Eating Like We Live Here

The January strawberry is an odd thing. It’s perfectly red, glossy as a magazine cover, and tasteless. It has travelled 1,500 miles in a refrigerated box, and maintains the illusion that seasons no longer exist. When we eat this way, we become tourists in our own towns.

Real localism is a homecoming. It’s the belief that good things like schools, local makers and real food belong within walking distance. A city built only for shopping malls fractures communities. We stop walking and bumping into neighbours. But the neighbourhood breathes again when the butcher, the baker, and the greengrocer return to the high street.

It’s when you buy a bag of apples at a local stall that you help small businesses—and the farmer in Kent can keep his soil dark, damp, and healthy. Contrast this with the imported supermarket tomato. It’is a lonely fruit. Your money goes to distant shareholders. But buy from a local grower? That money stays home. It pays the farmer. The farmer pays the vet. The vet buys a loaf of bread.

What if we stop apologising for the British rain and cold - after all it’s connected to culture and identity. This doesn’t mean shutting the door on the world; coffee and spices are welcome guests at our table. But the food grown in our own soil must be our foundation.

Why act like tourists in a supermarket aisle? Let’s start eating like we live here, and rejoin the natural rhythm of the seasons.

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