There's Nothing Like a Crisp, Sweet Pear! - Also Eating Locally and in Season...

Apples often hog the autumn/winter spotlight when it comes to seasonal fruit, but they don't upstage pears when it comes to taste or nutritional value. Delicate and elegant, their buttery soft flesh and slim stem makes it worth the extra effort to enjoy them when they're perfectly ripe.  Another reason why eating locally and in season is so much fun..  

Pears are a plan-ahead fruit. They don't ripen well on the tree — becoming mealy and brown at the core. Instead, pears are best picked when they're mature, but still under-ripe, and allowed to ripen at the market or in the home. Look for fruits with smooth skin and an intact stem.

Ripen them at home at room temperature in a plastic bag poked with holes or in a loosely closed brown paper bag. Refrigerate them once they're ripe. Some markets will sell ready-to-eat pears, but before you buy these, make sure they're carefully, individually wrapped and aren't stacked up more than two levels high. The pressure from the other fruits will likely bruise the flesh of a ripe pear. For the same reason, when you pack them up to take home from the market, make sure they're on top of the bag.

Crisp, sweet pear with crushed walnuts

Serves about 2 people

You Need

• 2 Pears, peeled, and cut into quarters
• 1 Lime, zest - juiced
• 1/4 cup walnuts, soaked & dried, crushed

Method

1. In a small bowl, place your peeled and quartered pears, and pour the lime juice all over them. Leave for 10 minutes on the kitchen bench. 

2. Divide the pears into two of your favorite bowls, and sprinkle the crushed walnuts and your lime zests.

Here are 9 Reasons to why Eating Locally and in Season is so Important:

Freshness: One of the most important reasons to choose your fruits and veggies from a local farm stand or shop is that since it did not have to travel to get to you-you instead travelled to it-it is all the more fresh. Chances are, the fruits and veggies that you purchase locally have just been picked. This means more flavor, and more nutritional value.

Local Support: Another important benefit of purchasing local and in season, is that in doing so, you are supporting the local economy, and staving off less support for big business. This, in turn, improves your local community through financial support.

Environment: By purchasing your produce at a local farm or store, you are also protecting the environment from excess pollution and shipping energies. Think of the amount of energy used, vehicle pollution exercised, and overall waste of shipping materials and transport that would be involved with purchasing out of town. By buying locally, you can easily cut down on the environmental burden.

Variety: A great thing about choosing to eat locally and in season, is that you are able to purchase the fruits and vegetables that wouldn't necessarily be able to travel. Typically, farmers will set aside a bunch of more strong produce that can endure the rigors of shipping, while keeping a wider variety of produce that is more ripe and less travel-weary than others. You gain the value of this great variety of taste.

Nature: By choosing to purchase locally-and by way of this, in season- you are subscribing to how nature intended it. Ever wonder why some vegetables and fruits are native to certain seasons? It is because the original plan was to have the land provide the types of foods-with necessary nutrients and nutritional value, etc-that humans would need during that season. For example, during the Fall-as we begin to ready ourselves for colder months-you may notice heavier stock veggies being at the height of the season. This is because nature knows we need to prepare for winter with more substantial foods.

Land Development: Another indirect benefit of buying your fruits and vegetables local is that you are supporting farmers right to afford their own lands. Every farmer-by necessity-needs a certain amount of land to be able to grow their produce and raise their livestock. Unfortunately, when more and more people start buying their produce at grocery stores, there's less money going to the farmer, and less chance of him/her being able to maintain the upkeep and costs. When you buy local, you ensure that farmers around you can keep their land, instead of having to sell it to developers that would commercialize it with a strip mall or some other treeless endeavor.

Expense: Though you might think that buying your fruits and vegetables from a local farm or store would be more expensive than at grocery store, you could be wrong-as far as when you buy it. Depending on when you buy your produce-in season or not-you could save quite a bit more money. It is based upon one of the most simplest of concepts: supply and demand. The more product a farm has, the less it will cost you. The farm will always have a lot if you buy in season, and this will drive down the cost to match or beat the grocery store chain's prices.

Contamination: The less far your fruits and vegetables have to travel, the less likely that they will be treated with preservatives, unhealthy conditions, and/or contamination. Just think of how far some of the favorites you have from the grocery store-as far as produce is concerned-have had to travel to get to your store. Do you even know where they came from? Exactly. Imagine all the bad conditions and possible contamination they could have been subjected to along the way? With a local farmstand or store, you know that the most it traveled was from the farmland behind the store, and is thereby, as uncontaminated as possible.

Choosing to buy only local produce that is in-season is just another step in the long road we have begun to tread upon towards a better, more informed, healthy future. Unfortunately, with so many problems in our economy and environment, we have no real idea what is happening to our food supply-except that we know that it is regularly contaminated with pesticides, subject to genetic modification, and processed with harmful additives and poisons. I cannot stress enough that more than 70% of our foods are full of addictive, unhealthy additives, and we have more genetically modified organisms living in our everyday foods than not. The best that we can do is-of course-to choose a diet and lifestyle that is full of untampered with foods, such as raw vegetables and fruits, and monitor where and how these foods are making it to our tables. The best way that we can do this, is to purchase all of our vegetables and fruits during the season in which it was intended and at a local farm or store that sells locally-grown foods.