead buy three times the berries I need. I'll still complain about all the work I have to do, but at least the boxes of berries will last me until after the winter thaw--just in time for the cycle to start all over again.

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The Slow Food Movement is a fun thing to get into if you're a foodie. You may find yourself as obsessed with fresh cooking as I am (I just wish I were a better cook!), but it's got some very commonsense ideas about how to live simply and eat well.

• Slow Food USA is a good starting place. In you live in the States, there's a bulletin board with all kinds of Slow Food events around the country.
• Slow Food International is a global perspective and one of the resources that started it all.
• This TIME magazine article highlights the difference between what slow food is all about--good food--and what the movement has been accused of being--elist food snobs.