Even though we’ve picked a whole bunch of fruit this summer, I’ve been buying fresh blueberries in an attempt to stretch our stash for the winter. We were at Wegman’s last week and I was checking out the New Jersey produce for nectarines for this tart:

I had already picked up two pints of blueberries and had noticed that not only were there blueberries from Hammonton but there were also berries from LA. What the heck. I’m glad I was paying attention…I just assumed that all the blueberries out were from NJ, where else would you be getting blueberries now and why the heck would you want to buy blueberries from anywhere else? And they were all mixed in! I couldn’t believe it. So now I’m checking out the nectarines and this woman picks up the LA blueberries and puts them in her cart. So, since I would have wanted to know, I politely say:

“I’m not sure if you care or not, but some of those blueberries aren’t from New Jersey.”

This could have gone either way. It’s obviously none of my business which blueberries somebody buys. But I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut. Luckily she did care and acknowledged that she would actually prefer the local berries and thanked me for pointing this out to her.

Because I feel like we have really immersed ourselves in the buying (and growing) of local food, I take it for granted that other folks might not care. The package of Driscoll’s strawberries just make me cringe. I do think that as more grocery stores like Wegmans start to stock more and more local produce, people who maybe hadn’t cared much before will start to notice. Of course, nothing beats chatting up your local farmers’ market vendors.