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Chilly
It’s all about the weather here. Today started sunny and clear and is now grey and cold, cold, cold. The forecast is for a wind chill temp of -41c (or a not entirely desirable -25 out of the wind). I think the chickadees will have to wait for their hand feeding a few days longer.
Before leaving for the monastery, I indulged in a good but not ethereal meal at Saskatoon’s own Nouveau Brit restaurant, Simon’s British Flavours. I was intrigued by the sound of the cheese and butternut squash souffle, but it was a shrunken little muffin
when it reached the table; clearly either the cook or the souffle had not read Delia’s opinion that souffles with vegetable puree can never fall flat on you. It was tasty enough, but I think I’d do some home experiments before trying this again in a restaurant.
Then after valiant work on her part, the last morsels of Mary’s itty-bitty lamb shank
defeated her, while I managed most of my nicely cooked (humanely reared) chicken, although I could have done without cream in the veggies.
We couldn’t manage dessert, or popcorn when we reached our next destination, a screening of Juno, which we agreed was appealing enough as a movie, but not what either of us would call Oscar material.
Then it was off to the east, and although there was a bit of blowing snow we managed to reach Muenster without incident, just in time to witness the start of a good snowfall, which fell a bit short of the blizzard I had been hoping for.
There has been some discussion of snow since I’ve been here. One term I learned was “finger drifts” which are the long, finger-like drifts that creep across roads. A less descriptive one was “ground drifting” which refers inadequately to the sweeping, snaking rivers of dry flakes that blow across the highway, causing a kind of hypnosis if you’re not careful. I liked Cherie’s suggestion to change it slightly to “snake drifting” (although this term seems to be already taken by car idiots who like to fishtail around parking lots) — which would work for this kind:
but we need a straighter term for this kind:
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Food and culture and deliberate misinterpretation
I am something of a broken record on this subject, but it’s not my fault, it’s everywhere! The latest Food Programme (Feb 3) broadcast an interview with Michael Pollan about In Defence of Food, with discussion about nutritionism, with input from the term’s founder, Gyorgy Scrinis; Danish sociologist Soren Askegaard – who argued 11 years ago that focus on nutitional elements of food bypasses the equally important cultural aspects; and British physician Dennis Burkett (the father of fibre).
There is an interesting clip with Andrew Wadge, Chief Scientist at the Food Standards Agency who, like other food scientists I’ve heard interviewed about Pollan’s book, doggedly stick to a misinterpretation of Pollan’s advice that “you shouldn’t eat anything your great-grandmother would recognise as food” — instead trying to assert that Pollan is proposing you only eat what your grandmother would have eaten. Happily, interviewer Sheila Dillon pressed him on the point until it was clear he either hadn’t understood or was deliberately presenting a contrary position. While he continued to dodge the correction (even reasserting the misinterpretation on his blog), at least the attempt to mislead was made clear to listeners.
We need more such interviewers in Canada; after Anna Maria Tremonti’s interview with Pollan, the point was allowed to slide in a rebuttal interview with a food scientist, who again deliberately misconstrued Pollan’s advice, inaccurately paraphrasing it as ‘not to eat any foods that your grandmother wouldn’t recognise’ and lamely citing such things as exotic fruits that have been developed or popularised in the past century.
Which missed the point entirely. Pollan advises going to the wisdom of our ancestors – not literally to their diet – and using that to guide your food-buying, using highly processed yogurts in a tube as his benchmark for something great-granny would definitely not recognise as food, let alone know how to ingest.
Honestly. If food scientists can’t – or worse, won’t – get a simple concept like that right, it rather begs the question of why we should trust other advice they give?
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Dog food to damned cold
Only exciting food in recent days was a batch of dog food for the returning Anton, who is equally interested in food, walks and blue dinosaurs. His food was made of ground beef, beef hearts, oatmeal, brown rice, potatoes, whole eggs (including the shells, blitzed in the blender), spinach, shredded carrots, raw chopped garlic, red lentils and mixed (cooked) dried beans. And dissolved glucosamine tablets (he turns 13 this year).
Then I jumped on a plane, leaving this:
to come to this:
And here in Saskatoon it is a balmy -3c or so at the moment, except if you stand in a vicious wind. Yesterday was around -20c with a vicious wind.
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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.
