Right Wing Nation

This has to be the strangest commercial on TV right at the moment.

The bacon is done. The pork steaks have thawed. All that’s left is to peel the potatoes and put them on to boil. As soon as they are, I turn the heat down under them, coat the pork steaks in seasoned flour, then start them cooking in the bacon grease. When they’re done, I mash the potatoes with a stick of butter, and make the gravy — just can’t forget to crumble the bacon in it, or worse, eat it all first. That’s a problem, not eating bacon.

I’ve got the chicken, but not the energy. Pork steaks, with mashed potatoes and gravy.

I had resisted the temptation to buy strawberries at the store for two reasons. First, they looked much as supermarket strawberries usually do, not dead ripe, and chosen for size and shape. Second, I was holding out for the Amish to reappear.

They did, and they had strawberries, beautiful, deep red strawberries. So we picked up some yesterday. Today, I hulled them, then sliced them, and they were a juicy deep red all the way through, strawberry perfection.I sprinkled them with sugar and let them macerate for a few minutes to draw out juice, whipped some cream, put berries on my shortcake and slathered them with whipped cream.

Ah …

That’s better. I just had some more.

That reminds me of a conversation I’ve had several times with Bloomingtonians, usually sparked by mention of, or going to, the farmers’ market there.

You have to understand that Bloomington’s farmers’ market isn’t what you think it is. It should be named the neo-hippie, pick weeds out of a yard and sell them as organic market. Actually, it has grown over the years, and there are a fair number of farmers who sell there, but it’s still dominated by moonbats with Socialist Worker Party buttons shoving petitions in your face and tone-deaf local “musicians” singing about world peace and social justice.

The Bloomington farmers’ market is the neo-hippie-wannabe event of Monroe County, held every Saturday. Most moonbats don’t get up very early, while farmers do, so the secret is to go early, around 7, before all of the wackjobs in dreadlocks and birkenstocks arrive.

About a third of the booths are things picked out of somebody’s yard. One of Bloomington’s nuttiest wackjobs sells “organic” cut flowers, for example. She doesn’t grow flowers; she just picks them on the way there. People buy them up because they’re “organic” cut flowers.

The remaining booths are farmers, for the most part (there is always a kettle corn booth, though why anybody would want to eat popcorn at 7 am I have never understood), and several local greenhouses set up booths so you can buy sets to take home and plant. Of the farmers’ booths, about half are Amish, and the other half, not. The non-Amish farmer booths can be divided into local farmers and hippie play farmers, and are pretty easy to distinguish: The real farmers have a lot more produce to sell, and don’t have “organic” and “free range” and other such nonsense written all over their signs.

Anyway, it’s a large farmers’ market, much larger than anything here, and there are many good things to be found there (just go early so you don’t have to put up with all the moonbattery).

Back to the conversation, always sparked by the market. Somebody always comes up with, “I wouldn’t expect you to go.”

Why not? Well, because Bloomingtonians — and not just I — see the market as some sort of super hippie commune thing, and place to be seen by other hippie types. Oh, and because you can get “organic” there.

Anyway, the conversation always boils down to this: Buying local, the moonbat believes, is something lefties do, not something conservatives do.

Okay, now do you find that odd? What is leftist about buying local?

Not a damned thing.

I love Wal-Mart, and there are a couple of supermarkets here I really like, but sorry, I’m going to be buying tomatoes from the Amish during the summer, not at Wal-Mart or the supermarket. It’s not political, particularly. It’s quality. In fact, I never buy supermarket tomatoes. If tomatoes are out of season, I buy canned.

Well, I suppose it is partly political, although I don’t think of it as political, since I’m not a moonbat and don’t keep tally of feel-good political statements. Farming is essential. I want farmers to succeed. So when they’re selling, I’m buying. I don’t give a frak if they’re selling “organic” or not. “Organic” isn’t the point.

Capitalism is all about parties entering into contracts for mutual benefit. The Amish get our money, and we get great strawberries. There’s nothing leftist about that.

And buying local, even in Bloomington, doesn’t mean giving your money to moonbats. At the farmers’ market there, you can get great certified conservative Republican elk roast, from Duane Long. Great stuff. Try it.