Industrial Onions from Prosser

The wholesale food service grocery where I buy some of my supplies sells a 50 lb. bag of onions for $5. Do the math. That's cheap enough that something's got to be wrong somewhere: the farmer is selling them to the grocer for even less than that.

The onions are grown in Prosser, Washington, which is 192 miles from Seattle, so in a sense they are locally grown. I know farmers' market vendors who travel farther than that to the market.

I do use these onions during the winter and spring, and even sometimes during the summer when it's logistically difficult to buy as many onions as I need from farmers at the market. I'll pay five to ten times more for onions grown by a small scale operation, but I also use the cheaper ones sometimes.

I've always thought in terms of creating a reasonably pure product that's a great value, rather than an absolutely pure product, whatever the price. We all manage long lists of contradictions, whatever our ideals, and we look for ways to manage them without too much guilt or denial.

I do believe that we can make big changes without changing our diets or our habits one hundred percent, and that cutting corners sometimes can make it easier to keep improving overall. If I decide that I want to only eat food grown within a hundred miles of my home, and then I really want a particular item that's produced in Europe or Asia, I might me inclined to say, "To hell with this," and give up on the 100 mile diet altogether. But if I decide that I'm going to use as much local food as I can sensibly source and realistically afford, then I'm going to keep on trying, and keep on adding local items.

Lately there have been a couple of new food concessions at the markets that conscientiously source all of their ingredients. Growing Washington makes soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, Green-Go makes corn cakes with a variety of sauces, and Rolling Fire Pizza makes wood fired pizza.

I'm humbled by their endeavors. I'm going to stick to my own approach for now, but they do inspire me to cut fewer corners, and to always keep looking for better ingredients.