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food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

So yes, I started a bee-keeping class this week. I don’t have bees, have no immediate plans to get any, but was curious because although I have always eaten honey I didn’t really understand how it was produced. My classmates were a mixture of current and aspiring bee-keepers and honey-eaters like me.

We started things off right with a tasting (creamed, orange, mesquite, fireweed, salal & blackberry, plus a little jar of French honey– whose label said ‘product of Italy’) and then had a review of the equipment needed. Essential items include a smoker and a hive tool, for prying the lids off after the bees have sealed themselves inside with propolis. We admired different styles of veils and bee-wear (it’s white because the bees dislike anyone in animal colours – brown, black etc. – but don’t mind white or bright colours) and looked at different ways to configure and prepare the hives.

I found a bee blog to keep me interested between classes. And a blog that has photos of dogs in bee costumes (hey, is the internet useful or what?), and Bonnie passed along some information from Darryl Hannah’s website about Colony Collapse Disorder, which our instructor (a former hive inspector) thought had a lot to do with pesticide use in the US. It’s not as much a problem on Vancouver Island (though we’ll learn more about it later) which interestingly has had a bee quarantine in place since 1986, since this is a honeybee bee breeding stock area. (Incidentally, who knew that bees are currently the only insects that are artificially inseminated?)

Meanwhile, here on the Island, it’s nearly fruit blossom time, which means we need mason bees (honeybees don’t wake up round here till the end of May or whenever the temperature hits a steady 12.4c), also known as Blue Orchard bees. They are smaller, gentler and sleepier than honeybees; they do their thing with the fruit trees and then go for a long nap in a hole pre-drilled (by someone or something else) in some wood which they seal up like, well, masons! You can make their nests for them by drilling holes 5/16″ in diameter and 4″ deep, spaced ¾” apart in blocks of wood.

By now I am sure that you are all well into your own celebration of this the International Year of the Potato, but in case you haven’t got everything in place, here’s a handy list of world-wide events you can still catch. What to do after that? Well, it can be a busy year if you let it.

Europain 2008 is coming up 29 March-2 April; sounds uncomfortable but delicious. Maybe closer to home (for some of us) it would be worth checking out the Seattle Cheese Festival May 16-18. How about joining the Nicosians for their annual Cherry Festival in June? Or there’s also the Prague Food Festival June 20-26. Stavanger, Norway holds its annual Garlic Festival in April, and this year is also hosting the real life rather weird cooking competition, the Bocuse d’Or Europe July 1-2: real life meets reality television. July 4-13 it’s time for the Ledbury Poetry Festival, which has spawned a poetry trail in a Herefordshire Orchard.

One could then return to Canada and attend the South Cariboo Garlic Festival August 16-17. After that, go Really Wild in Wales 30-31 August, and then down to Chichester for the Totally Tomato Show Sept 6-7, and back up to Ludlow Sept 12-14 (unless you are going to the excellent Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery) and across to Galway to celebrate some oysters September 25-28. Or round off the month with a visit to Sweden to catch Öland’s Harvest Festival 2008 September 25-28 and the Kivik Apple Market, September 29-30.

After that, you’ll want a little rest before Chocaday celebrations on October 12, and then make your plans for Eurochocolate 2008 in Perugia October 18-26, which should give you time to nip up to Torino to catch Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre which run concurrently from October 23 to 27. Then on to Austria for Salon Suisse des Gouts et Terroirs October 29-November 2. November 14-15 it’s the Clayoquot Oyster Festival in Tofino. On November 24 there’ll be tears before bedtime if you miss the Zibelemärit, the onion market in Berne.

In other news, giving some support to world-wide moves against bottled water, Venetians are giving up mineral water for Lent, which I guess won’t win them any friends in the Global Bottled Water Congress. Won’t bother the hibernating cod or dieting teenagers who’ve just been told again they can’t skip breakfast.

Goodness, here it is March. Where did that come from?

And here are some February crocuses.

The more I read, the more complicated the world seems. Recently I’ve been reading about Omega 3 fatty acids; there was a helpful article in the Times a little while ago that shed some light on one part of the puzzle – the difference between ‘good’ (EPA and DHA) and ‘bad’ (ALA) Omega 3 fatty acids, and the tendency of vitamin supplement marketers to blur the distinctions between them.

The ‘aha’ for me was discovering that the ideal balance of Omega 3 and Omega 6 in our diet should be about 4 (Omega 6) to 1 (Omega 3). Today’s diners are more likely to be in the 20 to 1 range, thanks to the transition that Michael Pollan describes as a catastrophic shift of our “western diet” from leaf- to seed-based feeding.

The outcome is that it’s harder all the time to get enough Omega 3 in our diets, since it comes mainly from green leafy vegetables and cold-water fish, and our diet is increasingly heavy on cereals such as wheat, corn and rice, and we eat more meat than we should (beef is a special case — but more about that later).

More problematic still is the question of whether or not fish is a good thing to be eating nowadays. Between over-fishing and dangerously high mercury levels in some fish, it’s hard to know what to do. There’s a helpful chart in an exceedingly helpful article called Mercury in Fish vs. Omega-3 Fatty Acids Health Benefits that clarifies many of the questions.

Someone had told me they’d heard mackerel was particularly bad for several reasons, but it turns out that King Mackerel is bad; Atlantic Mackerel is ok. From a mercury point of view, at least. But how do you know what you’ve got when the tin in your hand simply says “Mackerel”?

I’d been shocked to read in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and again in Not on the Label about the alarming transformation in beef of ‘good’ Omega 3’s into less helpful Omega 6s through the beef industry’s switching them from grass-eating animals to grain-fed meat products. It’s true even for a cow that ‘you are what you eat’, and by eating Omega 6-laden grain, the cow’s flesh becomes likewise heavy on the Omega 6, and therefore so does the meat we consume.

By the same reasoning, we should be wary of farmed salmon – once a favoured source of Omega 3s – that are fed corn and other grains instead of their Omega 3-rich natural diet. (But then the natural diet – requiring anywhere from two to five kg of fish (as feed), depending on whose statistics you read, to produce one kg of farmed salmon – is also unsustainable.)

An otherwise thoughtful article about salmon farming by Cameron MacDonald in the Globe & Mail (Feb. 23 Focus) fell a bit short, I thought, by not discussing these health implications when promoting grain-fed salmon as the solution to the destructive practices that harvest the fish that go into the fish pellets being fed to farmed salmon in BC. But then, as the author rightly says, eating wild salmon isn’t helping either in these times of over-fishing.

Eat less of all meats and fish, I guess is the only sustainable answer. Eat mostly plants, as Pollan says.

And here he is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWg0cCNAB-M]

What a farewell gift from the weather gods.

Although I got lots of writing done at the writers and artists’ colony this year, I also enjoyed the reading time. I spent my evenings with Edward Hirsch, browsing his Poet’s Choice, which led me down interesting paths — including one that led to Yusuf Komunyakaa, whose name I’m sure had not crossed my radar (though Brenda tells me she also came across him recently and was impressed).

I brought a chapbook called When Now Is Not Now, produced by The Poetry Trust for Alastair Reid‘s 2006 appearance at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, where he was one of my clear favourites, and after re-reading those poems still is.

For criticism and theory, I brought Annie Finch, The Body of Poetry, which had a fabulous piece in it about how the DWM canon came to be and what to do if you don’t like it. And some welcome introduction to the work of Sara Teasdale, which delighted me.

Other books I’ve read over the past couple of weeks include Jane Hirschfield‘s After; Vona Groarke‘s Shale, Paul Farley‘s Tramp In Flames, the 2007 Forward Prize Anthology, Helena McEwan’s Ghost Girl, Medbh McGuckian‘s The Currach Requires No Harbours, Mimi Khalvati’s The Meanest Flower, and Naomi Guttman’s Wet Apples, White Blood.

So here we are, having had a fabulous if freezing view of the lunar eclipse; last night having seen some absolutely gorgeous layered photographic slides from Regina’s own Cherie Westmoreland, and had our farewell reading. It’s time to pack up.

So long to Benedict…

And to these newcomers, who were born out in a -25c field and luckily spotted and brought inside for a little time under the heatlamp…

And today, all the colonists fly away home.

I went round to the sheep barn again yesterday, braving the face-freezing weather for a glimpse of the two latest arrivals, born on Sunday.

I had apparently timed my visit to nap time. Tipsy was there with her colourful offspring.

And this pair were watching the door.

In other news… Last night I made a batch of Fanny Bay smoked oyster pate (my changes: I used 2 tins of Fanny Bay smoked oysters instead of 1; green onion instead of white; and added a tablespoon of plain yogurt and a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice and a pinch of minced lemon rind) which swiftly vanished into the colony’s creativity machine.

A last swing round the freezing streets of Humboldt yielded an “Italian-inspired” yogurt maker, currently in experimental use (though Carla tells us she makes her yogurt in a much simpler way: using a mason jar, wrapped in a towel and set on the hot water tank overnight). After a crippling second night of badminton I am moving slowly but making what I can of my final two days and looking forward to our finale reading and studio tour tomorrow night.