Buy locally, think Globally or is it the other way around?

Well, have recently moved from San Francisco, where buying fresh local produce is the new black, ive been really confronted with the question of whether the American culture can ever really support ‘Buy Locally’ mentality on a large scale. Sure, Californians have it easy- a delicious variety of produce grows all up and down the state. There, you can get anything: lettuce, oranges, strawberries, potatoes, plantains, almonds, chard, you name it, it can grow there. But what of the rest of the country, where the climate is not so cooperative? Indianans would be restricted to…well, corn. And how about the poor Mainers? Can a person really survive on fiddleheads, potatoes, and blueberries?

Here in Ghana, there is no choice, you are forced to buy locally. The flash freezing, nutrient damaging, food preservation techniques employed in the U.S. are simply not in the cards for Ghana at this time. If it doesn’t grow somewhere in Ghana, or really even in the region of your residence, chances are you won’t get it.

The bananas grow next door; you get fish from the ocean or river if you live close enough to these sources or you don’t eat fish at all; and you buy your cabbage, carrots, Kontomire (the Ghanaian equivalent of spinach), Garden Eggs (mini yellow eggplants), onions, and tomatoes from the lady at the market if the season is right. In other words, if it is not mango or avocado season, there isn’t an avocado or a mango to be had. We eat by the laws of nature and that is just the accepted way of life here.

It makes me think that the only way, America could employ, the ‘Buy Purely Local Ingredients’ model is if we are able to sacrifice the concept of meal variety, which we unknowingly value so much. Let me rephrase, which I, personally didn’t know I valued so much.

In Ghana, there are no more than 10 different ingredients you can cook with, which of course gives you extremely limited menu options. Personally, I find it culinarily unstimulating and I’ve only been here for about three months. While cooking tasty meals with Civic Center farmers market ingredients used to be a hobby, now cooking is more of a daily chore, like sweeping the porch, and killing the ants on my counter. Tomato soup or tomato stew? Boiled cabbage or stir fried cabbage? These are my options. I wonder how you can balance the ‘fresh, local’ concept with our cultivated need as Americans for variety? Just something to think about.

For now, I go after every new ingredient I find at my village’s daily market. I swing by, see if there are any new faces with new things to try, and buy them by what I like to call the 5,000 rule. If I see something I haven’t seen before I buy 5,000 worth( or 50 Ghana pesewa, about the equivalent of $.35). I take my new discovery home, investigate it thoroughly, usually boil, steam or fry it and see what happens. Here is a picture of my latest 5,000 Rule purchase.

Crab Elbows?

After consulting a few other volunteers, via text message, we’ve agreed to refer to them as Crab elbows or forearms- they are not quite the claws but not quite the whole arm either. I deducted it was crab as the lady I bought them from was also selling whole crabs. She advised me these were the best ones to buy. Hey, why not?!