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Sweet stuff
A recent article asks if maple syrup is the new sugar? A timely question with the Bigleaf Maple Syrup Festival seeping up on our horizon. The instigators of this festival go by the charming name of the Sapsuckers, and for a couple of years now, they’ve been promoting what is news to most of us: that even out here in the west, our local bigleaf maple trees (Acer macrophyllum, aka Oregon maple) can be tapped and the sap boiled down to make maple syrup.
The reason this isn’t more well known, or more frequently done, is that the more commonly known and aptly named sugar maple (Acer saccharum) – growing in Eastern Canada – has a higher sugar content. So although both need to be boiled down to acceptable levels of sweetness, the Eastern variety will take less sap and therefore less cooking time to reduce to a syrup.
Before you rush out to tap all your trees to see if there’s more sweet gold in them thar trees, the research has already been done: the only other tree you can tap for syrup is the birch, and its syrup has a distinctive flavour that not all will enjoy. Like the bigleaf maple, birch sap is lower in sugar than sugar maple sap, so will take much longer to boil down. But if you want to go for it, here’s how it’s done:
And if you’re looking for syrup recipes, here’s a good puddle of them. When I was in Nova Scotia a year or two ago I picked up a couple of interesting alternatives to syrup: maple sugar (sinzibukwud) and maple butter, both of which are produced by boiling past the syrup point.
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Happy farmers and googly-mad writers
The blessed 60 day extension to the Madrona Farm fundraising campaign has yielded some truly gratifying results. Written up in Guy Dauncey‘s EcoNews, it caught the attention of a right thinking reader, Mel McDonald, who came up with the $200,000 that was needed for a matching donation by Ed Johnston, which reduced the amount needed to an entirely manageable sounding $287,000 – by March 31st. Still a lot of money to come up with, but “a lot” is certainly less than “a staggering amount”. And it’s a pittance compared with the amount that’s been raised – $1,413,000 so far.
A group of BC writers are carrying on their declamation of the Google Book Settlement as the final opt-out date looms hugely (January 28) before us. This is the date to opt out or opt back in if you went out but changed your mind. If you’re just plain mad, there’s a letter of protest (Canadian Writers Against Google Settlement petition) being sent to the US courts: to add your name, send it quickly to dvbolt@aol.com . Writers who are spending this last day on the fence are advised to devote some small part of it reading this FAQ on the settlement by the (US) National Writers Union.
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David O’Meara reading, A Chemical Reaction, and Slow Food Pasta
Food and poetry reared their twin heads last week, with a sprinkling of pesticide in the middle.
On Tuesday, Ottawa poet David O’Meara came into town to read from Noble Gas, Penny Black as well as older and newer work, at Open Space Gallery. The reading was probably the highest he’d done; we were up near the ceiling becoming part of an installation (Bamberton: Contested Landscapes). Here, he sizes up the pulpit with Tim Lilburn.
Introduced by Garth Martens…
O’Meara took the.. er.. floor, and after the reading was interviewed by poet Steven Price.
Thursday I attended a screening of A Chemical Reaction, sponsored by the Canadian Cancer Society, which is lobbying for a cosmetic pesticide ban in BC (you can send the government an email: they are seeking input on this matter till February 15). The man behind the film, Paul Tukey, is a former landscaper who through his own and his son’s experiences learned the personal and health costs of cosmetic chemicals.
He wanted to tell the exemplary story of the town of Hudson, Quebec, which imposed the first cosmetic pesticide ban in North America – due to the fearless work of local dermatologist Dr. June Irwin, who continues – at her own expense – testing skin and blood samples from all her patients, to monitor the presence of toxic chemicals in their bodies.
The film was an instructive lesson in the hard work of pushing municipal legislation through, particularly when it puts a multinational’s revenue stream at risk. Because of the town’s wish to stay chemical free, chemical companies sued it all the way up to the Supreme Court (it won!).
But those guys don’t give up without a long, expensive fight. Now Canada is being sued by Dow Chemical for violating the terms of NAFTA, which it feels, give it carte blanche to make its money unimpeded by pesky legislation or trivialities like long term health costs caused by recommended application of its products (hmm, why does that sound so familiar..?)
Dr Irwin’s advice to those who wish to follow her example and don’t know where to begin? “Letters to the editor are free” she says, and makes full use of that avenue. Her other strategy was to attend – live and in person as we all have the right and privilege to do – municipal council meetings, and speak up about her concerns, supported by her findings. Even so, with her more or less constant presence and insistence that they read her findings, it took her six years to convince them to act. The film asserts that had it not been for a receptive mayor, the bylaw would never have gone through. Despite the medical evidence.
The film also explains the systematic way the pesticide companies have exerted influence on state legislators in the US to make sure no municipality can follow Hudson’s lead. But as Tukey observed: we all have the right to vote with our wallets. Just stop buying the stuff.
To round out my week, on Sunday, Slow Food Vancouver Island held a pasta workshop and tasting at Ristorante La Piola in Victoria. About 40 of us milled about the place listening to various people talk pasta and sauce. Here’s Mauro Schelini, of The Tuscan Kitchen, advising us only to buy pasta machines that are made in Italy (the Chinese ones, he says, are too frail and have a tendency to spit metal filings into your pasta when they are new).
Don Genova shows us how to roll…
La Piola’s executive chef Cory Pelan catches and cuts the pasta as it comes out of the extruder.
The best part of any demo… seeing the tasting plates fill.
Eric Whitehead, mushroom forager, of Untamed Feast, shares a few morels and his special way with pasta sauce.
…Resulting in more tasting plates…
And very happy endings:
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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.
