Long before this was fashionable, in the previous century when scraggly tribes of hippies still roamed the land, we belonged to a food co-op in Ohio and enjoyed local cheese, fresh-milled grains, and the bounty of little farms and backyard gardens.
Here, on the northwestern tip of North Africa, I still eat locally. Most of the time this is by necessity rather than by choice, not that I'm complaining for, as we all know, fresh picked fruits and vegetables and just slaughtered meats taste like no other.
However – (there's always a however) – there are a few delicacies that are normally unavailable here. One of these is the lovely lime.
Although we live in a Mediterranean climate, this fruit seems absent from the local orchard repertoire. Limes are only for sale sporadically and when they are we happily buy as many as we think we can use. More accurately, as many as Jack thinks he can use in his seasonal gin and tonics.
Occasionally we supplement this hit or miss supply with a bottle of lime juice without worrying about its provenance.
Truthfully I can't remember where I bought this bottle: it could've been here, it could've been in Portugal or Spain or I could have even brought it over from the states.
I would have assumed that the limes came from the states, or possibly from Italy given the brand-name of Sicilia.But what I didn't expect was this:
But it gets worse.
The one minuscule speck of light is that I don't think the whole limes were transported, only the juice concentrate.
At any rate, it's not surprising that our chief lime taster, Jack, said this lime juice just didn't make the cut.
The solution is simple: buy more fresh limes when they are available and freeze the juice in our freezer (manufactured somewhere in Eastern Europe--but that's another story...)
