ReallyGoodWriter | Food • Writing • Poetry Iambic Cafe

food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

It sounds like the start of a bad joke, doesn’t it? When is a poet like a mushroom..? If I had been to more meetings of the South Vancouver Island Mycological Society, I’m sure I’d be able to fill in a punchline. We’ll have to come back to that another time I think.

Last Thursday I was lucky enough to join a mushroom foray with SVIMS’ evening speaker Robert Rogers, from Edmonton, who was in town to talk about the medicinal uses of mushrooms. He described himself as a herbalist rather than a mycologist, but was pretty quick off the mark when it came to talking up the medicinal benefits of what we found in Francis King Park.

First up was a Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) on the park gate.

Better specimens found later on. Robert says it is the most important medicinal mushroom in Japan; the healthcare system there spends around $2.5bn a year providing it in extract form to post-operative cancer patients. In one study the placebo group had a 4.6 yr survival rate, while those taking a daily supplement survived 10.6 yrs post-op. He said it was an immune modulator and an important mycoremediator: its mycilium masses can convert PCBs and petrochemicals into CO2 and water. And it’s edible – just – a sort of mushroom chewing gum.

Many were the Polypores. Here a Ganoderma tsugae, one of the Reishi mushrooms. The Reishi is said to be the most studied mushroom of all time. It’s easily collected; best to work with when younger and spongier, as it’s easier to slice before processing. To prepare it you need to get polysaccharides and other matter out first, and through a series of soakings and decantings make it into a tincture that can be taken for various conditions. It modulates the immune system (perks it up when depressed, damps it down when over-active, as in the case of rhumatoid inflammation, lupus etc.) as well as reducing inflammation (and it is inflammation after all that kills us). It’s a great anti-cancer agent because it interrupts the cycle of cancer cells (via Apotosis 53: a point in self-cycled growth where cells are dividing) so can help prevent cancer formation. Chinese medicine uses it for esophageal carcinoma and indigestion.

Mushroom hunters use all their senses in identification.

Dacrymyces palmatus (Witch’s Butter)

Inocybe sp. — is this the LBJ of mushrooming?

Spring in the rainforest: skunk cabbage and trilliums:

That evening at the meeting Robert went into more detail about a selection of mushrooms. But first we took a look at a Black Morel (Morchella elata), and observed the way the cap is integral to the stem, which is the way to distinguish a true Morel from a false one. It is of course an excellent eating mushroom, but one that can cause some diners upset, particularly if consumed with alcohol.

Then we heard about the beneficial properties of common edible mushrooms like Shiitake (Lentinula edodes) which a San Francisco hospital apparently found to be as good as any of its existing retroviral drugs); and it’s a cardiovascular regulator, preventing “hardening” of arteries, coronary embolisms, varicose veins, and helping with cholesterol problems.

The Enoki (Flammulina velutipes) cultivar is the only mushroom that Robert recommends eating raw; it is a cancer-preventive food, and one of the few to have undergone trials on breast and ovarian cancers.

Even the button/crimini/portobello mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) got mention: don’t eat them raw, he says: some compounds may be toxic. But they are aromatase inhibitors (as are nettle leaves) preventing replication of hormone-sensitive cancers (prostate, breast). Regular consumption can act as good prophylactic. Reduction in breast cancer through eating these was found to be 67% but when combined with green tea, raised the reduction rate to 97% .

Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus populinus; P. ostreatus) is a cholesterol reducer, containing lovastatin. Mitochondrial cell efficiency is affected by statin drugs (this inhibits Q10) but not by eating mushrooms. Two meals a week, he says, are as effective as statin drugs. They prevent build-up of placque in arterial walls, and are protease inhibitors: when the liver starts to shut down, cholesterol levels rise, but oyster mushrooms prevent both, and are antiviral as well. And an important mycoremidator – oyster mushroom mycillium can help clean up environmental messes (an idea Paul Stamets explains in his TED Talk).

There were many more besides.. described in fascinating detail in Robert’s book, The Fungal Pharmacy – Medicinal Mushrooms of Western Canada.

And on Friday, I was one of a multitude attending a book launch for new collections by two grande dames of Canadian poetry: Susan Musgrave (Origami Dove) and Lorna Crozier (Small Mechanics).

A stylish and hilarious evening, fuelled by quantities of sushi from the restaurant next door.

This Open letter to Canadian Journalists should really be read by readers of Canadian media as well, as it affects all of us, and our right to know what our government is doing in our name and with our tax money:

Civil servants – scientists, doctors, regulators, auditors and policy experts, those who draft public policy and can explain it best to the population — cannot speak to the media. Instead, reporters have to deal with an armada of press officers who know very little or nothing at all about a reporter’s topic and who answer tough questions with vague talking points vetted by layers of political staff and delivered by email only.
…
Politicians should not get to decide what information is released. This information belongs to Canadians, the taxpayers who paid for its production. Its release should be based on public interest, not political expediency.

This breeds contempt and suspicion of government. How can people know the maternal-health initiative has been well thought out or that the monitoring of aboriginal bands has been done properly if all Canadians hear is: “Trust us”?

— Canadian Association of Journalists, April 2011

A question to ask your Conservative – and other visitants – during the current election campaign is:

• What will your party do to repair what Stephen Harper has done to the taxpayer’s ability to know how the government is spending our money?

(Perhaps you’ll get an answer from the Conservatives by email from the election’s public affairs staff…?)

I blossomed along last night to catch Michael Ableman speak on Thinking Like an Island: Food Security and Sustainability, as part of the art gallery’s Art in Bloom series. The promo promised we’d hear about how “thinking like an island means minimizing reliance on “off-island” resources.”

And indeed it was so. It was a lively, passionate and articulate talk, presenting alternatives for a sustainable future, “where communities develop their own full cycle food systems and city planners integrate food production into new developments.” Ableman speaks with authority, from the foundations of a lifetime spent farming and driving urban agriculture programs (like SOLEfood in East Vancouver), which he now does from Foxglove Farm on Salt Spring Island.

On Salt Spring, he said, there are the problems we all share today: utter dependence on fossil fuel and the automobile and imported food; and like many other urban centres, even this island has its share of poverty and food insecurity, well hidden from public view.

Think of Earth as an island floating in a sea of space, he suggested; perhaps if we thought of it that way we might take better care of it.But it all starts with food: nothing is more basic to our needs, and yet we’ve handed over that responsibility to others, and we’re seeing the results in soil loss, water contamination, obesity, health problems of many kinds.

But islands of farming – for every farm should be as self-contained, self-sufficient and self-renewing as an island – nowadays have ecological and educational roles as well as to feed a predominantly urban world.

His deepest message for the future of food security has to do with education. We can learn to build food security by growing our own gardens: people need the knowledge as well as the means and land to produce some part of the food supply. We can secure it for the future by cultivating those skills in our children, who will after all reap the fruits of our time, so they might as well learn to grow vegetables while they’re at it.

While you can’t impose changes on those who don’t understand the value of food, you can teach children in schools – where the curriculum needs to cover all aspects of food production with the same importance currently given to math and history. Moreover, every school should restructure its approach to food procurement, and make use of its off-duty kitchens for neighbourhood food processing and preservation.

On land tenure, a much discussed obstacle to new farmers, he proposes different models of ownership. It’s wrong, he said, that the only qualification you need for this at present is capital, when stewardship is the more important quality for custodians of this essential resource.

If we are all just passing through, all that remains is the land: we owe it to the future to leave it more fertile than we found it. Land ownership, particularly of parcels of 5 acres or more, should be tied to requirements to learn how to rebuild the soil for growing. But for any new development, building permits should include food production component in proportion to population they support; industrial buildings should be required to have rooftop growing spaces.

He suggests that the armed forces should be put to work restoring growing land and our railway system. Because a local diet is not necessarily an inclusive or varied one, particularly in northern areas, we need to make use of regional foodsheds and transportation is central to providing the population. Rail is the most cost and energy-efficient way to do that.

He paused to throw a few cautions in about phosphorus, one of the three essential components in plant nutrition (along with nitrogen and potassium). Commercial farming uses about 90% of mined phosphorus in agricultural production: this includes, of course, biofuels. Phosphorus is another nonrenewable resource which is due to become scarce, and Ableman feels it’s the elephant in the room, and it’s going to be the next thing worth fighting for. He suggested we check out which countries hold reserves of it. The answer is: China (which has just upped the price so as to conserve supplies for its own use); the US (will run out in 25 years); and, sadly for Africa, Africa.

He mentioned some lectures he’d given on the Hawaiian Islands for the Center for Ecoliteracy. Hawaii used to be a model of self sufficiency, where the population’s role in relation to the environment that supplied its food supply was fully understood; where it was appreciated that the survival of each of us is inextricably tied to one another and the world around us: and that what we do in the way of harvesting seafoods, for example, affects the survival of our community in the long term. But that knowledge has been lost and Hawaii now imports 80% of its food and suffers the same associated problems as everywhere else.

He spoke as well of time he spent as a teenager in Jamaica, and how that island too now relies upon imported food; and in its altered agriculture, geared to supply global markets, has lost what he calls its “national wealth” – the flavour of its fruits.

He quipped that it’s time farmers received the same rock star status that chefs do; but then again, farming is not a spectator sport. People who don’t want to farm should make friends with a farmer: you will need them. And speaking of rocks, he has a fine idea for soil replenishment, which is that every community should have a rock grinder, to enable us to replenish soil minerals by creating our own rock dust.

The bottom line: though it’s encouraging to see how many people want to eat well and locally today, there simply aren’t enough of us doing the hands-on work of growing food. We have a couple of generations of people now who know no more than how to push keys on a keyboard. We need to consider what we’ll depend on when we can’t depend on technology, for the skills we’ll require to survive on this earth include growing food and restoring the soil.

Just wanted to let you all know to let all your Saskatchewanian friends know that I’ll be reading from my new food poetry chapbook, The Earth’s Kitchen (soon to be published by Leaf Press) at the following venues in April.

Please pass it on!

Sunday, April 17 at 8:00 pm at Tonight it’s Poetry (TiP)
at Lydia’s Pub, 650 Broadway Avenue, Saskatoon
TiP’s Facebook page has more details about the series; up and comers are invited to sign up for the Community Stage.

Tuesday, April 19 at 7:30 pm at Reid Thompson Public Library
705 Main Street (next door to City Hall) Humboldt
306-682-2034 for more info, or check the library’s Facebook page.

Sunday, April 24 at 7:00 pm at Vertigo Reading Series
Orange Izakaya, 2136a Robinson Street, Regina
Vertigo’s Facebook page has more details about the series.

The llengths some of us will go to in order to reap a few veg was demonstrated last weekend when we trekked through a damp field of llamas

to procure a nice bit of dung.

It’s said to be the best kind of manure to add to your garden because it doesn’t need composting. It’s not too hard to shovel. And it doesn’t smell too bad at all, either. Reasonably organic as well, since these llamas

are not fed on medicated feed, which is often the case with other types of manure, such as horse.