National Indigestion

I had to check out this map when a link to it appeared on Facebook.  What a disappointment.  Wouldn't this be a more interesting picture if something harvested in the state were shown?  How could dessert at the French Laundry in the Napa Valley actually represent all of California, when so many wonderful fruits and nuts are grown here, never mind the salad and the rice.  And bottled sauce for New Mexico? What about Hatch green chiles?  Maple syrup and salmon I accept, but Washington does a lot more than salmon - berries, cherries, apples.

If you'd like a larger scale and links to more background
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-food-in-america-2013-7

Nice graphics

Here are some of the best representations of what's in season I have seen.

http://chasingdelicious.com/produce-calendars/

They need a little tweaking for climate and weather but the circular design seems a lot easier to read than the usual bar chart - and there is more variety on these.  If I had a kitchen or cooking school to decorate I would definitely choose the prints from "Chasing Delicious". The nutrition by color pie chart is fun, too.

As for the tweaking - most plums have passed their prime here, but we have been gleaning figs for several weeks.   Pears are just beginning, and gravenstein apples are rolling in.  Most everything is a few weeks early this year, due to our warm dry spring.   Unfortunately I did not push to get things into my garden early, so I still have no ripe tomatoes here in the night-and-morning-fog part of the county.  Lots of grey mornings and cool evenings since the protracted heat of late June and early July.  But the hedgerow blackberries are plumper than I expected, thanks to the midsummer (John the Baptist) rain storm.

A small grant from Episcopal Community Services in our diocese is funding some more equipment for Sonoma Valley Gleaning, good to meet our increasing opportunities to glean.  Word of mouth in the community is a wonderful thing.   When my car is not filled with fruit, it is filled with boxes collected from Trader Joe's (wine boxes for firm pomes), Imwalle's, Raley's, even dumpster diving (shallow boxes for the fragile fruit like figs).  And a good detective could always tell the last thing I gleaned from the lingering smells in my little red wagon (Subaru).