It's frustrating having way too much time in an airport and being asked to pay for wireless service. It seems as though with all my communication bills - cell phone, dsl and home phone - coming from ATT, they ought to give me free access to their wireless network.
Today is Earth Day (though I'll be posting this Earth Monday). I can't say it's been a particularly banner one. The ecumenical roundtable on science technology and faith wrapped up before noon, and now I am wending - and I mean wending - my way home from Manchester, NH, via Dulles. I can only hope that this next leg gets to San Francisco on time, so I can get the 11:00 p.m. bus home. If I have to wait for the 12:30 it will be a 23 hour day - which always makes me feel I should have gone to Europe, not a mill town in New England.
It's not been a memorable trip food-wise. I know from experience what a frustrating time of year this is for anything fresh and seasonal in the northeast, and things haven't changed much. Yes -there's lots of imported food. The market in Manchester where I picked up some whole wheat pita for today's Eucharist was spectacular. But local specialities? Only the real maple syrup on this morning's french toast casserole at the retreat house where we met.
It's also pretty frustrating traveling and trying to eat anything like I do at home. If I make the mistake of letting people know that I eat fish, there's way too much of it and usually the unsustainable and questionable stuff like farmed salmon and shrimp. I think from now on I will just tell people I don't eat any animals. I also only saw beans once on this trip, and very little whole grain bread. White flour seems to be big in New England.
A couple of interesting things. Tuesday I went to two wine tastings with Pam. To-the-trade kinds of things - folks from restaurants and package stores. It was interesting trying wines from Europe and South America, and maybe even one or two from Australia. I realized that wine and beer are areas where I am committed to buying local, and have been for some time. I also realized that I like the Sonoma stylings of wines. There was nothing that I tried that I wished were local to me, except the ones that actually were.
At the wine shop in Plymouth I saw a magazine called Edible Boston. It had an article on oysters from my home town, and other info on the local and slow food scene in greater Boston. Since the shop owners had two copies they'd gotten for free, they gave me one. I learned a lot I don't need to know - since Boston isn't in my foodshed most of the time - but I also learned that this is one of a series of magazines which seem to be done on a franchise plan. They have similar covers, layouts, purposes, but there are more than twenty regional editions done by different people. There are editions for Sacramento, San Francisco, and the East Bay, and lots of content is available on-line.
http://www.ediblecommunities.com
Scroll down on this page and on the right you will see a compilation of links to food pages of most major newspapers in the U.S.
http://www.ediblesanfrancisco.net/
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