… or as they quipped during the Saturday night entertainment, that’s terroir as opposed to terre noire as opposed to terreur. It’s a term that began in the realm of winemaking, to describe the many elements that go into building a wine’s character: the mineral content of the soil, sun exposure, moisture and drainage, altitude and so forth.

Marc Loiselle and the Rural Development Alternatives panel.

The word has been picked up by other food producers who find it a good all-encompassing way to describe the qualities that go into making a food product unique. If it’s an animal product, you look at the breed as well as the climate, topography and flora that affect the flavour, fat and texture of its meat or milk, which will in turn provide unique characteristics to its products – cheese, for example – made from it.

So last weekend I spent a day at a conference with the enticing title of Terroir, Identity and Seduction which gave the francophones of Saskatchewan (and a few of us anglophones) a chance to take a close look at local issues of terroir, through presentations, networking and even a bit of eating and drinking.

Kicking things off with a plenary on Regional Development in Saskatchewan and Beyond

There was a small but diverse and surprising selection of producers offering tastes and consumables of all shapes and sizes; howdja like them apples, from Petrofka Bridge Orchard

or that lovely flour from Marc Loiselle’s Red Fife Wheat

rising to life in Trent Loewen’s excellent Earthbound Bakery bread…

and who could have imagined Bedard Creek Acres’ Red Clover Syrup

plus beaucoup de bison (including an awesome bison pâté) from the Meridian Bison Company; marvellous moutarde de Gravelbourg from Gravelbourg Mustard (the one with cranberry made me swoon, and yearn for a nice bit of roast goose to eat it with).

André Simard told us about Charlevoix’s Local Development Centre and the state of gastrotourism and food production in Charlevoix, where they’ve made good progress in establishing unique products and viable markets for them, including La Route des Saveurs de Charlevoix, which was set up nearly 15 years ago and continues as a model of gastrotourism to the rest of the country.

Jean-Pierre Lemasson offered some gritty truths about terroir, identity and commerce, touching on some interesting dilemmas, like: is it possible to recreate a historical dish when the ingredients no longer resemble their origins? And talked about the industrialization and globalization of production and taste since World War 2, and the sticky issues those things raise for contemporary notions of authenticity and terroir. At lunchtime he offered an impromptu historical view of Tourtière, maintaining – to enthusiastic acclaim – that it is an ancient food, on the grounds that a recipe for a meat pie encompassed in pastry was found on cuneiform tablets, proving it’s been on the table for around 4,000 years. Hotly debated, tourtière’s origins according to folklore are that it was named for passenger pigeons – tourtes – that were used as ingredients a couple of centuries ago; but others maintain that, like paella, the food is named after the dish it’s cooked in. Here’s a recipe for it from Charlevoix.

We heard from Claude Dubé about Economuseums (économusées)

which are part museum, part workshop, part commercial enterprise, or as they define themselves:

a craft or agri-foods business whose products are the fruit of an authentic technique or know-how. The business showcases artisans and craft trades by offering an area for interpreting its production and by opening its doors to the public.

André Simard and Sylvain Charlebois ponder Saskatchewan issues.

We even had a participant who knocked a few socks off – even when they were sat the other side of the wall in the next room – by ending his presentation a capella. Here he is singing for CBC/Radio-Canada, the one and only Zachary Richard, Acadian advocate from Louisiana:

For me the grand finale was the Iron Chef competition, featuring three talented locals preparing hors d’oeuvres we could vote on:

Jean-François Dionne

Pascal Lafond

and Trent Loewen prep it up.

Pascal Lafond’s spectacular and surprising cherry salsa, mustard tile and liver pâté bison glacé

Jean-François Dionne’s Diefenbaker Lake trout tartare with greens served on a wild rice flour cracker was elegant and understated:

but the winner was Trent Loewen’s silky chicken liver mousse on Éphémère flax bread.

I recently fielded a request from Canadian Literature, where I had published (unpaid) a poem a few years ago. They have developed a fine archive featuring poetry they’ve published, together with virtual interviews and biographies. The laudable aim of this enterprise is to make good quality contemporary writing available to Canadian students so they can take inspiration from published works in order to learn to write poetry themselves.

The journal makes its archive available for free, which is lovely for the schools and students who will benefit. But one of the reasons it’s available for free is they’re not paying the writers for what amounts for unlimited use of their creative works, as well as the thought and effort involved in answering questions about their life and process.

There are a hundred tired comparisons I could make: does a teacher or editor or librarian who develops such a database do so without accepting a salary? I doubt it. Should a carpenter be asked to build a house for free because it’s beautiful to look at and inspiring to student builders? Unlikely.

There is, unfortunately, no end to the things writers are asked to do for free, and unfortunately for those who ask, such requests have to go to the bottom of a freelancer’s or wage earner’s task list. Maybe it’s worth it to tenured academics with publication requirements or budding writers with day jobs who are hungry for publicity. But it seems to me that a lot of worthwhile and well-intentioned projects that aim to make information or creative work freely available to a wider public overlook the fact that the people who create those works have a right to expect to make a living from their writing.

And in my experience, the people who initiate these projects seldom make the effort to raise funding to pay those creators, particularly if the projects are from academic or educational institutions. Worse are the folk – like Google for example – who do so with aims of generating revenues of their own, on the backs of creators.

While educational institutions may not be awash with cash themselves, they are no less able than more exemplary folk – some valiant and unpaid editors of magazines and reading series – who fall over backwards to pay the people whose writing they publish and promote. And they are no less able to tell the people they’re asking just why there’s no money to pay them, if they have tried.

After a little prodding, Canadian Literature told me they did try their hardest to get funding for the project, but failed, and decided to proceed anyway, in the interests of having something worthwhile to offer to students, particularly those in remote locations. On the strength of the enthusiasm of the archive’s creators, I will likely participate in this project despite my misgivings, but I can’t help feeling caught in some kind of freebie vortex that sucks me and my ability to earn a living ever downwards. Money may not be why poets write poems, but it’s certainly a consideration in making them public.

And I wonder how keen those students will be to take up poetry if they’re made aware that a good annual income from writing for successful Canadian poets (aside from the blessings of PLR and Access Copyright cheques) seldom exceeds three digits.

February 20-22: Terroir: Identity & Seduction; Saskatoon
A conference about Terroir — in Saskatchewan. Why not? Some interesting speakers and entertainments planned, as the participants toss around ideas of sustainability, gastro-tourism, geographic indications (appelations), ecomuseums and rural development initiatives. I’m expecting some good music, eating & drinking too.

February 23-March 8: Fair Trade Fortnight; UK
In England, recent research finds that 70% of British consumers now recognise the Fairtrade Mark, and more than a third of people want to see more Fairtrade produce available in cafes, restaurants and pubs (34%, up from 25% last year). Fairtrade is more than a fair selling price and marketing scheme for goods; it’s a fully audited system of trade that assures that the workers who grow, harvest or work with those goods are fairly treated and that their communities – not just the business owners – reap a benefit (the ‘social premium‘) which goes towards improving health, education and living standards for all. Thousands of producers in poorer countries depend on the system for a fair price for their product, fair trading conditions and market access. Britain celebrates and promotes this work with Fairtrade Fortnight, which this year runs from February 23 through March 8th. Perhaps we smug North Americans could get on this bandwagon a bit more – if British supermarkets like Sainsbury’s can bow to consumer pressure and stock only fairly traded bananas, why do I never see any in Canada? (In Canada, the process is handled by Transfair)

Yesterday, at St Peter’s
And one more local event was aperitivo hour at the writers’ colony last night, which featured Yotam Ottolenghi‘s wonderful caramelised garlic tart. Here’s my picture of this food’s horizon of caramelised garlic, golden nugget squash (thanks Jim!) and goat’s cheese:

And here are some Scottish socks complaining in falsetto about Ottolenghi’s pics:

The other day, I was talking to Jim the gardener who had spent some years in France, and time in Spain, and inevitably therefore the conversation wandered into quince territory. I’d seen quince (mele cotogno) trees growing in Herculaneum. In Spanish it’s known as membrillo, which is also the word used to describe quince paste – a good companion for cheese and which I read here is, itself deriving from melomeli (more about this below) the etymological ancestor of marmelade.

So then I was looking at my beautiful little book about foods of Pompeii which I’m crawling through with my limited Italian. It’s called le stagioni dell’antica pompei: recette farmaci e conserve, and includes a few recipes, including one for preserving quince (Conserva di mele cotogne) and making melomeli – a kind of honey/fruit wine used for its curative powers, to treat fevers and liver, kidney, or urinary ailments; as an astringent, and to facilitate digestion and relieve dysentery.

The basic method used in Pompeii was to pick quince when at their ripest – on a dry day in a waning moon – and then remove their fuzz, layer them in a glass container covered with a woven wicker cover and pour liquid honey to cover. My book says that this also produces melomeli which is used to treat fevers. But the melomeli recipe attributed to Apicius requires adding to the quinces a mixture of defrutum (grape must reduced by half) and honey. And defrutum is thought to be the ancestor of balsamic vinegar.

So food once more ties the past to the present in an edible package. Let’s celebrate on this wintry day with a little Hot Chocolate, courtesy food poet Leslie McGrath.

We had a chat in the lounge the other night which raised some buzz about wild bees. In BC we have Blue Orchard Mason bees (Osmia lignaria) which emerge before the honeybees (Apis mellifera) and do faultless work in the apple trees. They don’t make honey for us, but we need them for pollinating our fruits and flowers so there’s a lot of interest nowadays in making them welcome by building them little homes. These can be made out of scrap lumber, rolls of paper or slatted extravagences.

These bees are subject to mites – not the varroas that imperil honeybee populations worldwide, but other varieties, so the houses should be cleaned (I heard that you can soak them in bleach solution, or if they’re made out of scrap lumber you could burn them at the end of the season and make new ones).

We also get visits from leaf cutter bees (Megachile perihirta) who decorate our rose leaves with nice round holes, and in return pollinate all kinds of things.

Here on the prairies, apples bloom and honeybees buzz at closer times on the growing calendar, so that’s why prairie honeybees can make apple blossom honey and layabout coastal bees can’t.

And there’s another bee, a relative of the Blue Orchard bee, the Alfalfa leaf cutter bee (known as ALB, or in Latin, megachile rotundata), which is prized – and bred – in these parts to pollinate alfalfa. Alfalfa is tricky for honeybees to pollinate, our bee-breeding writer colleague told us, because it’s a long way into the stamens, and they’re apt to lose the pollen on their way out. The leaf cutter, though, is a hard little nipper and can do a much more efficient job.

The world is struggling to maintain its population of wild bees as much as its honeybees; and much the same culprits are killing off both populations: urbanization/loss of habitat, pollution, pesticide use, and mites. In our relatively sparsely populated country we are lagging behind the losses, mercifully, and maybe temporarily; so the bee breeders in Canada sell a lot of bees to our neighbours to the south. We can all help in our small ways by building bee houses and cultivating bee-friendly plants. And holding off on the pesticides!

While you’re at it, if you belong to an organization that might be relevant, you can join the campaign to support the Saskatchewan Organic Directorate‘s Organic Agriculture Protection Fund, to let the Canadian Food Inspection Agency know you want Canada to withdraw its approval of Monsanto’s GE Alfalfa. This substance was approved in Canada in 2004, and in the US in 2005, but in 2007 an American federal court found that the US Department of Agriculture’s approval of the crop was illegal on the grounds that it lacked a thorough Environment Impact Assessment, a decision affirmed last September and a national ban (in the US) was upheld. Because alfalfa is at the bottom of our food chain – essential for crop rotation and animal feed – cross contamination would bring our organic farming business to its knees and would contaminate just about every animal product we eat. Because we lack labelling for GM products, we wouldn’t know anyway. The SOD campaign deadline for supporting groups is February 28, 2009.