Food Bytes

Too bad you got tasteless grapes - I've bought several baskets of them so far this fall and all have been delish.

To answer your main question, though, I have to say that if I didn't have a great independent grocery store near me that creates it's own little farmer's market style display outside it's front doors, i'd be weeping. I went to the brand new Metro near my work last week and they had cellophane wrapped wizened up corn and I had to hunt for red stone Ontario peaches since the US peaches were more prominently displayed. I was gobsmacked! So, I got in my car and drove 2 km to the independent where the great Ontario produce is right there, easy to find.

Sigh, yes you have a good point but you've chosen a terrible example to illustrate it. the seedless blue table grapes you are seeing are no doubt Soverign Coronation grapes. A variety developed using traditional crossbreeding techniques in the 70s in the Okaganogan but only available in commercial qunatities since the late 90s. In reality they are a good replacement for the Concord, notwithstanding your recent experience they do have a similar taste profile to the Concord and they are more naturally pest restistant, thus reducing the chemical footprint of the crop, in fact it's actually practical to grow these organically. In reality Concord was a pretty 2nd rate table grape, the flavour profile was OK but the combination of slip skins and seeds work against it, it really only works for one use, juice and the sadly there is no market for that anymore.

The real point your trying to make is about the lousy job our grocery retailers do at getting fresh local products on the shelves and our unrealistic expectations as consumers, which ought to include the fact that nobody living in PEI ought to be expecting to buy ANY variety of table grapes.

Kevin, you mentioned greenhouse tomatoes in your blog, something wrong with them? Please understand that there is a huge difference in taste between the different tomatoes offered. Also the source of the tomatoes, or any greenhouse grown product, is a factor. I like to discuss this with you in an open and honest way. This industry is putting a huge effort in producing a healthy and tasteful product on the shelves at a reasonable price. Pitty enough the product is not always (seldom) treated the way it should be to bring the best flavor out for the consumer. I hope to be able to play a part in changing these perceptives. In the end it will serve and the producer and the consumer the best possible way.

I hear you and definitely agree. For this reason, during the growing season, I only buy produce at farmer's markets. Living in SK, our growing season is very short but I'm still able to enjoy the harvest seasonally. I buy bushels of tomatoes and preserve them myself to enjoy them during the winter.

Most of the food you buy today in the supermarket is tasteless. Our industrial, globalized food system is looking at the lowest common denominator which is price. Growers are forced to grow high yielding crops that can be stored for months and shipped around the globe. Taste and nutrition are the least important aspects of the system. Tomatoes are only one example, take watermelon. I have not eaten a descent watermelon for at least a decade. Todays seedless varieties are tasteless and not half as much fun as the old seeded varieties. But eventually todays children will grow up thinking that this is the normal flavor and we old folks will die off with the memory of food that used to taste good. Today most families no longer have a vegetable garden, so children no longer learn how food is grown, nor do they get the experience of what a carrot tastes like just out of the ground or a tomato just off the vine. The same goes for our meat which is factory farmed with a host of drugs and chemicals to make it cheaper and again lacking in flavor or nutrition. I am glad to be a small scale farmer that can eat my own meat and vegetables and not have to buy much in the supermarket. I still know what good food tastes like and have the pleasure of selling this to my customers at the farmer's markets.

Being in college without a car I find it nearly impossible to get to a good farmers market cheaply and efficiently. That being what it is my local Superstore had no fresh strawberries or for that matter any berries at all this season. It wasn't until just recently that I actually saw something local (peaches, potatoes, and beets) on their shelves. I miss fresh Ontario stuff because I grew up really close to a farm and always had fresh (even stuff I picked) right at hand when the season came upon us. I find it quite sad that they don't stock Ontario produce when it's in season and that the stuff the do stock is for the most part either just before bad or way before it should have been picked.