-
Look both ways
Time is slipping by without my being able to keep up. I’ll finish off Oxford when I can, but meanwhile here is what happened last week.
Monday night was a long awaited magazine launch reading at Foyle’s:
Seam is an excellent vehicle and the list of readers, though frightening in its length, was smoothly handled by its super-poet-editor Anne Berkeley, and we reached the break seamlessly, ha ha. Here’s the reading list (I can’t say I checked this against actual attendance but I know a lot of these people did read: Sue Rose distinguished herself, of course, and Mike Barlow was my surprise hit of the evening. I was glad as well for a chance to meet Todd Swift who has been on the edge of my acquaintance for several years, with more and more people known in common. Anyway, the other readers were: Gill Andrews, Pat Borthwick, Ken Champion, John Clegg, Chrissie Gittins, Allison McVety, Caroline Natzler, Julian Stannard, Kearan Williams.
After a bracing glass of wine, a bit of light mingling, and a chance to purchase copies of the magazine, we were treated to a second half reading by Sheenagh Pugh,
who demonstrated her position as an advocate for accessibility in poetry without sacrificing intelligence and interest. I particularly liked her ‘webcam’ poems. (Perhaps webcam poems will be the dream poems of the future?)
Afterwards some of us repaired to a Greek restaurant in Bloomsbury. What can I say: the half timbered interior was probably a pretty clear clue, but we were not in authentic Greek cuisine territory. I was curious to eat “Greek” restaurant food after my Crete experience, and it was about as unremarkable as I remembered, though filling. Anyway I needed to shoot off early to get myself tucked into bed for another day at London Food Link in the morning.
Which I did. And was there until Thursday when I finished up and went to meet Nancy to see Atonement, a well-made, grim but topical number I hadn’t been exactly looking forward to but thought I ought to see, as it’s much discussed. But I’m not a big fan of Ian McEwan, see. This film certainly demonstrated what I don’t like about his creative vision: it seems to be a matter of making each of his characters suffer as much as possible; there is no mercy and no forgiveness in his world. As I remembered afterwards, Alex’s mother once said to me that she only really wanted to see happy films anymore. I’m there too. Anyway Nancy and I took ourselves to Ottolenghi for some A-1 takeaway (the peppery gingery greenbeans, spinach and snow peas were particularly good). I’ve been following his interesting New Vegetarian column in the Guardian but was happy to see he serves some exquisite beef as well.
So that was kind of it for the week. Then I zipped off to Sussex for the weekend. The weather was beautiful: classic autumnal Englishness, clear and crisp. We went to a place called the Boathouse for lunch on Saturday, which was really hopping, with a big anniversary party on the other side of the room. But we had a sunny table overlooking the stream
which was a nice setting with pleasant staff (even in the depths of Sussex it’s the New Britain: 1 each English, Polish, Latvian and Slovakian waiter and a Chinese maitre’d). Food not so good though: I encountered an ammonia-pong skate wing. By its soppy texture I’d say it was previously frozen, if not just plain overcooked, which might explain why the kitchen didn’t notice the problem. According to your sources, the ammonia develops either as an effect of poor handling when caught, or it is a symptom of a less-than-fresh piece of fish. Whatever the reason, it’s inedible at this point, so we sent it back and I had a bit more beef which was ok, and then after a little sit down on the wall by the water
went in search of the sellers of some local free range eggs,
but they were apparently out, leaving a few chickens and a couple of dogs in charge. The church next door was cold and quiet
and after a look round and a cock-a-doodle farewell from the very fine rooster,
we left.
-
More Oxford
(**This post was lurking in my unposted half-finished back-(b)log and pertains to two previous posts from September 2007: apologies if it reaches and confuses current subscribers!)
We went round the mulberry tree on Sunday.
I don’t believe I’d ever eaten a mulberry, let alone picked one off a tree. I was surprised. They seemed very fragile, perishable nuggets, difficult to get hold of at the perfect moment of ripeness. Once ripe, these ones at least seemed to be already mouldy. Past their harvest date or inherently flawed? Further research clearly indicated..
The Sunday morning sessions were really interesting. I started with the panel on Foie Gras, poppies and cacao.
The Foie Gras Fracas: Sumptuary Law as Animal Welfare? presented by Cathy K. Kaufman, discussed the ethics of foie gras (duck) production as practised in New York state. Her starting premise was that “killing animals for food is morally acceptable provided that animals not suffer unnecessarily in their rearing or slaughtering”.
The argument she presented was more or less the same as I’d heard from a former chef. She observed that migratory birds have an inbuilt behaviour to store fats for the journey, and to do this practice a form of gluttony that is compatible with being fed the volume of grain that producers provide them; and that the force-feeding of birds, gavage, has been practiced for millenia: it appears on Egyptian tomb-paintings reckoned to date back to 2500 BCE. She also observed that tube-feeding is not a world away from the regurgitation/throat feeding practiced by parent birds on their young (i.e. although we would not want a tube down our throats, it’s not so different from having your mom’s beak pushed down there). The birds Kaufman was writing about were visited by veterinarians who found them generally less stressed and in better living conditions than factory-farmed fowl, as I guess you’d expect when they are raised in smaller numbers. Jeffrey Steingarten has a good piece on the same theme.
In Poppy: Potent yet Frail – Aylin Öney Tan gave the Turkish history of poppy production and the impact of foreign interference in local agricultures. She dated opium poppy cultivation back to Mesopotamia in 4000 BC. Her comments on the physical similarity between poppy seed heads and pomegranates were a revelation, as she showed a few illustrations that could be seen quite differently if you mentally swapped plants. She talked about the culinary uses of poppy seeds: in breads and baking, in both savoury and sweet dishes, and as a cooking oil, which contains no opiates. The oil is also used by artists and the paint industry because of its unique drying qualities. She pointed out that it’s a plant used in its entirety by peasant farmers, including the use of poppy seed pulp (left over from oil pressing) as animal feed (now that would make for happy animals..?). Although poppy production resumed in 1974, after being banned due to international pressure, the legal hoops that villagers have to go through limit the numbers of those willing to cultivate it.
Cacao in Brazil or the History of a Crime by Marcia Zoladz was a bit of a tangled web, covering an example of market manipulation in the late eighties and early nineties. Basically it was the story of a group that was aiming to change the economic and political power balance in Brazil by buying up cacao plantations and then destroying them by infesting them with a fungus known as witches’ broom (Crinipellis perniciosa). The infected plantations would then infect healthy ones and cripple the whole economy. Cacao was always an export crop, so there are question marks about its value in a healthy and self-sustaining economy. Brazil’s complicated social history – where slavery was abolished but replaced by a kind of indentured labour system – was part of the problem, and the reason for the act, as well.
Sunday lunch was organic chicken: local, seasonal foods, very good and extremely beautiful.
A further postscript: The papers presented at the 2007 “Food and Morality” themed Oxford Symposium are now available from Prospect Books.
-
Saturday afternoon
Moving on from the already full morning, on Saturday afternoon I went to a talk by Rachel Laudan, on how food makes us moral agents – more or less virtuous. She presented two trays of foods representing opposing value systems: in one, we gain altitude on the moral scale through refinement, through mixing and perfecting through cooking and treating our foods. Proponents of the refined side of the equation believe that cooking separates humans from the animals and barbarians who eat raw, unrefined food. Examples include refined flours and sugars (sugar, she observed, is an immortal food: you can remain pure by eating foods that never perish — might be said of a lot that we find on supermarket shelves these days) and wine.
On the other side, where we find wholemeal breads, water or milk, we gain moral value through the belief that foods are naturally good, and that cooking or refining them disguises their benefits. In this value system, cooking stimulates unnatural appetites and leads to sins like gluttony. So, I guess the bottom line would be that once again, you judge others according to what you’re used to.
Then on to Steven Kramer, a philosopher-foodie, who invited us in How Clean Is Your Plate? to think about morality and change, the entrenchment of habit when it comes to our food choices. The talk’s title referred to the admonishment by parents to clean your plate because children (always elsewhere) are starving. Quoting from Plato, Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, his recommended starting point was actually a book about animal welfare by Peter Singer, a utilitarian philosopher, called The Way We Eat: Why our food choices matter. He spoke about our willed ignorance when it comes to food production, particularly the raising of animals for meat: we don’t want to ask the questions about what’s on our plate. But when we introduce ethical issues to our eating, are we creating a fear of food? He concluded with a discussion of the moral issues demonstrated in Babette’s Feast, with its opposition of dull but virtuous cuisine versus extravagant gourmet foods, and the less than simple value systems attached to each.
There was then a discussion of food and environmental challenges, in which student Brian Melican asked how one brings people round to actually make choices and change their eating patterns without imposing on them a kind of consumer dictatorship. He questioned the difference between marketing and propaganda and balancing food preferences – like, say, mangoes – against their wider issues, such as the environmental cost of transporting them to your table and the need for their producers to make a living. It was, he said, a ‘different pocket’ reality: when ultimately we pay for the real and hidden costs of cheap food under different names, there’s a disconnect.
Saturday night’s Ethical Dinner, prepared by chef Tim Kelsey in consultation with Caroline Conran and Anissa Helou, was based entirely on ingredients sourced within 25 miles of Oxford. The evening’s entertainment was edible hat-making, led by Alicia Rios, to which end we gathered what was left on the tables after supper, and added it to the groaning board of ingredients.
Some stunning headgear emerged.
And meanwhile, it was the Last Night of the Proms, which was celebrated remotely and appropriately even in Oxford.
Latest Posts
- Sublime
- Good weather for reading
- The world, the world
- Sublime launch!
- Planet Earth Poetry – Readings by Volunteers, Victoria 2026
- Poetry at the Goldfinch
Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Barny Haughton BBC BC poets Berkswell blackberries Black Stilt Bologna book launch Borough Market Caerphilly Carlo Petrini Catalonia culatello Cyrus Todiwala dairy Dijon Edinburgh Fanny Bay Feast of Fields ferries Food and Morality food journalism Michael Pollan olive oil tasting Omnivore's Dilemma Our Food Our Future Oxford Parmigiano-Reggiano persimmons Planet Earth Poetry poetry poetry readings Poetry videos prosciutto salumi Sean O'Brien sensory analysis Suffolk ticks tortelli di zucca Troubadour Wendell Berry Wendy Morton Yvonne Blomer
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.
