But it's DIRTY!! A post about produce. That comes from the ground.

I found an article while perusing the internet earlier, and thought I would share it.  It's called Romancing the Food: The conundrum of Beautiful food.  It's about how we look at produce, and I think the author raises some great points.  If we only buy the pretty produce, what happens to the ugly stuff?

Here's the thing: as a kid, I remember eating out of our garden all summer long.  My parents had a HUGE garden, and we ate fresh-picked corn, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, green beans, peas, squash, pumpkins; you name it, we probably grew it.  And guess what?  When we picked it and brought it up to the house, it was dirty.  It comes from the earth!  It's supposed to be that way.

There's also an apple tree in my parents' front yard; the type that produces odd-shaped, sour, green apples of some unidentifiable variety.  And guess what?  Everything we grew tasted fantastic.  Was it always pretty?  No, not in the sense that everything was uniform and blemish free.  Check it out:

It's a lovely, LuMPy, yellowey-orange tomato.  And I'll bet it tastes fantastic.  I just thought I'd share this, with a reminder that food, especially produce, doesn't have to be pretty to be delicious.  In fact, in most cases the nice-looking stuff you buy at the grocery store has been genetically engineered to be just that: pretty.  They breed the plants so that they get a long-shelf-lived, shippable, storable, good-looking product; flavor is usually not their first, or even second or third concern.  Just another reason to show your local growers some love, people! Or, if you're feeling adventurous, plant a little garden.  You'll enjoy better tasting food, while helping the farmers in your communities.

Who doesn't love that?