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Slow Food

GM food labelling – the debate

At last, I thought, some coverage of the bill c-517 debate on national radio! But no, I later realised I was tuned to Village 900 which was broadcasting a May 22 episode of an excellent program from Kootenay Co-op Radio called Deconstructing Dinner.

It was fascinating to hear the politicians who voted down the bill try to explain why they had done so. Listen for yourself; despite numerous polls which show Canadians want to know what they’re eating, too many politicians doggedly maintain they think it would be harmful to Canadians to be able to distinguish between GM and non GM foods.

You can read the debates in the Hansard: April 3 and May 5. See for yourself who said what, and who said nothing. Pretty interesting reading. As was the email I received from my MP who assures me he believes “in using a precautionary principle with regards to genetic engineering”. Apparently this precaution does not extend to labelling those precaution-worthy food items, since he voted against the bill.

Anyone in the neighbourhood wanting to talk more about this issue should come to the Slow Food Vancouver Island discussion on July 9.

News in the news, and devilish fun with translation

In the self-serving-don’t-mess-with-my-lifestyle department, a recent Pew poll says that over half of Americans surveyed don’t feel humans are responsible for global warming.

In the interesting angle department, Raj Patel draws some interesting conclusions from a recent Lancet article and the ensuing media headlining.

And in the bee-keeping department, here’s a cool manual on bee-keeping produced by the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity.

Such fun with words we’re having. We started off doing translation exercises, similar to this “Homophonic Translation” routine, which we did using a latin text. Last night it occurred to me that I might be able to find a way into revision work by using an online translation tool, so I’ve been blasting a few pieces apart by translating them into Japanese, Greek, Portuguese, Korean, Russian, French, Italian and Spanish — and back again, sometimes more than once. It’s been a fun way to take apart a dull line or sentence and see what might enliven it. Or perhaps start me off in a new poem or image.

Here are the opening lines of an old poem of mine I chose at random:

The path of disaster is so often
just beyond the window we’ve turned
away from for that critical
moment

and the translated version (via Japanese and Greek)(with a few tweaks to make the syntax work, more or less):

Such a certain street of destruction
a precise and often window
that exceeds our regard
with empty importance
turns because this

So, a different world and a different meaning, and a lot of nonsense, but maybe something in there presents an opening for new directions and energy.

Televisualess, with eggplant

I have been living for a couple of years now without television, which has been freeing; it has, as I’d hoped, freed up more time for reading, cooking and walking. I still watch stuff on tv-like screens, but now I rent movies and watch videos online. I suppose that has narrowed the field from which my media heroes are drawn, but if it has there’s one person I’m glad I’ve been able to see in a number of documentaries. She speaks clearly, simply and – although the message is terrifying – with hope and vision.

Here’s an interview with the awesome Vandana Shiva, who has put the plight of Indian farmers into the public spotlight, can explain beautifully the perils of seed patents (covered by Vanity Fair in the May/08 issue!) and biodiesels, has put her money where her mouth is through her foundation, Navdanya, and among her many other activities, now sits on the board of Slow Food International:

And now, if you have a couple of hours to spare, here’s Fast Food World: Perils and Promises of the Global Food Chain, a fascinating panel discussion from way back in 2003, featuring just about everyone I admire together on one stage: Vandana Shiva together with Carlo Petrini, poet Wendell Barry, Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and a charming introduction from Alice Waters.

If you’re still hungry after that, I wandered into a wonderful website that is all about aubergines, or eggplants, or melanzane. It includes a recipe for Tumbet, which we had in Spain; I tried Rose Elliot’s version the other day, which was very good, but I think this is closer to the one I fell in love with.

Something for the new year

A lot of you expressed envy at my departure for Italy to study food for a year, and to anyone of that mindset in the Victoria area I offer glad tidings: my classmate Don Genova is offering a course at UVic called Food Culture: Fast Food to Slow Food which covers a lot of the sorts of things we learned in Italy. It gives you the opportunity to meet local food producers and doesn’t incur the cost of travel to Italy (though you might feel a need to go once it’s over!).

Here’s Don’s blog/podcast site if you want to get a sense of who he is. He’s a good speaker and he knows everyone, so I think it will be a great class. (And no, I’m not getting a commission, though I have certainly offered to be his assistant!!)

Anyone not in Victoria will perhaps enjoy looking at the scenery (from a walk along the Gorge on Boxing Day) and wishing you were here…

But it’s not all fun and games in Lotusland. We do have a police presence here, and environmentally-minded transportation for them. We weren’t sure what crimes were being fought at this point but it may have been that one of the fisherfolk needed help with a dodgy lure..?

Orford Ness & Game for Everything

Always an auspicious sign, the snail.

This one was living free on Orford Ness, in Suffolk, a blasted landscape in many senses, being a former military testing site and now a valuable nature preserve. A group of poets made a visit there on the weekend in search of inspiration.

It’s made up of 10 miles of seaward-exposed shingle, which we were told comprises 15% of the world’s habitat for coastal vegetative shingle (another 15% is at Dungeness). There are many signs pointing to its military past…

The National Trust man who showed us round told us the bomb disposal squad is still called out to deal with unexploded bombs some 15 to 20 times a year.

After our walk we returned to little Blaxhall

for some tea, and then made our way back to Orford for supper at the Butley Oysterage, where I dined handsomely on griddled squid

and grilled Dover Sole. A poetry workshop followed, accompanied by a very fine smoked salmon terrine with potatoes and leeks, and some of Orford’s best smoked chicken.

Then before I could turn around it was Tuesday, and time to join some of London’s Slow Foodies for a night of wild food from Mark Gilchrist, who shoots, butchers, dresses and cooks all his own game.

He started us off with a plate of assorted duck appetisers: Teal liver pate; Pintail confit; air-dried Pintail; salted, cured and smoked Widgeon, served with fresh brioche and kumquat jam.

Then a pan-fried fillet of Roe deer…

And then he put on his butcher’s coat and demonstrated how to skin and joint a hare, and told us how to make a ragout of hare like the one he was about to serve on freshly-made tagliatelli.

The ultimate dish was Conference pear tarte tatin…

which, containing molten caramel, must be turned onto its pastry base with care…

And of course it must be served with a drop of cream.

Food reading

Just back from a sprint round northern Italy.

Meanwhile, a couple of journals we’ve been pointed towards. Food For Thought, self-described (in the spirit of nose to tail gastronomic studies?) as the Organ of the University of Gastronomic Sciences, is a beautiful thing, like all the Slow Food publications. Helpful in many ways to be part of an organisation started by writers.

And Anthropology of Food is a webjournal produced by a network of European food academics.