Eating Local, Mid-February, Minnesota

No modern homestead is an island, especially not my almost-farm, so I have no qualms about searching out fabulous food from other growers. Ultimate inspiration on this front can be found in Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon's book, Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally. This week I found at my co-op, in addition to the usual local cheese, eggs, flour, and bison, bright and flavorful Minnesota carrots from Featherstone Farm. The Whole Foods down my street offered up a rare treat: Minnesota-grown tulips. Best of all, I dug out two cans of blueberries we picked 18 months ago at Rush River Produce, 59 miles from home, and made a blueberry pie to welcome my mother for her visit. I used the recipe for berry pie using canned fruit in the 1975 edition of Joy of Cooking by Rombauer and Becker. The pie was baked by 3:00; waiting until after dinner to dive in took serious self-restraint. "The meaning of life," I couldn't help chanting in the early evening, "is pie." Yum.