The New York Times offers another of the seemingly endless guides to sustainable seafood which are starting to make me very uncomfortable. For example they recommend eating anchovies on the grounds they’re low on the food chain and reproduce more readily, but anchovies are known to be endangered.
I begin to wonder if it is right to eat any kind of seafood (I will for the time being draw the line at farmed oysters, however).
I spent a gentle morning, not so long ago, reading through the comments to an article Meli sent me about the worst recipe ever written (though I agree with the reader who guessed a typo had turned “peas” into “pears” in the recipe cited — on the other hand, canned peas are a horrifying enough substance).
While some of the comments link to truly awful things, many others I would say cheat by being deliberately horrible constructions never intended to be eaten (e.g. the Twinkie Souffle), while others fall into the “edible” but not entirely serious (the spectacular Meat Ship, arrrr, the perfect meal with which to celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day). The Gallery of Regrettable Food is excellent though, since the recipes are honest examples of foods once recommended, even if by the demons of a food company’s marketing department. (How can I ever forget those Kraft Foods commercials that brightened my childhood Disney Show evenings?)
On a more serious note, it is good to see the UK taking action on the plight of bluefin tuna. The attitude taken by Nobu (the swish sushi joint co-owned by Robert De Niro) as reported in the Times article is a prime excellent example of how our market economy treats the world like its personal shopping basket, and damn the consequences.
Pablo Neruda once wrote an Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market. Thanks to overfishing, he’d have quite a bit more trouble finding a large one to address nowadays.
I’d heard of corn smut, but never experienced it. Just knew it was bad. Now I find out it is good! In Mexico, it is a revered delicacy called huitlacoche, cuitlacoche, maize mushroom or Ustilago maydis. You can make it into many dishes including soups, sauces and even ice cream.
Speaking of corn, and Mexican-ish food, Gabe passed along this delightful clip from the The Onion…
http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/common/assets/onn_embed/embedded_player.swf?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theonion.com%2Fcontent%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2FGREEN_MENU_article.jpg&videoid=96591&title=Taco%20Bell’s%20New%20Green%20Menu%20Takes%20No%20Ingredients%20From%20Nature
Taco Bell’s New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature
Spent the weekend testing the limits of heat endurance and my sunscreen at the Vancouver Island Music Festival in Courtenay.
Steven Page was solo-ing after leaving Barenaked Ladies.
Arlo Guthrie played for us on his birthday and was repaid with cake and our wonderful singing.
Saturday was so hot the most popular venue was the Woodland Stage as it had the only shady seats. But Eric Bibb was hot enough to draw a crowd no matter the temperature.
Del McCoury and his almost all-family band were top notch Saturday nighters.
and Martyn Joseph
at one of the song circles.
The Comox Valley Farmers’ Market is excellent, enviable and right next door to the festival site: an extra treat for Saturday morning. The sour cherries looked good enough to take home,
but somehow the wrong thing to be hauling around all the hot, hot, hot day long.
Sunday morning kicked off – almost as hot as Saturday – with the likes of Jim Byrnes and The Sojourners
and the star of the show, IMHO, the wondrous Eric Bibb
Had we been tall enough, we would truly have hung from the rafters to enjoy this blistering blues workshop, featuring both Bibbs (Eric and his dad Leon), Michael Jerome Browne Band, Jim Byrnes, Luke Guthrie, Sam Hurrie…
Mark Stuart and Stacey Earle gave a farewell (as a duo) performance – both are heading into solo projects.
Yves Lambert et le Bebert Orchestra started the Sunday night set off with some fun.
Some lovely things at the festival: the water wagon was a definite treat, bringing chilled water to the masses in this festival that dared to ban plastic water bottles.
There was also a liquid godsend in the form of the jet tent, where you could get a cooling blast of mist…
And there were artists at work here and there.
The food was pretty good. The Nomad’s Kitchen was as folky as they come
serving platters like this one with grilled salmon
But Woodstock’s smokies were up to their usual magnificent standard; the top seller again was the Gardener’s Revenge (venison) – and very good it was too.
A fabulous treat which sadly sold out before Sunday elevenses: the outstanding caramel nut bar, lovingly crafted by Corfield Coffee Bar in Duncan.
I’ve split myself into two blogs – I wanted to see if I could prune some of my more garden-specific thoughts into my Random Garden blog – but then there’s farming which has to do with food and also growing things, so it’s going to be a little difficult to know what to post where for a while here.
I happened upon a story about Manitoba potato farmers that I wanted to share; it’s coverage of a new film that looks interesting:
Food sovereignty and the fate of the family farm are big issues for all of us who eat. I also recommend farmer Jonathan Wright’s ground-up account of what it’s like to try to farm sustainably in Alberta; part one, part two, and part three. And a visit to their farm here.
I read that Whole Foods is now planning to take on non-GMO labelling. Well, I guess had the recession not slowed its growth it might have reached the size of a small country so perhaps it makes sense that this should be where the initiative comes from, if governments won’t do it. Whatever else, it will certainly give the chain an enviable marketing edge in North America.
This last was a spectacularly warm weekend in Victoria, perfect for the fifth Organic Islands festival. On Saturday the Terralicious team talked us through a sneaky way to ply your family with vegetables.
Tina and Dayle concocted a couple of lovely pizza combinations, with fennel and potato as the main stars.
Then there was a talk on the topic of Reviving the Vancouver Island Diet. Food security by any other name, it featured a crew of familiar faces and voices. Local farmer and writer Tom Henry
spoke about the need for Canadians to pay a fair price for their food – to allow local farmers to produce it; to encourage politicians to help small local meat producers raise and humanely/ locally slaughter food animals; and he stressed the importance of staying on top of local politics where these might impinge on food security – citing a potential loophole in Metchosin’s secondary suite provisions that could allow the unscrupulous to subdivide farmland.
He appeared with Carolyn Herriot, talking about food security, the power of the land to provide a living, and her irritation with corruption in local politics; she has a long-standing mistrust of the nutritional value of foods reared hydroponically and so felt affirmed, if shocked, to read recently that greenhouses block the UV light needed to form antioxidants in vegetables.
Bill Code talked about the power of food to heal, and the community value of the Island Farmers Alliance; and Jen Fisher Bradley championed food collectives, debt forgiveness (student loan debts/young farmers) and the Vancouver Island Diet.
After too much sun, an organic hot dog and a dribbly cornetto di gelato, it was time to crowd beneath the tent to hear Jeremy Fisher play some old and some things from his new cd Goodbye Blue Monday.
