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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.
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Honey extracting
Last Monday a group of us went to Larry and Marilyn’s for an extracting party. So absorbed was I in my task of finding cool comfortable clothes to last me a day in a warm garage I forgot to remember who else might be there…
but luckily was able to adapt my wardrobe to suit the conditions and escaped without a sting, although not everyone was so lucky. The bees were a bit dopey and curious and kept a close eye on us and the honey supers, and did a bit of the fine cleaning.
First task was to cut the cappings on the honey. There were several tools at our disposal. Top of the line was the capping knife,
which melts the tops off in one fell swoop, with relative speed (depending on who was operating it)…
and then there’s this more modest version…
and finally the capping comb, which is useful and necessary for finishing work as well. They must all be used carefully as you don’t want to damage the comb and make more work for the bees when you return the frames to the hive.
Then the frames, dripping honey, are positioned in the extractor, either a larger-capacity mechanical one
or a hand-cranked model that can do two frames at a time.
After a while it starts to flow…
and flow.
And then, when you have uncapped as many frames as you can,
you can down tools (the cappings are melted down for the beeswax)
and go for lunch. If you are not too full from sampling fingerfuls of honey.
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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.
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In her latest collection, Rhona McAdam navigates the dark places of human movement through the earth and the exquisite intricacies lingering in backyard gardens and farmlands populated by insects and pollinators, all the while returning to the body, to the tune of staccato beats and the newly discovered symmetries within the human heart.
“…A beautiful, filling collection, Larder is a set of poems to read at the change of the seasons, to appreciate alongside a good meal, and to remind yourself of the beauty in everything, even the things you may not appreciate before opening McAdam’s collection….”
Rhona McAdam is a writer, poet, editor, and Registered Holistic Nutritionist with a Master’s in Food Culture from Italy and a deep-rooted passion for ecology and urban agriculture. Her work spans corporate and technical writing to poetry and creative nonfiction, often exploring the vital links between what we eat and how we live. Based in Victoria, BC, and available via Zoom, Rhona is always open to new writing commissions, readings, or workshops on nutrition and the culinary arts.
