Don't worry about the strawberries. They're almost certainly a backload. I haven't done the calculation, but I would be very surprised if the value density would make it worth anyone's while sending an empty truck down to Mexico to pick up a load of strawberries, but if you've sent a full truck down there carrying something more valuable than strawberries, you might as well (economically and ecologically) fill it with strawberries for the journey back.
Your freezer stays on all year, right? It's not like your freezer only does its job because you have strawberries in there.
Yay, the Durham Farmer's Market came back to being open every week again! You know what I've found really tastes different when you get it locally? Eggs. They're actually a little more expensive than the pricey ones in the grocery store ($4/dz), but man are they excellent.
Right now, our house is just crammed full of spring greens and yummy yummy strawberries.
Around here we turn our freezers off on December first and turn them back on on March first.
Oh, local eggs. Mmmm. That is one of those foods I didn't think would be any different, tastewise, whether from local or factory, and I was wrong. When I've had to buy supermarket eggs in the past few years, they've tasted pretty gross.
1: Well, they also taste like hell -- I'd be pissy about imported winter strawberries regardless of the environmental impact. Which leads me to the conclusion that I'm probably just using the environmental thing to bust people's chops, and should stop.
3. Ours never shuts down -- it's Saturdays all year round -- but it's pretty bleak in the winters. Actual produce, as opposed to last year's apples and some baked goods, should start showing up soon.
The produce at our local farmer's market isn't always that great, tbh.
However, our local Co-Op [that's the big UK co-operative chain, not some boutique operation] advertises their commitment to selling locally sourced produce and the locally grown veg they stock is great. There's usually only one or two items, but the quality and price are excellent.
Crunchy strawberries and tomatoes have been bred for transport and storage.
On a good day here you can get fresh fish, sweet corn, and tomatoes, and strawberries as good as you can find in any expensive gourmet market anywhere. But these days are all clustered in about a month at the end of summer, and there will only be a few of them. And in season you get so much gourmet corn and tomatoes that you get sick of them and have to freeze them.
You know what I've found really tastes different when you get it locally? Eggs.
I think it's that the savory pain a mother chicken feels when her brood are eaten can only travel so far.
( BTW, your boy Hansbrough is unreal. Perhaps the college game is so bad and so small that I'm unable to see his real athletic flaws, but I think he's going to be a very good pro. I don't know why people have been downgrading him as a potential NBA player.)
During the winter, the Durham one goes to every other week. I think the Raleigh one is open weekly year-round. It makes me sorta irrationally happy. Bok choi! Turnips! Sunflower sprouts! Hooray!
I don't know why people have been downgrading him as a potential NBA player.
At 6'9", he's a bit undersized for an NBA center. He really did look fantastic though, didn't he? If he can hit 19-foot jumpers the way he did last night, I'm not sure Carolina can be beaten.
Also, at the risk of sounding heretical, I tend to find that supermarkets have consistently better produce than most local markets. The markets are often good for finding one or two really excellent things, but, on the whole, the supermarket stuff is better.
I mean for veg.
And don't get me started on the organic veg boxes like:
http://www.abelandcole.co.uk/Home.aspx
At 6'9", he's a bit undersized for an NBA center.
So he plays power forward. He probably comes off the bench. But there's just no way that he should las until pick no. 24
He really did look fantastic though, didn't he?
Gawd, yes. I was impressed by the jumpers--I didn't think he was supposed to be able to do that--but the play that shocked me was the put-back dunk. He got up. I can't quite see why his athleticism is so often marked down. Again, perhaps it's the competition that's confusing me.
I'm not sure Carolina can be beaten.
Carolina really does look fantastic. I can't bear to watch Kansas or UCLA--don't like the styles of play--so I don't know how good those two teams are. I'm a little worried about Lawson. He reminds me a bit of Felton: both are very quick, but also seem slightly out of control.
Do they have vegetables in Scotland now?
no way that he should las until pick no. 24
Shhhh. We want to him to come back for his senior year and get all the rest of the ACC records.
re: 14
Heh. Some of the best produce anywhere, as you fine well know. Although a lot of the country outside the [lush] central belt and Fife isn't really suitable for agriculture [being mountains, or midge infested bog, or both].
However, I live 'down South', so the stuff I'm talking about is Oxfordshire/Gloucestershire produce.
Yay, the Durham Farmer's Market came back to being open every week again!
Hey Apo, what's the Durham/Raleigh area like to live in?
I actually started a blog about this and other related dilemmas. After reading The Omnivore's Dilemna I never want to consume corn syrup again.
We just signed up for a CSA share. Since they typically drop off 10-30 pounds of food a week, I'm going to be learning how to can, pickle and freeze all summer. Plus I just won a replacement for my late lamented home-built smoker on E-Bay. Lots of good eats all summer chez Chopper.
Well, I love it. The weather's great, the landscape is pretty, it's reliably liberal (at least the Durham side, anyhow), cost of living is still low, and the area has been very resistant to economic trouble thanks to all the pharma and high tech industry here. You absolutely need a car here, though.
nattarGcM ttaM perhaps you could get started on the Able & Cole organic box. We ordered one and lasted about two months. I found the fruit excellent. My enthusiasm for piles and piles of potatoes and celeriac is, however, very limited. The one time we had cherry tomatoes they were excellent. Perhaps they'll pick up in summer.
19: Cool. Thanks. (I am collecting anecdata.)
re: 20
We tried them, and their stuff was over-priced crap. Week after week of boxes that contained stuff we could have bought separately for about 30% the price and which was, about half the time, either actually going off or was mouldy within a couple of days of it arriving.
There was usually one fairly interesting thing in the boxes, but there were was always a lot of 'filler' that was of poor quality.
When I used to live in Glasgow I used to shop at a small, mostly organic, independent grocer that had really cheap but extremely high quality produce. So it's not beyond the bounds of feasibility to do it. Abel and Cole, from our experience, weren't it.
<obligatory>Carbon taxes will make this all transparent!</obligatory>
The biggest energy cost is going to be freezing the berries in the first place; keeping them frozen shouldn't take much energy. Exactly how much is going to depend on your freezer - less for a chest freezer, more for a fridge-top one, more if it gets opened a lot. Coming up with actual numbers would be hard, though.
Raleigh-Durham area is gorgeous. And my family's, this generation, at least, been gravitating towards NC. I almost went there for graduate school, and all of my cousins have ended up at Duke for one reason or another. And my sister just got into NCSU ("no, not UNC, the other one. No, not Duke") for graduate school (tho it might lose to Pitt.)
We tried them, and their stuff was over-priced crap. Week after week of boxes that contained stuff we could have bought separately for about 30% the price and which was, about half the time, either actually going off or was mouldy within a couple of days of it arriving.
Some co-op type arrangements around here (where a local farmer delivers a box of fruit or veggies to you every week) have this reputation, too -- that you end up with the stuff they didn't sell to Safeway that week. The emphasis on seasonality allows the farmers to palm off all sorts of crap, too, or give you 10lbs of corn, etc.
Pitino agrees with you, Tim: "He really showed what an All-American he is. Some pro team is going to be very lucky. I haven't seen a guy play every possession like that in a long time. I've never seen it, actually."
I really hat the very thought of Durham / Raleigh. Elgin is good enough for me.
So, weather's great, Cala might drop by to visit family, and Emerson really hates the place. I'm nearly sold.
Hat not hate. There is a difference.
Within the next 4 weeks or so, I will commence The Eating of the Asparagus. They're only good here -- and by good I mean perfect -- for maybe 2 weeks a year. I grab a bunch at Union Square that had been picked that morning, take them home, drop them for the briefest of swims in a pot of boiling water, toss with lemon and butter. Pour myself a big old glass of chablis. This will be my dinner nearly every night for the last week of April. I can't wait.
People are really prejudiced against hatters. Under certain circumstances, hat is the most important family value.
Don't you find that it makes your urine smell funny?
I was counting to see how long it would take someone to make a piss joke. Under a minute!
||
Breaking: in Iraq a truce has been stacked on top of the cease-fire.
That place must be damn peaceful now.
|>
Not that anyone needs to care about my blog, but if you are interested, it's www.banalityexperiment.blogspot.com. Stupid inability to type.
If you're tired of piss jokes, try sticking the spears up your nose. Hilarious!
http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=mideast&item=080330131357.1k5valip.php
Since everybody here hates basketball, I'll keep right on talking about it. The slobbering encomiums to Hansbrough do get to be a bit much over a 40-minute game. Starting with this funny picture and going down, this Deadspin thread cracks me up. But then 200 instances of the word "ballsack" has that effect on me.
"But if Tyler were given the mission of licking a ballsack, he'd do it with unparalleled grit and determination."
Elgin is good enough for me.
You do not have to go too far from the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area in order to find places that have the economic possibilities and cultural attractions of Elgin.
If you're tired of encomiums to college basketball players, try sticking the players up your nose. Hilarious!
Under certain circumstances, hat is the most important family value.
Damn. That was a mistake. What I meant to say was:
Asparagus is inextricably linked to the American icon Babe Ruth. Only when Ruth is forgotten will the flood of piss jokes end.
We used to grow asparagus, and I know a trick. Don't harvest with a knife, just bend the stalks till they snap. You only get the tender part if you do that. You can prepare bought asparagus in the kitchen that way too. You lose about a third of the bulk, but it's the least tasty third.
EMerson, no! You're wasting a lot of good asparagus that way. Peel the bottom third and it's just fine.
I love asparagus, too. But I'm really anxious for tomatoes this year. I've been having tomato cravings for weeks!
Sodgerel is lovely. My reading tells me that hats are very important in steppe society, as did my Kirgiz student.
Elgin's unique landscape cannot be duplicated in the South, where trees obstruct the view.
Not good asparagus.
Did you hear about the moron who ate dates with the pit inside? When asked why, he replied "I bought them by the pound and can't afford to throw them away".
I use the asparagus stumps to feed the hogs on days when no Republican officials are available.
How does Sadr order a ceasefire in the middle of a ceasefire? Is that a meta-ceasefire, or maybe a ceasefire squared?
Emerson, you don't actually have hogs, right?
do you find? :)
my grandgrandma's set was donated to the Red Army during WWII, so now we see this kind of hats only in the museums, then my mother's brother were a big gambler and horse race lover so he lost a fortune by our standards, most importantly, the breed of very fast horses
we have a single silver shagai from that set
'shagai' is a knicklebone
No. The Republican officials are safe.
[Karl -- hear that? You are safe from me! I own no hogs! You need not be afraid!]
Pitino agrees with you
Kiss of death, right there.
Anybody picking Davidson to knock out Kansas?
chopper, all that stuff sounds great, and I wish you much joy of pickling, but you should keep a teeny bottle of karo at the back of the cupboard so your sugar syrups will never crystallize (just a tablespoon or less of corn syrup will stop it. it's like the anti-ice-9 of sugar syrups.)
I'm doing to sleep now, but I'm still at the hospital with my baby and I HATE EVERYTHING.
45: Oh, me too, Cala. And we have months and months to go. Blerg.
Mmmmmmm. Non-crunchy asparagus. Worth paying a premium price for, 50% higher than the price of crunchy asparagus.
57: I'm so sorry about all the health lousiness you've been having.
Seriously, alameida. Sorry about all the illnesses. It's like you need to call into the service center of God and complain about the warranty, which did not specify long-term viral illness. Wish I could send yinz guys some soup.
for Alameida and her baby
hope you will be well soon
So, so long until tomatoes.
Yes, good health wishes to the Alameida family.
57: Oy. Much sympathy.
56: I should have clarified that I don't mind (much) corn syrup as an ingredient I put into a dish, I object to corn syrup as the hidden ingredient in everything, all the related corn "fractions" that are in everything. I'm looking at you, guar gum (not actualy made from corn, but you get my drift).
So long, Until Tomatoes. All of the nights we harmonized till dawn.
Sorry to hear it, Alameida. Hope you're all feeling better soon.
From the Times, another reason to reconsider buying produce grown far away.
Dealing with sick kids when you're sick yourself really is the pits. Good recovery mojo being sent your way.
Should've subtitled this post: ", or how to make a half-assed effort at sounding concerned about the environment while just typing some mindless shit into your weblog."
Fresh berries make the best pastry filling.
We have plenty of U-pick berry farms within a half-hour drive, so it's pretty easy to get large quantities and freeze them for cheap—a buck or so per pound for strawberries, raspberries and blueberries; blackberries are free. With kids, though, we've never come close to freezing enough to carry us into fall. Nearly 15 pounds of strawberries picked last June were gone in about two weeks. Accursed children's appetites.
Calculations of the carbon footprint for freezing vs. transport are here. Especially lovely is the fact that the main post does the calculation and makes one conclusion, and then the first comment re-does the calculation and makes the opposite conclusion. [of course. if your food is shipped by air, that changes everything. And as long as you're running your freezer, it operates more efficiently when full of food.]
This article deals with meat more than produce, but raises some of the same questions re: the environmental benefits of locally-grown foods.
Chopper's blog is actually here.
14: I think the answer to that question pretty much depends on whether you consider frozen meat pies to be a vegetable.
The Daily Record, Scotland's newspaper of record, currently has a campaign going entitled "Hands Off Oor Mince!". Basically there is a new EU health regulation coming in saying that minced beef can only be made in butchers' shops from meat that has been hanging around for less than 14 days (down from the previous 28 days). The Scottish butcher's industry (and the Record) are basically saying "why should oor Scottish butchers be throwing hundreds of poonds of month-old beef awa' just because of a regulation that's meant to stop French people dying when they eat steak tartare?".
It would be funny rather than tragic if Scotland didn't have at least one or two instances of mass e.coli poisoning every year, killing a couple of dozen people due to poor mince hygiene in the country's notoriously awful butchers' industry.
41, but her hat disappears!
Does that mean her family is disintegrating? what a brave smile on her face, if so.
18: I'm going to be learning how to can, pickle and freeze all summer
This is the coolest thing about a CSA. That and -- depending on the type of CSA -- learning how to work with produce you're not particularly familiar with as yet. (Some CSAs, larger ones that actually deliver, provide sharemembers with the ability to check off which vegetables they'd like to receive. More's the pity, imho, yet it may be the way to convince a larger portion of the population to take part.)
I like the surprise that comes with a CSA. I also VASTLY prefer having the box of surprise food delivered directly to my door, I must confess.
O RLY? I will argue with you, rfts: it is vastly preferable to be able to choose your own tomatoes, zucchini, eggplants, and so on, from the bins. Like, like what if I'm intending to make eggplant parmesan -- I need eggplants shaped a certain way! Whereas if I'm cool with making baba ganoush or ratatouille, I don't care about the form of the eggplants. And what if there's an option between having either a butternut or an acorn squash in the fall, but not both? It matters!
Hmph. That said, my CSA is only a 10 minute drive away. (And is losing its farmer after this year, btw, so if anyone knows an organic farmer looking for a job, please let me know.)
Huh, choosing from bins has not been a feature of any CSA I've belonged to. You pays your money and you gets your box, the end. Plus, I just really love not having an extra place I have to go on a weekday.
Isn't having a farmer kind of necessary?
81: Indeed it is. It's kind of a dire situation. As you might guess, farming doesn't pay much, and there's a labor shortage.
Run ads in the Village Voice looking for framers, parsimon. The NYTimes suggests that tens of thousands of hipsters would jump at the chance.
80: Choosing from the bins is a feature; while it's true that a lot of people can't manage a farm pickup in their weekly schedules, if one can manage it, there's all sorts of additional information you can pick up. Chatting with people about what they're doing with the veggies, how they're handling freezing or storing; talk about local growing conditions and just why the green bean crop is so lame this year. Plus sharing resources about what's to be done with surplus (always an issue). It's bizarre, I tell you: we have a farmer who's leaving because we can't pay him enough, and he's producing more food than we need.
there's all sorts of additional information you can pick up
Like who it was who hit the Petersen place last week, where Joey's been hiding out, etc.
69 appears to be a poor man commenter who got lost.
86, that's from the framers, not the farmers.
This thread has inspired me to research CSA options in my area. It turns out that Angelic Organics has a pickup location not 4 blocks from my house! However, I'm just not sure if $390 for twelve weeks of produce is worth it--I mean, I just don't know if I would be able to use all the produce. Plus, their twenty-week shares are apparently already sold out, even though the boxes don't start coming until mid-June.
But the descriptions—just the descriptions!—of the produce are making my mouth water. And I've already had lunch.
Who stole the apples and clearly fell out of the tree in the process and limped off, who was driving the tractor during the night and crashed into a fence, who's secretly taking more raspberries than they should. A nightmare.
89: Are you living with your boy yet? $32.50/week for organic veggies for two doesn't seem too bad to me.
leblanc, do you know anyone nearby with whom you can split a share? We do that with the family next door, and it works out pretty well; we manage to get through everything, and it's cost-effective compared to the grocery store.
leblanc, $390 for 3 months is a little steep (I think our coop is $450 for the entire season, May to October or November).
Maybe check whether they have half-shares available (half the quantity), or find someone to share a share, or see whether the coop has a match-up method whereby people wanting a half-share can hook up with one another. If they don't have the latter, suggest that they do.
Are you living with your boy yet?
No, though the plan is to start doing so in the summer. Although given the difficulty he's having finding a job in Chicago, he may have to move elsewhere. Speaking of which, if anyone happens to come across job opportunities for liberal-minded new lawyers in DC or NYC (or Chicago, although I've all but given up hope on that score), feel free to pass them along to me at rockpaperswords@gmail.com.
Splitting a share is a good idea--maybe I could get a friend to go in on one with me. Or put up a notice in my building! It's kind of sad, really, I live in a huge building with a lot of young people (one-bedrooms and studios only), I've been here for two and a half years, and haven't managed to make a single acquaintance.
76
so the CM translates something like
'the shimmering moonlight silver cream (engeseg) is reminiscent of the beauty of the Mongolian queens'
mean, use of this cream will give you skin like that
there is nothing said about family disintegration
ttaM--The Budgens in Oxford was nice, but then it got bought out by the Co-Op. The various butchers in the central market provide much better produce than the supermarkets do.
Cheremoya at the Hollywood Farmer's Market is $3/lb, in case ogged shows up. He was payin six.
Also -- is Moqtada al Sadr just going to be the new, not quite as nasty Saddam Hussein, and can we just excuse ourselves until that happens and thereafter?
The premise here is probably wrong. Frozen strawberries in New York were almost certainly not grown locally. California is the most likely source. Also California and Florida as well as Mexico produce winter strawberries.
The main environmental issue with strawberries seems to be the use of methyl bromide.
OT: On authenticity; I'd mentioned sometime in the past week that I was puzzled by what's been meant by it in these here blog comments recently. Remembered to google for Mary Catherine's mentions of it, and lo, I find this comment from 2 years ago. As it happens, I've been reading Sincerity and Authenticity this past week. MC said she's read, or reread, The Ethics of Authenticity recently. I am not sure what my intention in saying this is. I can has reading list?
Budgens (in Summertown) was never nice! It's a Marks & Spencer now, much more in keeping with the area.
I treied a couple of different fruit and veg boxes, but found them just too expensive for not enough food. I need like 30 apples a week, not 6. One of the people I used, you could specify what you wanted, but then i just ended up spending huge amounts. In the DFH circles I frequent though, it's practically obligatory.
Shearer, I think the idea is that you buy fresh local strawberries and freeze them yourself. Incidentally, if y'all haven't frozen berries before, arrange them on cookie sheets so they're not touching, and then put them in containers; that way they won't freeze into large clumps.
Shearer, I think the idea is that you buy fresh local strawberries and freeze them yourself.
no, I think the idea was that buying frozen strawberries means you at least get ones that were good at some point, whereas fresh strawberries in the winter are guaranteed to never be good.
I like dried fruits rather than frozen ones, myself. Trader Joe's is good for that. except that the pears are hard as a rock...when they are deciding whether the dried fruits should be candied-ish or plain, I think pears would be better with the added sugar.
103
"Shearer, I think the idea is that you buy fresh local strawberries and freeze them yourself. ..."
From the original post "On the other hand, we buy frozen berries all the time ...".
103: Or that frozen strawberries, depending on where they're packaged, may have been harvested at the proper time and then frozen (that being the point of preservation.)
They do taste better for the reasons given above.
My sense of environmental preferability was based less on where they're grown (which I don't know), than on an ill-founded belief that because they're frozen, shipping isn't time sensitive, allowing them to be shipped in some less energy-intensive way, like container-ship or rail rather than plane or truck. But I don't actually know that this happens--the point of the post was asking if someone had done the math on this.
Kansas always chokes. How about today?
It's also very, very hard to root against Stephen Curry. So good! So fun to watch!
104
"... whereas fresh strawberries in the winter are guaranteed to never be good."
Why would fresh strawberries imported from California in the winter be any worse than fresh strawberries imported from California in the summer?
From the original post "On the other hand, we buy frozen berries all the time ...".
And then following that,
Pick it when it's ripe, and freeze it -- it won't be fresh, but at least it'll have some flavor. It recently occurred to me, though, that I have no idea what the energy usage or environmental impact of keeping a pound of strawberries frozen for a year, as compared to shipping them fresh from Mexico in February, is.
On preview, your assumption about what LB meant was correct. People, freeze your own berries.
110: Good strawberries are very soft and go bad very quickly -- they're difficult to ship. The ones that get shipped cross-country are varieties bred for being hard, so they're shippable, and they taste like nothing. (The strawberries being sold locally in California at the same time are probably wonderful, but not the same variety.)
A year ago Tuesday, I used fresh California strawberries to seduce my now-fiancee. I recommend them.
If you're in California, that's reasonable. If not, UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!
Tonight I'm going to use rain-forest mahogany, sea turtle eggs, and a polar bear to the same end. Stupid declining returns.
I recently got a pint of locally-grown heirloom cherry tomatoes, and I declare them inedibly flavorful. It sounds like a dumb thing to complain about at this tomatoless time of year, but this is extreme. They have thick flesh and lots of sour seeds and this incredible bite to them. Eating one is like eating several large regular tomatoes, somehow, all at once. Some of you might be able to handle them, but I cannot. They are wrinkling in my fridge as I type.
Isn't storing tomatoes in the fridge Not Done?
It is Not Done. I think she means she doesn't know what else to do with them.
They sound like they would be good roasted. And yes to 117, although I have seen a lot of cherry tomatoes in fridges.
If they are already overripe, the fridge is still deprecated?
Fridge is deprecated. Wrongshore is right; I'd roast them, or possibly stew them with some slivered onions and red wine (counters the sour seeds; I don't know why I think this, but I do). You want to intensify the sugar content.
Yeah, my plan is to roast the remaining ones. But they are already so strong! I am a tomato wuss, I think. Regular-sized heirlooms I like.
Halved and roasted w/ a bit of olive oil, they'd shrink down to a wrinkly size that would be fantastic to put on crunchy toasts with some feta cheese sprinkled on. Think mediterranean.
Mm. Bruschetta. Now I want some feta.
If you're going to freeze local fresh strawberries, use dry ice! So says Alton Brown.
OT: Dith Pran died. Video here worth watching.
120: Storing tomatoes below 45 degrees changes the texture and flavor for the worse.
125: Where does one get dry ice for freezing local produce?
In just weeks the local garden plots open and I can begin to sow my heirloom seeds!
re: 97
Yeah, the stuff in the covered market is generally pretty good. We go there for 'posh' meat and game and stuff.
The mince thing above is funny. The Daily Record is the most parochial paper in the world.
I remember, actually, the last big E. Coli epidemic. It was cooked meat bought at a butcher's, iirc, that was cross-infected from improperly stored raw meat.
I just saw the two worst movies ever at a family event where I ended up taking care of my beloved grandnephew. F/X2 and Pirates of the Caribbean.
F/X2 was a Dodie Fayed production (died with Di, nephew of Adnan Kashoggi). What's PotC's excuse?
Wrong thread, not that there's a right thread.
This may be controversial, but I have to say it here, in the food thread, before God and all of you.
Tagalongs are the best Girl Scout Cookie.
Thin mints are good in the freezer and crumpled over ice cream. Samoas are like a sugar fat punch to the head; they are exotic, with their coconut crunch and chocolate striping, but for the same reasons, de trop. But every time I eat one of those choco peanut butter Tagalongs, I just get happy.
Also, I really liked Pirates of the Carib. The leads are fine, the action is fun, and Johnny Depp queers up the whole damn Caribbean. Why not?
Samoas are the best. They're only "de trop" if you can't restrain yourself.
It was the mix of The Three Stooges, H. G. Wells, The Three Musketeers, and Peter Pan that bugged me. The only one of those that I would like singly is The Three Stooges, but you can't actually do a takeoff on them.
134: And Breakfast at Triffany's, so that's one thing its got.
And a waste of a great actress whose name I forget. The whole movie was gratuitous, so why wasn't there any nudity?
Samoas are the best
Here I was about to call you both racists, when I learned that ABC bakers call them Carmel deLites, whereas Little Brownie Bakers continue to use the name Samoas. 'Round these parts, I've seen only Carmel deLites for a few years now.
Also I learned those are the two authorized bakers of Girl Scout Cookies.
Oh, and ben is right: Samoas/Carmel deLites are indeed the best.
Heh, Stanley and I just did the same Google-dance.
I understand the Samoa position. I used to hold that position. But I'm past it now. It happened kinda like ... actually, forget that. Ray Smuckles turned from an ass man into a breast man, not the other way around.
i don't understand "seaonsal eating"
food tastes good any time of the year, and only slightly better at certain times than otehrs. I'm not going to go 8 months with no berries.
and only slightly better at certain times than otehrs
Your problem is that you've been sniffing too much glue and it's ruined your tastebuds. Things like strawberries and tomatoes are nearly incomparable between fresh in season and otherwise. Some things aren't that bad off-season, but many are just lousy. `slightly better', wtf?
addendum in 144: this of course assumes you are buying decen ones in season, not getting suckered into the same tasteless look-good and ship well stuff you would have bought out of season. In which case, it's your own damn fault...