Local Flavor

The Secret Life of Vegetables

Surprisingly enough the veggies you've grown accustomed to in the produce section often bear little resemblance to the real McCoy.

by Deb Barshafsky

During the holidays, some nameless, faceless, anonymous spreader of cheer left a box of fruit and vegetables on the porch. Broccoli, a head of cabbage, white onions, sweet potatoes, grapefruit, bananas, pecans, tomatoes and one tremendous carrot. The carrot was so amazing in length and girth and vibrancy of color that we e-mailed a photo of it to my friend Marian's daughter at the University of Georgia. Marian put a penny next to it for the sake of perspective. Liza summed it up rather succinctly. "That," she observed, "is terrifying."

The Carrot, as it has become known, really was a little scary. A hair shy of 11 inches (yes, we measured) and absolutely unappealing if for no other reason than an unfortunate case of gigantism. Despite what those of you with filthy minds might be thinking at this point, we thought The Carrot resembled one of those plastic toy bats. Or a billy club in a techno-colored police state. It was enormous and so very orange. If it were animated, surely it would have lumbered toward us in slow motion making unintelligible vegetable noises.

When we unearthed The Carrot from beneath the pile of pecans, we recoiled. We were absolutely stunned. I suppose our reaction was not too dissimilar from a child's at seeing the Elmo float at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade after playing with a Tickle Me Elmo doll for years. Amazed. Bewildered. Dumbfounded. And, yes, frightened. It couldn't possibly be that large.

It wasn't just us. The Carrot held court on the kitchen counter for a few days, like a sideshow attraction in a traveling circus. We showed it to anyone and everyone who stopped by for a visit—free of charge. They all had the same reaction. A look of shock followed by laughter. No one had ever seen a carrot quite like The Carrot. Just before it turned the corner, we sent The Carrot off with Dori, Marian's other daughter, to the barn. She fed it to her horse, Precious the Tank. Fitting end. A big carrot for a big horse.

I tell the epic tale of The Carrot to illustrate a sad modern truth. We've lost touch with food in its natural state. As a society, we prefer processed produce. We like our consumables precut, freeze dried, air tight, antiseptic.

Think of that little bag of "baby" carrots in your fridge. I know you've got one in there. Everybody does. But here's a news flash: "Baby" carrots occupy the same realm as unicorns, Bigfoot and a free lunch. There ain't no such thing. There's no field in sunny California covered with rows and rows of tiny carrots. No Lilliputian farmers driving Matchbox tractors planting microscopic seeds to be harvested by mini-migrant workers. Sadly, my friends, we've been duped.

For our collective illumination, here's how Bob Riha Jr. describes the "baby" carrot birth process in a piece he wrote for USA Today.... "Baby carrots aren't babies at all. They're grown-up carrots cut into two-inch sections, pumped through water-filled pipes into whirling cement-mixer-size peelers and whittled down to the niblets Americans know, love and scarf down by the bagful."

A real carrot—a crooked, cracked root vegetable with a stem, a mechanical injury or two and an intact tap root—bears no resemblance to those bags of babies or those perfect orange soldiers we see in formation in the produce section of grocery stores. Heck, sometimes it's hard to find a "real" carrot at a farmers' market for they too have fallen prey to merchandising for the masses, to culling the oddities. Tomatoes with cleavage. A sweet potato that looks like a club foot. Siamese squash. Rarities, I tell you. But that's what real food looks like.

Last week when I was in Fresh Market searching for a good ginger beer for my father (I managed to find a really bad one), I stalled in the produce department. I simply could not pull myself away from the brussels sprouts.Fresh Market sells them on stalk. I don't know if that's the correct way to refer to sprouts that aren't sold as individual heads, but I like the way it sounds. On stalk. Anyway, I wanted them. Bad. I wanted them in my cart so that people who were there for nothing more than the free coffee and the pimento cheese would look at me and find me interesting, intriguing and somewhat mysterious because I buy brussels sprouts "on stalk." I finally pulled myself away—sans stalks—and berated myself for being seduced by clever marketers. I wanted those brussels sprouts because they looked exotic. But that's what brussels sprouts look like! Are you following me?We're surprised by food in its natural state. Do you have any idea how large a butternut squash is?!

Don't get nervous. I realize I've gotten a bit exercised about this topic, but I'm not about to jump on a stump and proselytize about the rewards of slaughtering your own barnyard animals. I would, however, like to venture this tiniest of suggestions. Perhaps, my faithful readership, we could band together this year and make an attempt to acquire our food a little closer to the source, a little less processed, not so unrecognizable in its current state from its natural state. You know, like a real block of cheese (maybe a nice balsamic washed goat cheese from Sweetgrass Dairy in Thomasville) instead of processed cheese food or a block of plasticine mass produced pepper jack. Or maybe a fresh fish from Island Seafood on Lumpkin with its head and tail intact—instead of a box of breaded fish sticks from the frozen food aisle at BiLo.

I'm not suggesting we embrace the 100-Mile Diet—that experiment in local eating that requires you to gather your food and drink from within a 100-mile radius of your home. Nope, I can't do that. I like French vodka and Argentinian wine a little too much to prescribe to that approach. And I'm not sure that bluefin tuna run in the Savannah River.

But we could do this, couldn't we? We could plant a vegetable garden, a little patch of something, like pole beans or kale or heirloom purple Peruvian potatoes. Or try growing your own monstrous carrots and sending pictures to your children at college so they'll think you've lost your mind. We could buy shares in a CSA, a farm that embraces community supported agriculture (learn more at www.localharvest.org). You become a member or shareholder by providing nominal financial support and you get a basket of produce every week during the farm's growing season or until your money runs out. I'm looking at Boann's Banks in Royston just outside of Athens. But that involves talking Liza into being my produce mule and she's been a little skittish around vegetables ever since we sent her that photo of The Carrot.