In honor of my first return to the States after 1.5 years of living in Denmark, I thought I’d share this—the first story I ever wrote for Heirloom Food Project. In those beginning times, this project was specifically aiming to inspire U.S. cooks to participate and take pride in our food culture. Since then, I have realized that many of us living in industrialized nations beyond the U.S. could use this inspiration, too. Enjoy :)
Read More“Why does our asparagus come from Peru?”
I read that question and paused to mentally scan all past asparagus labels I’ve seen at grocery stores. Yeah, why does most of our asparagus come from Peru?
Alan Beattie investigates this question in False Economy: a surprising economic history of the world. He writes, “it may strike you as odd that…a cost-effective industry spontaneously emerged to airlift a perishable green vegetable thousands of miles around the world from the remote western coast of Latin America.”
That does, in fact, strike me as odd. Is it because Peru has especially good soil for asparagus? A perfect sun angle? Trade secrets that no one else knows?
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