Fresh Fruits and Vegetables...

Riddle me something.

I finally got Bridget to sleep and I thought I would get a jump start on supper. Call me crazy, but having a toddler pulling on the leg of your yoga pants while you are trying to cut and brown raw chicken breast isn't any fun.

So while my chicken breast was browning nicely, I started slicing and dicing peppers. I had a whole rainbow of them in front of me- Yellow, orange, green, and my absolute favourite, red. However, you can imagine my excitement when I cut into the first one, and though the flesh was still firm and shiny (which I fully realize is actually sure to be some sort of wax they throw on there to make it look pretty), the inside was rotten.

Well that's just great, I think, as I fire a pepper that I paid $5.99/lb for into the garbage bag.

You can also imagine how excited I was when I cut into the second one, only to discover it was the exact same way.

I start thinking about how long ago I bought them. I think back over the last week and remember that I bought them last Monday. Well, they have been in the fridge a full week. But other two were just fine, and they were packaged in the same cellophane bag. That just doesn't make sense. How exactly does fifty percent of something rot from the inside while the others remain shiny on the outside and nice on the inside?

Right I think. But really Amy, you have had them a full week.

But then I get to thinking...

The silly peppers had to be grown and picked. Then they probably sat somewhere for a few weeks ripening before they were put into a barrel and shipped somewhere so that someone else could put them in the package and stick the label on before....

Wait one red pepper loving minute! The label!

Right- grown in Spain. My peppers had sat in a barrel before packaging, before making the trip from Spain. That's for sure a few days journey. But then I study the label again. They were distributed by a company in Delta, British Columbia. So (silly me) they weren't flown here (really, what was I thinking?). They were sent to sit in a container, then put on a container ship, floated here, taken off the ship, sat in a container, moved from the container to the warehouse, where I am sure they waited for their ride from Delta, British Columbia, to their new warehouse in Edmonton, Alberta. All before they sat for a few days in the cooler in the produce section at the St. Albert Super Wal-Mart waiting for me to come and put them in my cart, drive them back to Edmonton where they waited in my fridge for a week.

So I ask. How does one feed their family fresh fruits and vegetables? Oranges come from Florida, we all know that. Fish has to come out of the ocean. I get that. But really? Does nowhere in Canada grow peppers? If I head to the Farmers Market in Edmonton will I find peppers made anywhere more locally than Spain? Or do I have to eat produce that came halfway across the world to get to me. Honestly, not to have ridiculous ideals on the whole matter, but I am sure they can't be quite as healthy as something grown nearby and consumed right away and not only for bodies- but what about the earth. What kind of environmental impact does it have to send food to the other side of the world? If we are encouraged to carpool, how does it make sense to spend all of that energy and pollution on transporting vegetables? There has got to be another way.

I have concluded though, that considering the lengthy road trip those darn peppers went on to make it to my fridge, I am sure the rotting didn't actually start in the last week while they waited for me to cut them. It probably happened back around the same time everyone was buying flashlights and Coleman lanterns to prepare for the end of the world at the Millennium, when they were actually picked in the first place.