I bet a lot of people don't think about where their food comes from. In our American culture of fast food, eating out, and fabulous grocery stores like Wegmans, we take for granted being able to eat strawberries in the middle of winter. But how did those strawberries get here?

Much of the food you eat travels a great distance to get into your mouth. Thousands of miles, on a truck, boat or plane, and often processed in tons of packaging to keep it fresh. Every mile costs money in gas (as we are all too aware right now), and creating packaging takes energy as well. Consider bottled water: "Manufacture and shipping of billions of bottles causes unnecessary energy and petroleum consumption, leads to landfilling or incineration of bottles, and can release environmental toxins." This is exactly why I choose to drink tap water instead.

What's a girl to do? Some people are becoming more conscious of their food choices and are selecting organic food. While the idea of organic is a good one, organic food tends to be more expensive, and in some cases (traveling from California to Rochester, for example) it carries an environmental cost as well. Eating locally grown food saves the environmental cost of transport and can be better for you because you're getting it fresher, sometimes the day it's harvested. Organic local food is probably the epitome of eating right. The Public Market in Rochester is a good resource for both locally grown food and non-local food. I always ask the vendor where their products are from, and I like to bring my own canvas bags to carry stuff home with me. Plus, I get the bonus of cheaper prices than the grocery stores.

It occurred to me, as I was researching this topic, that even if I spread the word to buy local veggies, it won't matter much to people who don't know how to cook a big pile of collard greens, an ugly buttercup squash, or leafy rainbow chard.

Chard happens to be my personal favorite leafy veggie and it is plentiful in Upstate NY, even this late in the season. Here are step-by-step instructions with pictures of how I cook it, and I've even included a healthier version of my friend's Dad's Boonyalatti recipe (like a calzone- although I think he made up the name!). Isn't the chard beautiful with its crinkly leaves and bright red stems?

My favorite places online to find recipes include Epicurious (Best for searching on a specific ingredient. Be sure to only use the recipes with at least a 3 fork rating and read the user comments- they are so helpful), cooking for engineers, the Culinary Institute, Cooks Illustrated (subscription), and Cooking Light (also good for searching).

The best way to learn to cook something new, however, is to just try it. So this Saturday, head to your public market, pick up some local veggies and give it a shot. Let me know how you like the chard. Mmmmmm, chard.

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Over the past weekend friends of ours asked my husband to take both a family portrait and a nude baby portrait of their five-month old baby. We set up a studio with professional lights in our living room, and I had the job of photographer's assistant, making lots of funny faces and kitchy-kitchy coo noises to get the baby to laugh. When I was discussing this with another friend (who does not have a baby) she thought five months was "on the old side for taking naked baby pictures". How interesting to consider: how old is too old for naked baby pictures? I seem to recall seeing a couple of pictures of me in the bathtub, up until perhaps, two years old. Musing about it now, that seems completely fine to me.

There is something so innocent and beautiful about a nude baby sleeping on a parent's chest. Or a newborn baby cradled in a parent's arms. Online there are galleries with beautiful artistic photographs of naked babies. Even my favorite Newsweek author, Anna Quindlen, has a book, Naked Babies. Obviously people agree that it is both artistic and acceptable when a baby is very small to do nude photos. I also noted that all of the photos I saw (including the ones we took over the weekend) strategically positioned the baby to cover his private parts. Even if the baby doesn't care about being modest, obviously we, as a society, do care. At some point, however, even with the modesty, it isn't acceptable anymore. At what age is it no longer culturally acceptable? Perhaps some people believe it isn't acceptable at any age? Some cultures believe full nudity is acceptable at any age. I can think of pictures I've seen from tribes in South America and Africa, where people don't have the same perceptions of nude as we do. I wonder about why this is the case, and how different societies have evolved to have different perceptions.

I think the only catch with our photoshoot over the weekend was the fact that while naked, the baby took the opportunity to pee. I guess that is what babies do!

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