Edible Gardens, Terra Madre Day & Digging the City on TV

Dec 15

I was over on the Mainland earlier this week and spent three days enjoying many things, including a tour of some urban agriculture in practice, Terra Madre Day celebrations Vancouver style, and a few minutes in the public eye to promote Digging the City.

On Monday afternoon I was delighted to be able to meet up with Emily Jubenvill, community liaison with the Edible Garden Project in North Vancouver. They use a mixture of community gardens and corporate partnerships to grow food, teach gardening skills and increase the amount of food growing going on in the community.

They’d planted an urban plot behind a skateboard shop which demonstrated a couple of the problems that can arise with urban growing. The shop’s ownership was about to change, and so the garden’s future is as uncertain as on any borrowed land. This is something that affects SPIN farmers and other farmers working under leases rather than secure tenure: it determines the kind of crops they can grow and the amount of long term planning they can do. And then there’s urban vandalism: a ripped polytunnel and a few torn plants here; earlier at the community garden we’d passed a sign asking people not to steal the vegetables.

 

 

 

 

 

One of EGP’s high profile projects, Loutet Farm, was built on the underused edge of a city park with considerable help from private and public funds. It’s a place for workshops and demonstrations, but mostly it’s land for growing food, which can be sold to raise money to fund green jobs in the community. Its success, Emily thinks, is due in large part to the fact they can pay a farmer to manage it: anyone who’s struggled with the ebb and flow of energy and funds around community garden management – or any other social enterprise run by volunteers – will understand what a big deal it is to be able to have someone in charge! On our visit the drainage was being revamped with the help of some grant money and a lot of free muscle. An apiary was under construction as well: this being North Vancouver, it has to be bear-proof: the sturdy mesh cages for the hives will be sunk into concrete before they’re stocked next spring.

 

 

 

 

Monday evening was of course Terra Madre Day everywhere, a global celebration of local eating. As I was missing the carnivore culinary book exchange that Slow Food Vancouver Island was hosting, I was grateful to catch wind of Slow Food Vancouver’s  celebration, which took place at Chill Winston in Gastown. Chef Derek Bothwell is a hand-crafter if ever there was, and brought many of his wares for us to sample. Ingredients included house smoked steelhead, bison (he’s an Alberta boy, originally), a pretty amazing lentil caviar, and local pork belly, with some salt caramel chocolates to finish. We ordered some nice limey crab cakes, smashed potatoes and wild mushrooms to tide us over in between.

Tuesday I made my television debut on CTV with a short spot on a noon show where I was grilled on food security in Canada. You can still catch my moments here.

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Stones in your Soup

Dec 14

I was thrilled to be among those invited to present at Victoria’s Stone Soup event back on December 2: much like the story it grew in a few short weeks from nothing to a sold out celebration of food and community. There were storytellers, artists, musicians, writers and farmers in the lineup, two cauldrons of soup to warm us on another rainy evening, and even a vegetable auction! Funds raised were destined for agricultural micro-lending projects. Below, one of the organizers, Neil Johnson, explains the event; local farmers Robin Tunnicliffe, Sol Kinnis and Goldie Paquette were part of the farmers panel; Mason Street farmers Jesse and Angela explain their crowd-funding efforts towards hiring interns and creating Victoria’s first urban greenhouse aquaponics operation; Chef Dwane MacIsaac of the Island Chefs Collaborative discusses the soups he and his volunteers made from entirely donated ingredients; and my book, which someone purchased using only No Tanker loonies.

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Food so clean & local

Nov 28

It’s been a couple of weeks of book promotion and food events… I keep waiting for things to slow down but they keep speeding up instead, so I will try to catch up a little.

Last week began well, with a unanimous vote by Saanich District Council in favour of a no-GMO motion that had been in the works for a couple of years:

“That the Healthy Saanich Advisory Committee recommends that Saanich Council does not support the use of genetically modified seed crops within the District of Saanich, and that Council write to the federal Minister of Agriculture, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and local MPs in support of the mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods.”

For those who don’t hail from these parts, Saanich is one of the largest of the 13 municipalities that make up the Capital Regional District (what outsiders would call “Victoria”) and one that has an interesting mixture of urban and rural properties. It joins other BC communities, including Powell River, New Denver, Kaslo, Rossland, Nelson and Richmond in banning GMOs.

Biotech Crop Countries+Mega-Countries 2010I was among those who spoke in favour of this motion at a public meeting in October, on the grounds that GMOs have not been proven safe for human consumption. While some might argue the horse has long since exited the barn, I am with those who believe we can only carry on letting people know they have a choice and a voice and trying to educate the wider public on under-discussed aspects of what should still be a lively GMO debate. I pointed out that since our parliament has failed to allow our population to safeguard itself against eating GMO products by introducing mandatory GMO labeling, all Canadians have been fed GMO foods without their knowledge or consent since 1996. So I was particularly pleased to see that the municipality would be writing to the federal representatives about labeling. And would urge all sensible people to do likewise while they have ink in their pens or pixels on their screens. Sanity may yet prevail in this country when poor brainwashed Canadians manage to grasp the same realities as the citizens of more advanced nations including South Africa, Kenya and Peru.

Tuesday there was a round-table meeting of Victoria’s CR-FAIR which brought a couple of dozen food and agriculture activists together to discuss local initiatives. The range of activities was heartening and included work or plans for community gardens, agricultural land protection, community seed banks, access to food by low income residents, community kitchens and kitchen gardens, gardening workshops, food redistribution tools and access to farmland.

Friday I was at a promotional do for my beautiful book, held at the even more beautiful Maritime Museum. Appropriately for a daughter of the bench, I took my turn speaking from the place where Judge Begbie had thumped the gavel in days of yore (and he was *not* a hanging judge, according to Marlyn Horsdal, who also presented as author of a novel in which he is a character). Thirteen books from the Heritage Group of publishers were celebrated by 14 authors, each of whom had five minutes to say something about their books. One book, in fact the only one I bought (in a spirit of strictest frugality) – Saanich Ethnobotany – was co-authored by the excellent Nancy Turner and Richard Hebda whose collaborative tale-spinning made a fitting finale for an evening well spiced with food, drink and tantalizing introductions to a good mix of fiction, nonfiction and anthologies.

And finally, tonight I launched Digging the City at the Cornerstone Cafe in fabulous Fernwood, with the kind assistance of Don Genova as my celebrity host. About which event I will say not much except a good time and tasty treats were had by all.. and my generous readers took away some purdy books and free seeds!

 

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A small culinary diversion

Nov 19

I was lucky to be able to attend a Slow Food dinner last night, when Chef Naotatsu Ito collaborated in the Sooke Harbour House kitchen with Chef Robin Jackson. They offered us a menu that celebrated and honoured vegetables and featured winter bounty from Umi Nami farm served with local fish, seaweed and foraged mushrooms. Each of the eight courses was paired with teas from Silk Road Tea, chosen by Japanese Tea Master Daniela Cubelic; others took advantage of the chance to try Osaka Artisan Sake from Granville Island in Vancouver –made with local rice!

First course was a winter vegetable terrine (kabu, chard, broccoli, daikon) held together with agar rather than gelatin, and served on a green sauce potato puree with Nootka rose vinegar. Next came some pretty little morsels of crab meat seated on a bit of broth-infused daikon wrapped in coppa.

 

 

 

 

And then came octopus – some lightly cooked and sliced, the rest simmered and mixed with kabocha and daikon and then garnished with shredded vegetables and a dribble of red wine sauce. Next we had marinated freshly-caught albacore tuna wrapped in daikon and served with pretty and crunchy watermelon radishes. The next course required some audience participation: we were brought bowls containing lingcod rolled around green onion, seated on a bed of fir and seaweed beneath which was a hot rock. The servers poured hot tea in and covered it, and after five minutes or so we uncovered and enjoyed.

 

 

 

After which arrived some sauteed lingcod, served on a delicious kabocha–miso puree with a green “barlotto” and green onions and nodding onion. More kabocha appeared in the next course, combined with fresh local mushrooms and some bacon. Slivers of kabocha peel had been fried and arranged around all. The finale was a trio of desserts: green tea & turnip ice cream terrine, black turtle-bean cake and an exceptionally good matcha tea cookie (what a custard cream cookie might dream of being in its next life), with tart and sweet Japanese plum cherry jelly and subtle little drops of minty syrup.

 

 

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Food & mood, sleep & diabetes

Nov 14

Having kicked off my conference by hearing from the magnificent Sandor Katz, I wondered how the rest would compare. My second session, Depression & Anxiety Epidemic: How, why & what works better than anti-depressant drugs, though interesting, was a little disappointing. Julia Ross MD (author of The Mood Cure) had clearly spent some of her thunder in the first of her three-part appearance (while I was hearing Katz) and so left unexplained in this session some of the technical aspects of her talk that she’d covered earlier.

However, she gave some good causal information: that people have a 51% greater chance of mood disorder if they eat the Standard American Diet. The top three causes of mood disorder problems are the dietary changes since the seventies (when refined foods replaced home cooking, cereal product and sugar consumption increased, and refined industrial vegetable oils replaced animal fat); the increased addictiveness of refined sugars; and low calorie dieting, where the brain chemistry needed to support mood (and much else) is literally starved out.

She sketched out the diet needed for proper brain function, and explained a useful fact about the WAPF dietary principles’ obsession with pastured meat (grass-fed and finished beef, for example), which is that corn-fed protein is deficient in tryptophan, the amino acid without which serotonin – the body’s chief mood regulator – cannot be produced or function. There was much else, including a discussion of how caffeine, aspartame and ritalin block the effects of the body’s natural relaxants, keeping it in a perpetual state of stimulation, which of course doesn’t allow the brain to rest and recharge. She observed that most people on SSRI (antidepressants) really need them, but may be unaware of the side effects or addictive qualities, or the non-pharmaceutical alternatives (she provides amino acid therapies to her patients).

After a break, she moved on to discussing Insomnia. She observed we’ve been sleeping so badly for so long, we don’t know what good sleep is, so she defined it for us:

  • 8-10 hours in the dark, with no awakening
  • dream recall in the morning
  • regular breathing (no apnea)
  • waking up rested

Insomnia is rampant in Western culture – she said that a third of teenagers report having it – and is costing us in many ways: it correlates with food cravings (increasing them by 30%), insulin resistance/diabetes, depression/anxiety, ADHD, fatigue and injury. There is also a fourfold increased risk of mortality with the use of sleep medications. So it’s a good idea to solve this without. The first step is to identify the type of insomnia (night owl who enjoys staying up late; can’t get to sleep/don’t enjoy it; light sleeper waking several times through the night; or some combination of these; apnea sufferer; person in chronic pain; restless leg; short sleeper needing only around 5 hours a night; or caffeinated or medicated – ADHD – manic type). Each one corresponds to a different neurotransmitter or amino acid treatment (details in her Mood Cure book, I imagine).

After a hearty supper we were off again, and I chose Treating Diabetes with Dr Deborah Gordon as my post-prandial entertainment. It was excellent. She had much to say on the subject (more info on her website) but the (by now) usual advice applied: no sugar or refined carbohydrates; lots of high quality protein; and the inclusion of dietary fat. She cited a study that was done of 311 women following the Atkins (high protein, low carb), LEARN (low fat, high carb) and Ornish (low fat, plant-based) diets which showed that the Atkins diet was the most successful: it’s very similar to both the Paleo and Weston  A Price eating plans. She also recommended lifestyle choices including avoiding environmental toxins (pesticides, cleaning products), reducing stress, getting enough sleep, avoiding iron supplements (shown to contribute to diabetes), and doing strength training such as the HIIE exercise plans, like Tabata Training.

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