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food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

I enjoyed Saturday’s whistle through the topic of winter vegetable gardening with local permaculturalist Geoff Johnson. He began by pointing out that we West Coasters follow, wrongly, the veg growing guidance from over yon Rockies, where the season is short but hot and the winter too cold to grow a thing; whereas we are blessed with the climate-mitigating force of the ocean, which means we can grow food all winter.

Some other things I learned include…

• an easy way to sew salad greens: mix your seed with compost and spread it on the beds
• make more use of growing space by planting quick crops like radishes among slower-growing things like parsnips
• purple sprouting broccoli actually takes two seasons to produce florets
• parsnips and leeks are easier to grow than carrots and onions
• to grow leeks, seed them in pots and let them grow long and leggy; when the size of a pencil, trim their roots and their tops (to the first leaf joint) and drop them in a pencil-sized hole; this will give you lots of nice fat white root
• higher sugar content veg like beets are particularly resistant to freezing (though they might lose their tops, so make sure you mark the rows)

After that it was time to go to supper. My birthday had gone a bit adrift, like some of the script on this lovely cake I had in Calgary, so I decided to go on celebrating.

Supper was in Shawnigan Lake, at Amuse Bistro, a little house set back and below the street, so a bit tricky to get to, but worth the navigational effort.

Amuse’s amuse-bouche: savoury bread pudding with quail egg.

Salt cod fritters…

Oysters with lots of stuff….

Pan-seared halibut on a bed of heritage grains…

Half of a spot prawn extravaganza, complete with poached egg, and more savoury bread pudding.

Local scallops.

Last Sunday I got what will probably be my first and last tour of the Calgary Farmers Market.

The place is Alberta-sized, and housed – for the moment – in a former airplane hangar

at the Currie Barracks, which is being razed

to make way for new development. The search is on for a new, permanent home. Such is the public support for the market that it received a temporary reprieve until this can be found. Meanwhile, you can get your tomato sauce

and your ostrich soap

and your fruit tarts there.

Having found enough bits and pieces, Susan primed us with cherry wine and, after I admired her lettuce lamp,

produced an excellent meal, including pear and pine-nut salad with chili dressing

which went well with Dee’s pumpernickel bread

followed by some Hutterite-reared lamb.

Throughout proceedings, the ginger cat brigade

kept a careful eye on us.

Back in Victoria, I’m looking ahead to this weekend where I can’t be everywhere at once. If I could, I would be at the Spot Prawn Festival in Cowichan Bay, as well as the Island Chefs Collaborative festival: Defending Our Backyard.

This weekend’s Writers Union of Canada AGM, held jointly with the Writers Guild of Alberta, took place in the comfort of Calgary’s Hotel Arts – quite a step up from days of yore when we used to hunker down in the end-of-term halls of residence in universities across the country. We are, as was often discussed, an older group of writers nowadays, and well up to the delicacies that fell in our paths through the weekend.

The annual Margaret Laurence Memorial Lecture was this year delivered by literary biographer Elspeth Cameron,

whose revelations on the scale of the persecution she and her family, friends and network suffered after she published Irving Layton‘s biography (in the form of around 500 hate letters Layton sent them) sent us running for the wine jellies.

Our appetites were tempered by the discovery that the spoons provided didn’t actually fit into the charming little glasses..

Workshop sessions included an enlightening discussion about new technologies, in which Ross Laird walked us through some of the new electronic demands on our time and energies

and began addressing the question that has been asked throughout the 20+ years that I’ve been a member of the union: how do we attract the next generation of writers to keep this going? It is obvious, I guess, that our roots are showing: we began as a print-oriented union, obsessing over copyright payments and fairness in book contracts. This year’s debate and discussion about the Google Book Settlement and electronic rights indicates where things are leading. How and how much is the union to change to incorporate the writing life in largely electronic environments;

and how to attract a generation that hasn’t yet learned yet to fight together to improve its collective lot in this most individualist age… The questions will be asked for some time to come.

The Saturday night banquet was marred somewhat by the lack of chairs, in a meal designed for schmoozing and grazing, but attended by diners more inclined to sit down with enough room to wield their cutlery. The fare included some darling little pickled golden beets with chevre

Dungeness crab maki rolls

beef (this was Alberta after all)

and precious little for vegetarians, who seem to have been designated friends of the deep fryers: risotto balls were not very big or very interesting (neither the saffron aioli which was really just yellow mayo)

and the vegetable spring rolls, while they lasted, were nothing to write home about.

After a few more wine jellies and other small delectables, we hunkered down to listen as Writers Guild of Alberta president Blaine Newton

did an admirably witty job of orchestrating the WGA awards and the Danuta Gleed prize for short fiction.

There was a door prize (which I did not win) containing many desirable items, thanks to the generosity of the Calgary Slow Food convivium and its fearless and well-published leader, Dee Hobsbawn-Smith.

Otherwise, there was much to eat in Calgary. We found a good harvest in The Catch, an unlikely thing, a seafood restaurant on the prairies (the fare flown in daily, so it’s all fresh). Interesting and beautiful food:

And I enjoyed Hotel Arts’ soups, which are not described as soups on the menu, but rather Chef’s Epiphanies. I had celery & apple soup with blue cheese, and this tomato & fennel soup, both excellent:

Catch it while you can (till Friday): John Harvey on Front Row (about 19 minutes in), talking (with Michael Morpurgo and Nora Roberts) about being prolific. This is in part to mark his 100th book, Far Cry, which has just been released. The interview offers a lesson on how to cut your teeth writing pulp fiction, and some interesting comments about how to keep those ideas coming for pages and pages and pages and pages and pages…

Weirdness on the Gorge. Who leaves a tethered cat on a walkway frequented by dog-walkers?

Meanwhile, this morning’s junk mail folder held a personal message from Awotwi Alden who promised that Women Will Be my Resigned Slaves. Alas, I did not find out how this could be before kissing the message goodbye, but it reminded me to catch the last episode (aired Friday) of The Handmaid’s Tale, broadcast on BBC Radio 7 every day this past week. A book I loved and it made me think of Natasha Richardson in the film version, which I wasn’t overwhelmed by. If you’re quick you can catch the last four episodes here.

Our urban farming group talked about the plague of birds that is upon us. Many in our neighbourhood have had seedlings uprooted or bitten off

by birds – Peg and Tom watched a pair of robins work their seedlings, while I witnessed sparrows eating my chard leaves – and there was talk about why this should be so. We wondered if there is a bigger problem for them; that they seem to be eating things they didn’t eat before: apples and chard for example. A hard winter, ongoing urbanisation and destruction of habitat and natural food sources and – maybe? – people cutting back on bird seed, or who knows what other factors – are making them hungry.

Perhaps all that bird seed in the past helped to boost their numbers beyond sustainable limits? So instead of cleaning up on the pests in our gardens they are searching harder for food and making a royal mess of things.

Which is forcing us to cover our plantings, which might give the wireworms and cutworms and other crawlies free reign on our vegetables. The ongoing battle between gardener and nature continues.