Old-Fashioned Green Tomato Pie ♥ Old Farm Recipe

Today's vegetable recipe: An old-fashioned country green-tomato pie, sweet not savory.

Last fall I spent an evening with a group of smart, successful, tuned-in, connected and world-traveling folks. Somehow, the talk turned to strawberries and someone complained that lately, strawberries were 'expensive' and 'not that good'. (Strawberries in October? Well yes, if you live in the southern hemisphere!) I broached the idea of the 'locavore' movement, the '100-mile diet' (want to know your 100-mile radius? try this 100-mile calculator) and the concept of eating seasonally -- all greeted with mostly blank looks. The strawberry-buyer (who's also a year-round blueberry- and apple-buyer) asked with a look of dubiousness, "What would we eat, in the winter?"

That's the question, isn't it? Our worldwide food distribution system masks the seasonality of fresh produce. Because strawberries are sold year-round, this otherwise smart, savvy person had no understanding that there's a brief spring window for strawberries, when they taste best, are most plentiful and least costly. And when the 'real' strawberry season ends, a seasonal eater moves onto the next seasonal something, grateful for both.

As I peeled the tomatoes for this old-fashioned green tomato pie, I realized how perfectly it exemplifies the concept of eating seasonally. In the Midwest at the first of July, the rhubarb and strawberries are past, the peaches not quite ripe, the apples still green. But we do have green tomatoes -- let's make pie!
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