Hello from Buffalo Locavore

The editing team at Buffalo Locavore has been hard at work for the last few weeks talking about what we want to include in our blog, and which of our team of five will focus on what issues most often. We also decided to each post a introduction so you can get to know a little more about who we are and how we came to be blogging about local foods. Whitney has already said hello, and now it is my turn.

As you can see from the tag to this post, my given name is Teresa, but my name will appear in posts as buffalolocavore. I grew up in St. Louis, and moved to Buffalo in 1999. For most of my life, I have lived an urban or suburban life. The two exceptions were the rural town where I went to college and the summer months I would spend at my great uncle's farm in northeastern Illinois.

When I was born, my great uncle was already 72 years old and semi-retired from farming. He had served as a dairy and corn farmer for most of his life, and met my great aunt when he was her family milkman. That was also when he met my grandmother, who was a child at the time. About the same time my great uncle was widowed, my grandmother was diagnosed as being legally blind and forced to retire. He asked my grandmother to move in to keep house for him since he was then in his 80s and couldn't do it alone. She agreed, and for my brother and I it began a decade of summers on this small farm in a house that my great uncle had built with his own hands. The peace and happiness of those summers was incomparable.

There were a few acres of farm that my great uncle still cultivated, though most of the 300 acres he'd once owned were rented out to his trusted neighbor. My brother and I had many adventures searching through the old barn and storehouses, and living far closer to the earth than a St. Louis childhood would permit. Best of all, though, was the corn and tomatoes we would help grow. While I will grant that picking tomatoes in the August sun and Midwestern humidity is probably not ideal, it is well worth it for a bite of a perfect, fresh tomato--so heavy and sun warmed the juice would dribble down your chin like a peach. The breezeway porch would fill with bushels of tomatoes for weeks every August, and no one who visited was allowed to leave empty handed. We also had peas, wax beans, zucchini, cucumbers, and the sweetest corn I have ever tasted. I helped my grandmother with the canning and cooking up all of that wonderful produce, and my brother would occasionally catch sunfish from the nearby creek to add to our dinner. That sweet corn was the best bait you could get. I suppose at the time we did not realize how truly idyllic it was. Does any child? I realize now that I am in my 30s how it changed utterly the landscape of my life and made me appreciate what it means to truly feed yourself.

Maybe it was those early farming experiences, but I have always liked digging in the dirt to make things grow. I remember in my suburban backyard as a teenager trying desperately to get carrots and lettuce to grow out of the Missouri clay without really understanding what I was doing. I think I managed three lettuce leaves one summer, and that was the extent of my bounty. In my home now I mainly stick to flowers, and my husband grows the vegetables. This summer he planted cucumber, tomato, jalapeno, and pumpkin plants. I always know that it is nearly Spring when he brings home the seed packets in March to start the seedlings indoors.

Despite all of this, it would probably be surprising to most of the people who know me best that I have started this blog and am so keenly interested in local food and urban agriculture. I have never been much of a vegetable eater. I stick to a few tried and true standards and have never experimented too much. I was a picky eater as a child, and didn't start eating mustard until I was 23 (nor really any other condiment, for that matter). I have never eaten a turnip, a parsnip, or a leaf of arugula and I don't have the faintest idea what a rutabaga even looks like.

I confess that I am not much of a cook, though I would like to be. When I was in high school I had quite a number of good dishes in my repertoire, but over the last few years I have lost my touch for the painstaking, patient preparation necessary for really spectacular dishes.

What I want to be is a food adventurer. I want to show people who, like me, appreciate good food and fresh fruits and vegetables, but have forgotten (or never knew) how to make their food uniquely their own. I want to show that eating locally doesn't have to be expensive, and that farmer's markets can be a treasure hunt. I want to take the readers of this blog along with me on my food adventures, and I hope that you will share your discoveries and experiences as well.