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Food • Writing • Poetry

A few idle moments lead me to start jotting in my nice clean 2009 diary… Here are a few items to pencil in.

January

Tuesday 13th
Another chance to catch one of three fundraiser screenings of Island on the Edge, a locally produced film about farmland & food security for Vancouver Island. Meet others and hear the latest news on The Farmlands Trust’s bid to acquire historic Woodwynn Farm.
Tuesday January 13; 7pm; Mary Winspear Centre (Charlie White Theatre), Sidney.

Thursday 15th
The Malahat Review offers an evening of readings and discussion by contributors to The Green Imagination issue, including Tim Lilburn, Jan Zwicky, John Barton, Arleen Pare, Nicholas Bradley, Patricia Young, Jay Ruzesky, and many others.
Thursday, January 15; 700-9.00 pm; Metro Studio (corner of Quadra and Johnson), Victoria.

Monday 19th
BC Sustainable Energy Association Victoria Chapter Meeting. Featured speakers are Guillaume Mauger, recent PhD in climate science, presenting the latest on clouds and their effect on climate, plus geoengineering projects that have been proposed for altering the climate. Trevor Williams, PhD candidate in mechanical engineering presenting research on plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and investigations into flying on biofuels.
Monday January 19; 7-9pm. Burnside Gorge Community Centre, 471 Cecelia Rd. Victoria.

Saturday 30th
The Path to Eco-Conscious Living, with Ed Begley Jr. Talk and book-signing from the actor-activist who aims to turn Hollywood green.
Saturday January 30; 7.30-9.30pm. Farquar Auditorium, University Centre, UVic.

February

Thursday 5th
Screening of Island on the Edge, and fundraiser for The Farmlands Trust’s bid to acquire Woodwynn Farm.
Thursday February 5; 7pm; David Lam Auditorium, MacLaurin Bldg, UVic.

Tuesday 10th
Launch of Acumen 63, featuring Leah Fritz, Sara Boyes, India Russell. All profits to Cold Weather Shelter for Homeless.
10th February, 2009; 6.30 for 7.00pm; Lumen United Reformed Church and Community Centre, 88 Tavistock Place WC1, London

Saturday 14-Sunday 15th
3rd Annual Victoria Tea Festival. Tea tastings, exhibitions and more, to raise funds for Camosun College Child Care Service.
14th – 15th February; 12-5pm; Crystal Gardens, 713 Douglas Street, Victoria.

Saturday 21st
Seedy Saturday has become a hugely popular event in Victoria (one of many across the country) where people can buy and trade seeds and pick up tips, hear speakers (Frank Morton and Thomas Hobbs this year) and generally mill about getting fired up for spring planting. Schedule will be posted later this month at James Bay Market‘s website.
21 February 10am-4pm; Victoria Conference Centre, 720 Douglas Street Victoria.

March

Tuesday 3rd
Screening of Island on the Edge, and fundraiser for The Farmlands Trust’s bid to acquire Woodwynn Farm.
Tuesday March 3rd; 7pm; Ambrosia Centre, 638 Fisgard, Victoria.

May

Sunday 31st
A local food festival, “Defending our Backyard”; the Island Chefs Collaborative celebrates Vancouver and Gulf Islands produced foods, beverages and the people who work to defend our back yard.
Sunday May 31; 12pm-4pm; at Fort Rodd Hill, Victoria.

July

Saturday 4th – Sunday 5th
The 4th annual Organic Islands Festival and Sustainability Expo is a rallying community-based event providing a look at who’s who in the green community. Food, music, talks, exhibition in the gorgeous surroundings of Glendale Gardens.
Saturday, July 4th, 2009 – Sunday, July 5th, 2009; 10:00 am to 5:00 pm; at Glendale Gardens & Woodland, 505 Quayle Road, Saanich.

The Victoria Film Festival‘s on our horizon. Now that we can see the horizon between lashings of rain.

It has some food elements, including Mad City Chickens, a film about (what else?) Mad City Chickens, urban poultry farmers in Madison Wisconsin. There’s a wonderful link from the film’s web page, to a really helpful website: BackYardChickens.com which has some amazing examples of chicken coops and tractors for people to copy.

And Know Your Mushrooms promises to reveal “the miraculous, near-secret world of fungi”. Apparently it all started with a mycocidal conversation with Jim Jarmusch, followed by a visit to the Telluride Fungifest, and ends up like so:

Combining material filmed at the Telluride Mushroom Fest with animation and archival footage along with a neo-psychedelic soundtrack by the Flaming Lips, KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS opens the doors to perception, takes the audience on a longer, stranger trip and delivers them to a brave new world where the fungi might well guide humanity to a saner, safer place… with extra cheese…

BBC Radio 4 provides me with most of my entertainment these days (I bless the internet that brings it to me) and I was spellbound the other day by a documentary called Professor President, which explored Obama’s intellectual and teaching life. Well worth a listen while it’s available (will only be up for a week from broadcast date).

I’m also a fan, it’s been said before, of Kootenay Coop Radio‘s Deconstructing Dinner radio show; they’ve done a very special remix of the Burger King ‘Whopper Virgins’ atrocity on Youtube. The soundtrack is quite amusing: George Bush finally says what he means (all he needed was a good editor).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDLFN3nK7Go]

You can start the new year off in an activating sort of way by exercising some civic muscle on the new federal budget. We, my fellow Canadians, have been invited to offer some guidance to our country’s budgeteers, and share our views and priorities to help Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty pull together the federal budget for 2009. So, if you want food and culture on the table, you’d best let him know.

The budget will be delivered January 27, and you have until January 9 to send him your ideas: www.fin.gc.ca/scripts/prebudget-prebudgetaire/1-eng.asp

For ideas on culture, check out the brief submitted by the Writers Union of Canada.

On Tuesday, January 13 at 7 pm, if you are anywhere near the Mary Winspear Centre (Charlie White Theatre) in Sidney you have another chance to catch Island on the Edge, a locally produced film about farmland & food security for Vancouver Island. It’s an event to meet others and hear the latest news on The Farmlands Trust’s bid to acquire historic Woodwynn Farm. They have a couple of other events coming up as well, in February and March, as they continue to try to raise funds to purchase the farm.

We’re glad the snow is mostly gone, but it’s still frosty on the Gorge in the morning, with odd wraiths rising from the deep.

There’s nothing like starting off the new year with a good meal somewhere new. I’d wanted to try Smoken Bones Cookshack since hearing the chef, Ken Hueston, talk at the Farmlands conference in November. The place is simple, the ingredients high quality and well prepared. My beef ribs (with local yam fries and collard greens) had the happy double purpose of bringing light to Anton’s new year as well. Should have stopped after the main course – which was substantial but not excessive – because a heavy hand on the cinnamon meant the organic peach cobbler was overwhelmed, and the cobbler itself wasn’t great. Would like to try the brulée du jour next time; although the desserts did look a bit too big to wrangle after a plate full of meat. Maybe they are designed to share.

Anyway I liked also the fact that Smoken Bones has local eating and drinking nights three times a year; the next one’s coming up in March. Gonna try to be there.

Much to my regret I won’t be making the Grub mingler and fundraiser for LifeCycles this week, but it sounds like a wonderful thing.

Started reading from the back of the latest Poetry magazine which featured a great interview with Seamus Heaney; I’m thinking it was probably an excerpt of a recently released book of interviews by Dennis O’Driscoll, Stepping Stones, which they say is a biography by any other name. He has interesting things to say about the sources, for him, of some of his well-known poems, and the value to him of form, which he says brings poems on more quickly and easily than free verse does.