Foraging!

I'm thinking of seeds and foraging despite the new snow that fell last night. Spring equinox is only a week away, after all. I read more interesting articles this week about people who define life and 'career' success little differently.

Goodbye Rat Race Hello Vegetable Garden (Globe and Mail)

Raising the World Leaders of Tomorrow (FFWD)

Also, I have found another book for the expanding 'to read' list..

Am I am femivore?

Perhaps so. The NYTimes featured an interesting reflection on the intersection of feminism, the local food movement, and motherhood.

The Femivore's Dilemma

Mead

I was at Millarville Market this weekend, and had a chance to chat with Cherie Andrews of Chinook Honey Company. Bees have been on my mind lately; just this week I read an article about colony collapse disorder.
I heard Cherie speak about the disorder and its worrisome effect on bee colonies at Local 101. Scientists have concluded that it is brought on by a combination of a pathogen that has become drug resistant, and.. wait for it... pesticides. What a shocker huh. Apparently the pesticides from pollen build up in the honeycombs, which result in weaker bees who are then susceptible to the pathogen.
It's encouraging to know that that scientists have been able to make these connections and track the consequences of heavy pesticide use. Hopefully these realities will result in action by governments and citizens very soon. In the meantime, I try to support local producers like Chinook Honey. Thankfully, they make it easy for me; they produce some really fantastic meads (honey wines) at Chinook Arch Meadery that you have to try to believe. Unlike midieval style European meads, which are a bit thick and funky for my taste, Chinook Arch's meads are light, like a sweet white desert wine.
On Saturday at Millarville, I also picked up a new product, Cinnamon Twist Honey, which is honey, cinnamon, and apple concentrate. It's good enough to eat off the spoon, and it was all E and I could to to stop ourselves from doing just that. Who says local eating is all about deprivation?

100 Mile Challenge

I was happy to find that foodtv has the 100 Mile Challenge reality show available online (in Canada at least..). This is especially exciting as we don't pay for cable... Yes it is oversimplified etc. for television, but it still makes for good free tv :)

Episode 1

There are some good recipes and other resources on the show website:
http://100mile.foodtv.ca

Convenient

Just saw this article at Grist on how convenience foods take about the same amount of time to make as unrefined food, contrary to what you might expect. I had just had a conversation along these lines at the dinner table. I wondered aloud.. 'Why would anyone buy prepackaged food when you can make this is 20 mins?' We were having my go-to comfort food, a riff on al olio and arrabiatta pasta. Evan pointed out that the individual ingredients did take time to get our hands on; cheese from the italian store, tomatoes from the organic store, olive oil from The Light Cellar. But once you have the staples, it takes no time at all.
When you are hungry and need dinner now, try..

olive oil medium low
4 cloves of garlic minced
a shake of hot pepper flakes

optional:
cherry tomatoes sliced in half
bread crumbs
grated parmesan or cubed feta
artichoke hearts

Boil up some fettucine, toss it in with the garlic, bada bing bada boom.

Good news, bad news..

OK, bad news first. It's easy to be discouraged by the number of stories about food systems collapsing due to monoculture cultivation and other destructive agricultural practices. Take Why Bananas are a Parable for Our Times by Johann Hart for example, a feel-good story full of illegal coups, poison and death. Sigh.

I also heard from a friend that bee keepers she knows in B.C. are anticipating a catastrophic collapse of North American colonies in the next two years.

This is the problem with the easy access to news and information we have these days, after 5 stories like Bananas, who wouldn't want to curl up in the corner and give up. I try to remind myself that the internets isn't the only source of information in my life, and the day to day information I receive is pretty good.. Right now, I eat well, and live well. That is a privilege, no doubt. If I value it, then I should fight for it, even if the only way I can do that right now is to pay attention to what I consume. I am encouraged by stories like Will salmon be back in 2009? by Jacoba Charles, and people like Taras Grescoe. Here's what he said in a recent interview about his new book, Bottomfeeder: How to eat ethically in a world of vanishing seafood:

"I was getting sick of food writing and of writing food porn. I thought the form was shot. There are the Anthony Bourdains having these "to die for" meals and having a great time, but no one's really talking about what's at the end of the fork and where it comes from. There's this food-writing convention where you're not supposed to think about the origins of your food and suspend any judgment against people who eat endangered songbirds, or whatever. It's been a real privilege to be able to write articles about this kind of thing. But after a while, you know what? You're contributing to the impoverishment of the world. In a way this [book] is a bit of a "F**k you" to the food-writing world."

Love it.

Organic standards coming to Canada

I was surprised and pleased to find out that Canada will have a standard organic designation that will be regulated by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), starting on December 14th. I hope this will help counter some of the superstitions out there regarding organic food just being a cash cow for dishonest farmers.

See Doug DiPasquale's post about this here.

Canada's Fall Harvest

CBC is featuring a summary of the Fall Harvest across the country.