Life Without Citrus

My husband and I have tried to eat fairly locally for a number of years now, but we have become more conscious of it over the last year or so. I started this blog at a time when we were feeling the need to take it a little further, though we didn't have any precise plans of what we were going to do (or not do). We still don't have any hard-and-fast rules. But we have found that the further along we go, the more it just doesn't feel right to buy things from far away--especially fresh/perishable items--especially when there are reasonable alternative from here in Western Mass.

So it suddenly dawned on me recently that we basically have not had any citrus all winter long, while it was previously a winter staple. We bought a box of clementines around Christmas, and some friends brought us a few oranges back from a trip to Florida, but that has been it. We have been getting by on apples from Clarkdale and fruit that I froze last summer and fall (mainly peaches). But the truth is, it hasn't really felt like "getting by"--it has been fine. And while at this point in the year I am starting to hanker for spring and summer fruits, I don't feel any more that way than I do every year. We never made a decision to give up citrus, we just found that we didn't really feel like we had to have it. (It probably helps that those Clarkdale apples are so darn good! I think have appreciated them more fully this winter than in the past.)