What’s in Your Basket: Fruta Feia

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Back in May, I read a great article in The New York Times (Minder, 2014) about a movement in Europe called Fruta Feia, or Ugly Fruit. It is an example of food politics at its finest. One part economic, one part environmentalist, one part social justice. “It has taken off with hard-pressed consumers, won applause from advocates outraged by Europe’s skyrocketing food waste, and provided a backhanded slap to overweening European Union rule makers. In its own way, it has even quietly subverted fixed notions of what is beautiful, or at least edible.”

One of the founders declared her mission, ““to break the dictatorship of aesthetics, because it has really helped increase food wastage.” Or sense of beauty is not based solely on how we experience things through our senses – a detailed mosaic, a rich chocolate cake, an earthy perfume. It’s about our knowledge of how those things came to be.

This is all coming to mind as we harvest our carrots. We’re getting some nice straight ones, but we’re also getting a whole bunch that look like

this.

None of them are going to be going to waste.

I’m imagining a platter of them roasted with herbed butter or something like that.