Tariffs are coming to the dinner table — and we’re all stuck with what’s bound to be a bad situation. You can, of course, continue your habit of making blueberry pancakes in the middle of winter, but you’ll pay more for it.
President Trump’s proposed tariffs on many countries whose foods we import will force us to look at how we shop and what we cook. When the tariffs take effect, you’ll notice it right away in the produce section because so much comes from neighboring countries to the south. Those blueberries might have been plucked from bushes in Chile (which also exports potatoes, grapes, and other fresh items).
Here’s what we’re going to do ― collectively, so everywhere you go and every time you’re in the supermarket, everyone around you is doing the same ― we’re all going to learn to shop for groceries like thrifters, we’re going to work hard on eliminating waste (a big problem in the United States), and we’ll cook smarter.
You have to adopt a frugal mindset and rethink how you do things. We’ve been lulled into complacency by the sunny array in supermarkets when we’re shopping in down parkas, displays showing off bunches of asparagus spears imported from warmer climes — and it’s freezing out.
The big question is, are we expected to remove all the pleasures from the table and turn the nightly dinner into a feast of locally grown turnips and leafy greens?
Leafy greens, yes. Anyway, they’re good for you. Put them into your rotation. If you don’t like turnips, add white beans to the pot.
To keep grocery bills down, rely on market specials. If you have broccoli on your shopping list but cauliflower is a better price, switch without giving it a second thought. Cut the cauliflower into florets, add them to a skillet of onions and curry powder and cook until the white clusters turn a pretty golden color.
Maybe the sale meat that week is chicken thighs and you live in a white-meat household. Well, you’re looking at thighs for dinner. Get family members used to it by roasting or grilling the meat until it’s very tender, take it off the bone, and stuff it into tacos.
At the fish counter, look locally. Hake, haddock, and pollock, all firm-fleshed white fish, are caught in the North Atlantic. Saute a cup of canned tomatoes in olive oil, add the fish pieces to the mixture, cover, and simmer. Dinner is ready in less than 10 minutes. Add a squeeze of lemon juice to the pan with chopped fresh parsley.
No one is suggesting that you completely cut out things you like. Anyone with a coffee or chocolate habit will probably balk at the new prices. It will always be cheaper to make your own coffee and take it with you in a travel mug. (I always carry tea bags, mainly because tea at most places is dreadful, but no one can ruin boiling water.)
Start thinking of local food as coming from the Eastern Seaboard. Gravitate to signs in the produce section telling you that items come from Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Get in the habit of reading packages and labels.
In the kitchen, learn to saute or stir-fry in vegetable oil, with a little butter in the pan. Use imported (or American) olive oil as a finishing touch — sprinkle it on cooked food. Your saute pan is where a carrot on its last legs goes, or the rest of an onion after you cut away the soft spot. Many of us watched our grandmothers do this. They knew not to waste anything.
Add torn greens to the carrot and onion, lettuce that doesn’t look good anymore, a cup of canned tomatoes, a can of beans, a little chicken or vegetable stock, and simmer it all into something delicious and stewy.
You may find yourself buying frozen vegetables instead of fresh. Green Giant claims on its site that all vegetables are U.S. and Mexican grown, and honestly, frozen peas (from this company or another) are an exceptional product, as is frozen corn and mixed vegetables. And while you’re in the frozen food section, grab some wild Maine blueberries for those pancakes.
Here’s a little Pollyanna take on the subject: We’re headed into spring. It means more produce right now is going to come north from Texas, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and east from California.
“There’s a natural progression,” says Tony Casieri, longtime produce manager for Wilson Farm in Lexington. When East Coast produce comes into the market, he’s buying it, he says, “because it’s good quality and a fair price. It’s always been that way. This time of the year, we start with strawberries from Florida.”
Condiments and spices from Asia and the Middle East will go up. “I don’t think that pantry ingredients are a big deal in terms of cost,” says Christopher Kimball of Milk Street magazine, radio, and books, and a contributor to the Globe Magazine. “The cost per serving is incredibly low.” In that group are spices, fermented sauces, vinegars, chile pastes.
Ninety percent of the inventory at Sevan Bakery in Watertown is imported, including teas, jams, honey, French feta, Bulgarian feta, Greek feta. Co-owner Nuran Chavushian was on the phone to his vendors as soon as the tariffs were announced. “Somewhere down the road it will effect us,” he says, “but we don’t know when.”
What we’ll all take a beating on is kitchen equipment, large and small. “The real hardship in terms of pricing are hard goods,” says Kimball, “cookware, tools, gadgets, tabletop, storage, etc. A $130 Dutch oven will end up costing, say, $20 or $30 more.”
That may be true of the top European brands, but Lodge Cast Iron, a family-owned foundry established in 1877 in South Pittsburg, Tenn. has you covered.
Sheryl Julian can be reached at [email protected].
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