Laura Ingalls, but slightly Wilder

When I go to the gorcery store, I deliberately avoid produce from California or South America and try to go for the stuff that comes from remotely nearby. This practice predated the whole e. coli business, and came more from my wanting to abide by the conditions of my idiotic, romantic conception of farm life that involves eating what you'd eat if you were Laura Ingalls Wilder and you called your Dad "Paw" and traded grain with Seminoles. Except sometimes you also have Luna Bars and Gatorade. It's a system, it works for me.

That's one reason I appreciate Whole Foods--even though an overwhelming majority of their produce is from California, they're very clear about where everything comes from and they've always got something or other from the vicinity. And by something or other, I mean cabbage.

That's right. I got through the fall pretty nicely-- lots of gourds, etc., but for the past few weeks I've been, like my distant Schwabian ancestors, subsisting pretty much on cabbage. Pickled, slawed, braised. Gnawed on raw over the evening's reading. If you looked in my purse right now, I'm sure you'd find a couple little purple threads of it, like the stray confetti of a 19th-century Russian serf celebrating the death of a locally menacing she-bear.

I see the stuff from California-- the big, plump, glossy green stuff. "Leeks?" I scowl. "Paw wouldn't have leeks in his root cellar in the middle of January." So it's a no. Whether Paw would have Colombian coffee, Camel Lights, Norwegian salmon and Pecorino is irrelevant. I'm sticking to my guns on the cabbage.


Grandmaw churning Diet Coke.