Canned for Dried

Ripeberry Jam, not quite done.

Recently, I arranged for a serious breach of locavorism. Fortunately, I am no more orthodox in that movement than I am in anything else. 

But there's enough distance involved that I feel a need to rationalize a little. What's happening is that a friend of mine and I are trading local foods. I'm packing up some Northwest treats, and she's packing things from her farm in Honaunau. Sure, each package will travel about 2800 miles, but the contents were gathered locally. All the processing was done at home: I canned and she dried. (OK, if I'm lucky, there will be some coffee that was roasted down the road from her farm, adding a few miles.)


There are no middle men. No money. No corporate tentacles. Just some taste treats we cannot grow ourselves, could not obtain otherwise without great expense. Two medium flat-rate boxes stuffed with onolicious food, taking up a tiny space in jets that were headed that way anyway. Chewing on a dried banana, I'll travel by tastebud to a place I have not been in years, and I won't feel guilty at all.