Someone once told me you could survive on just peanut butter sandwiches and oranges. I have no idea if that’s true, but the advice suggested a tasty lunch for a road trip.
It was a freezing, foggy day last December, and I was preparing to drive from my home in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to California’s Central Valley, the great agricultural heartland of a state that produces a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts.
As I spread my peanut butter, I read the packages on my counter. My nine-grain bread promised, vaguely, that it was “made with natural ingredients.” My oranges were “locally grown.”