The winter is showing vague signs of easing up.  It’s been a tough haul since December in Toronto, but the reality is it’s been the most normal winter we’ve had in years.  Cold, snowy, cold, rainy, cold, grey, cold, sometimes sunny but mostly cold.  That’s it folks, from December until April, this is the kind of weather that makes running to the compost bin in our slippers and jim-jams a risky endeavour.

When you’re trying to buy local produce and giving a nod to 100-mile diets, about the time squash are no longer in season in Canada, the farmers’ markets shut down and the rest of the world opens up. While it’s nice to get exotic fruits and veggies all year, we crave what local farmers can give us. Organic, unadulterated and delicious.  If not organic, at least it’s local enough that the produce remembers where it came from.

We make smoothies every morning (strawberries, blueberries, banana, soy or almond milk, ground flax seed and soy protein powder) so we go through a lot of berries.  The problem is they’re hard to come by cheaply in Toronto in the winter so we’ve adjusted our ‘local’ food boundaries considerably.  During the winter it’s North America for the most part and while I don’t mind buying strawberries from the States it reminds me of the days when we could only get them a few weeks in the summertime and then that would be it until the next year.

I remember the first time I ate sweet Irish strawberries.  I bought them from a farmer’s market somewhere near Parnell Street in Dublin (maybe Moore Street?)  I was living out of a backpack and would buy fresh produce when I could. They were glorious, so after that I always made sure to buy strawberries when I went to Ireland in the summer.  Just like the blueberries we would eat as we picked them in the fields when we were kids, strawberries were a summertime treat you ate within days of picking or they’d go bad, just the way it should be.

So, how did these strawberries from the US last a whole week in my fridge?  They are soft, a little soggy and look a little sad, but there isn’t a mouldy one in the bunch.  In fact, I haven’t seen a mouldy strawberry all winter.  That’s just not right given the distance they had to travel to get to my fridge from as far away as California or Florida.

These pictured strawberries have probably been genetically modified to last longer, like bananas and tomatoes to mention only a few.  I say ‘probably’ because don’t know for sure.   The Canadian government doesn’t believe we need to know if we’re eating GMOs so we can make informed food choices (Canada has even tried to bully non-GMO countries like Ireland into taking our GMO-laden exports; thankfully Ireland dug in its heels).  If Stephen Harper ever ate an Irish strawberry, he’d know why.

Maybe we’ll do what we did a few years ago: buy them when they’re in season and just freeze them for the winter.  They won’t look as pretty when they thaw but who cares since they’re going straight into the blender anyway.

I just won’t take any pictures.