Sherry Chandler

Food for Thought

in this Thanksgiving NYTimes essay by Corby Kummer:

A RECENT article in the Montreal newspaper La Presse quoted growers as claiming that within a few years Canada would be a larger producer of cranberries than New England.

That the article was written in French only pointed up the hurtfulness of the boast. Canada is already the biggest harvester of lobster, that other quintessential symbol of New England — even if the Pilgrims regarded it as little more than trash fish, unworthy of a place of honor at the original Thanksgiving table (the only sure items at which were deer and wildfowl, according to Kathleen Curtin and Sandra Oliver’s “Giving Thanks”). Bad enough already that Wisconsin produces more cranberries than Massachusetts. Must we cede to Canada those too-tart, hard-to-love, health-giving remnants of a time when New England agriculture had national significance?

Well, yes. Cranberries and any number of Thanksgiving Day staples are probably headed north thanks to global warming, as Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, told me recently. Dr. Epstein looks at the future, and it’s not so hot for native foods, or at least not for those that grow in the United States.

The present isn’t so great either…

In short, folk, the days when “the frost is on the punkin” look to be numbered. And a small number at that.

Sorry about the native chestnut, now making such a promising comeback in those Appalachian forests after decades of breeding with blight-resistant varieties to recreate an almost all-American strain. American chestnuts have a lovely, soft, floury texture — perfect for stuffing — and a sweet, delicate flavor. It’ll be back to Chinese chestnuts, the mealy, low-flavor kind — unless you are able to find a source for Italian and French chestnuts, the ones with real flavor, and are willing to pay premium prices for them. But don’t worry about the cost: they’re probably doomed too.

Same for the pumpkin for the pie and the string beans for the canned-onion-ring casserole, as opportunistic weeds and pests move into disrupted climate areas and wreak havoc with growing cycles and yields.

I read this to mean that soon your trip out to Double-Stink Hog Farm to pick your own punkin will find it smothered in kudzu.

Possibly related posts:

Here’s a thought

A Bartlett’s Thanksgiving

Catullus 101 — “I had not thought death had undone so many.”

Happy Thanksgiving

Daddy’s in the alley, he’s looking for food

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