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Victoria

The pit

Spent last Sunday learning about pit cooking – and many other things – from the wondrously encyclopaedic Nancy Turner. It was a Slow Food Vancouver Island event, and about 20 of us made the schlep out to Sooke Harbour House where the sun shone while we shivered on the shore, grateful in the end for fire.

Although the pit had been dug for us (phew) by some Wwoofers, it was apparently too big, so had to be filled in a bit.

The next point of business was to find some smaller rocks for cooking: the large rocks were deemed suitable for lining the pit, but the food itself had to sit on smaller rocks, preferably lava, and without any cracks.

We lined the pit

and started the fire with some of Nancy’s fuzz sticks which made light work of kindling.

While the fire gathered heat and warmed up the rocks to cooking temperature, Nancy entertained us with some interesting foods. She brewed us a nice pot of Labrador tea, which also included other local delicacies like nootka rose, stinging nettle, yerba buena, subalpine fir, liquorice fern root (a powerful sweetener), dried saskatoons and dried yarrow.


Onto the fire it went.

And it simmered away while we had a nice snack of bannock, molded onto green sticks

and toasted over what was now getting to be a very hot fire.

Tea time.

Then there was a nice snack of porphyra, a near relative of nori, which had been harvested in the Broughton Archipelago and then dried

and was particularly tasty toasted on the bannock sticks.

Eventually all was ready,

the fire was hot enough,

and Nancy gave us a thorough briefing, as the pit and food have to be assembled quickly and in sequence.

With a pole to guide the laying of food, the rocks are covered with ferns and salal branches…

the salmon goes on…

add some shellfish, veg

and a bowl of water (the cooking method has more to do with steam than fire)


cover it all up with more ferns, more salal branches, and top with soaked burlap

then shovel dirt over all

until it’s completely covered.

At the end of the cooking time (in our case a somewhat excessive 4 hours or so, but in large traditional pits as much as 24 hours), uncover — carefully


and decant the food onto platters

and lay it out

to enjoy in a gorgeous al fresco dining area

and finish with some of Sooke Harbour House’s excellent desserts.

Food price issues for low incomes; BC Day, blackberries and zucchini

In Our Food, our Future last week, the topic was the impact of high food prices on those with less disposable income, where the proportion of monthly income spent on food is escalating with possibly dangerous results. Some interesting issues raised. The rise in obesity among poor people, because fatty, sugary foods are cheaper than better quality ones. The lack of practical food skills (selection, preparation) among those who need them most: young, pregnant or breastfeeding women, single parents, students. The difficulty of feeding ever-hungry teens on a small budget. And the economic risk of experimenting with cooking or dietary change: if you are on a very tight food budget, with children to feed, monotony is a big problem, because you must stick to foods with a long shelf life (fatty, sugary, highly-processed) that you know how to portion and prepare, and that your family will eat.

It’s been party time in Victoria. Last weekend was BC Day, and the crowds were out in the inner harbour,

the Snowbirds did an impressive flyby.

I didn’t stay for the evening’s open-air entertainment which included Burton Cummings, Feist and Sarah McLachlan, because I had food to think about.

The Himalayan blackberries are in season now, though I suspect people are not picking them because there’s a rumour about (repeated to me with my berry pail at every turning) that they aren’t ripe until the end of August. Ok, so believe that if you wish. I believe with mine eyes and mine palate and mine berry bucket.

During an irresponsible visit to some farm markets, I bought loganberries and giant boysenberries, which for scientific purposes I compared in my berry line-up, in order of size, with a Himalayan and a native blackberry.

Then, because my apples are ripe and my berry pail full, I made pie. Rather good with Udder Guy’s strawberry ice cream.

And for those who say to me “but don’t you get tired of zucchini?” I can only laugh sadly and smugly. There’s soup to be made, chocolate-zucchini cake of course, but also zucchini parmigiana as earlier mentioned, and this wonderful thing which I sampled last April (paired with smoked provolone) at the wonderful La Croce di Malta in Parma. I thought the proprietor was calling it zucchini escabeche, but in fact she was saying Zucchini alla Scapece,

which is a superb Italian cousin; by her account from Sicily. It’s a wonderful substance, featuring fresh mint, garlic and vinegar and – best of all for dinner party purposes – a good long sit on the kitchen counter. I read that its combination of sour and sweet flavour signals its origins in Spanish cuisine, and its roots in Spanish-ruled parts of the country.

Organic weeds

I spent some time reflecting on the back-breaking nature of organic farming last week.

Wednesday’s tasks at Haliburton were to liberate the squash patch from smartweed, which was something more than abundant.

Four of us made a good dent

and were rewarded with lemonade and some rejected potatoes, which I took home and roasted with thyme, lemon and mushrooms, as instructed by Nigel Slater.

Saturday I paid a visit to Local Yokels, where with my growing weed-naming skills I can with some certainty say that we pulled smartweed, sorrel, morning glory, plantain, mustard and lots of other stuff from the squash,

the broccoli

the cabbage

and the corn (boo!)

Couldn’t say hello to the chickens as they had been taken away for a holiday to get over the trauma of witnessing whatever was killing their kin – a weasel, it was thought, rather than raccoons, as the corpses were left in the chicken tractor. Whatever it was, security’s going to be ramped up considerably before they return to the field.

But the berry trail was looking good, with lots of berries ready for the picking.

And the bees are very happy in the borage

though it’s nearing the end of honey season, and I’m looking forward to a visit to Larry & Marilyn’s to help out with some extraction on Monday.

Berries ‘n Cherries

I think while the fruit’s still with us, we should go on celebrating National Cherry Day in England! Read all about it at CherryBites, or join the CherryAid group on Facebook.

Over here, we too love cherries. Some of us might be lucky enough to be in Bruno for some sour cherries ‘n poetry… But if you can’t make that, how about heading to bing country in Kelowna for their festival?

A happy discovery on my walk the other day: it’s native (Rubus ursinus) blackberry season and I found a bowlful’s worth in a secret location.

Smaller, sweeter and much less numerous than the Himalayan blackberries, which have overrun the Island, they pack an aromatic punch and flavour. After gorging on them (well paired with Udder Guy’s vanilla bean ice cream)

I’ve frozen a precious handful to wait for my Yellow Transparent crop to ripen, which won’t be long now. That will be one fine pie.

The Himalayans are still feeding the bees, and won’t be ready till later in August from the looks of things.

Organic Islands, featuring Percy Schmeiser

The Organic Islands festival took place last weekend, and we went for a sunny Saturday afternoon of tastings and talks and music. Found some Emmer (aka Farro, in Italy) an ancient wheat now being grown for the first time on Vancouver Island.

There were interesting causes to support, like this one where you can register your fruit tree and have others pick and use your fruit if you don’t want all of it.

A lost tree being tormented by small children.

One of the events we wanted to catch was the GE Free BC panel, featuring Yukon farmer Tom Rudge,

Powell River politician Colin Palmer,

activist Josh Brandon from Greenpeace,

and special guest Percy Schmeiser,

whose story I knew from CBC coverage and films like The Future of Food and Life Running Out of Control.

Schmeiser impressed me with his speaking skills. I hadn’t known he was a former MLA as well as a farmer. I did know he was a life-long seed developer who had spent $400,000 and 7 years of his life fighting Monsanto on the grounds of patent infringement when Monsanto found GM (Roundup-Ready) canola growing on Schmeiser’s field in 1998.

The rather alarming issue of GM canola crossing itself with non-GM canola is something Schmeiser talks a lot about: “You can’t contain nature” is his mantra, and the message he dearly wants to deliver to regions tempted to introduce GM crops alongside non-GM.

Canola, a Canadian cross-bred (not genetically-modified) brassica plant that was developed in the 1970s, is an important crop because it is used for vegetable oils (lower in saturated fats than any other oil) and animal feed as well as a rotation crop.

Canola has proven it doesn’t obey corporate laws of ownership and whether through wind, rain, pollen drift, flood or spillage, GM and non-GM canola have interbred right across Canada and pretty much killed the country’s organic production of canola (no GM crops or products are allowed in Canadian organic production).

Not only does being GM make the contaminated crops unexportable to the many countries which do not allow GM imports, it also – from Schmeiser’s experience – makes those crops, and their seeds, the property of Monsanto, since you have, willingly or not, and no matter to what degree, ended up growing a Monsanto-engineered plant. This is anathema to farmers who have traditionally saved seed from their own crops to plant the next year. But if you grow GM plants, Canadian patent law prevents you from saving and sowing or trading or selling that seed, since it includes Monsanto technology and is therefore not yours to do with as you please. To reinforce this message, farmers who buy the seed are required to sign Technology Use Agreements which forbid farmers from re-using seed, and require that they purchase new seed each year

Schmeiser also talked about the promises Monsanto had made: higher crop yields, better nutritional content, decreased use of pesticides (insecticides and herbicides), an end to world hunger. Instead, the crop yields from GM crops are lower, nutritional values from industrial crops are demonstrably down, and the potency of today’s Roundup is 4x what it was ten years ago because glyphosate-resistant strains of weeds (superweeds) have evolved; the content of new herbicides currently used in Saskatchewan includes Dioxins, which have toxic effects on human health and are largely passed to humans through the food supply.

Standing ovation…

Also discussed by the panel was the point about there being no research about GM crops aside from what Monsanto itself funds, selects and publishes, and how that just might be a problem in terms of credibility and human safety.

The GE Free BC campaign aims to make BC a GE free region. They’re also linked with campaigns to promote that seemingly elusive goal of requiring food containing genetically engineered substances to be labelled in this country, and another worth-while movement to ban Terminator technology, which would allow corporations to genetically sterilise their crops, ensuring farmers would have no choice but to purchase seed from them each year.

After that we needed a hot dog, from the eternally popular organic hot dog stand where we managed to get the last three hot dog buns on offer for the day.

Then we wandered beneath the attractive drystone arches of the Green Drinkery

for a glass of local wine

and a prime location to hear former Victoria resident Jeremy Fisher play us out.

Canada Day on the Gorge

I got back to Victoria just in time for Canada Day, last Tuesday, which is a happy time on the Gorge, as they block the road off and throw a big party, starting with a parade

and featuring music

(Morris) dancing

and food, including these popular items from Café Vieux Montreal.

We had earlier seen some besieged diners walking down the road bearing bbq salmon with pea shoot salads, asked at every turn where they’d got them, and this was where. They also served cream puffs with maple syrup, chocolate tarts with strawberries and Montreal smoked meat sandwiches.

But nothing beats the popularity of Mr Tubesteak.

Walking along the pathway, we saw what looked like an alien invasion on some wild roses and asked the plant guy, who told us it was rose canker. But it doesn’t look like any picture I’ve seen of rose canker, so I’m still thinking it’s more likely extraterrestrial.

There’s a vintage car show and a few crafts stalls and eventually everyone wanders off for a Canada Day barbeque. By the time night falls on the Gorge

gangs of youth, red and white and drunk all over,

make their way to the Inner Harbour to see the fireworks.