Seafood is as confusing a topic as any these days. Trying to get to the bottom of what is and isn’t a good choice of seafood is baffling and contradictory. Here’s an attractive guide for Europeans from The Guardian; and here’s some information from the Suzuki Foundation, complete with informative videos and links to sustainable seafood lists, adapted to different geographies.

But is it as simple as eating only this or that fish, when they do not exist in isolation? Humans are persistent in choosing to believe they can pick and choose from nature with no effect on its complex interrelationships. There is a whole aquatic food chain involved, and deeply affected by our choices; eating our way through multiple links in it is bound to cause unknown effects on all the ocean’s stocks.

Today I listened to a report on NPR about a study of acidity in the coastal waters just south of Victoria. It seems CO2 emissions are being absorbed at such a rate by our oceans that they are turning acidic much faster than supposed, bad news for acid-sensitive marine life like mussels, while ideal for acid-friendly life forms like algae; and down the line will corrode the shells and kill off other vulnerable shellfish including coral and plankton, way down at the bottom of the food chain – and what more important place is there? (Lots more on this in a 2006 report called Impacts of ocean acidification on coral reefs and other marine calcifiers)

Meanwhile, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has published a new and interesting page of information for people wishing to peddle so-called “novel fish and fish products” in this country. Novelty is not so cosy a word as it used to be; nowadays this is food-regulation-speak for genetically modified and otherwise oddly manipulated food items. (A list of the “novel food decisions” going back to 1994 makes for uneasy reading.)

This led me down some time consuming side-tracks… I find myself wondering if the appearance of this information sheet might herald some potential movement on Canada’s part in allowing genetically engineered fish to be farmed here, just as the FDA has offered up some procedures for companies wanting to market genetically modified animal products in the US; and what happens next door usually spills across our border without a fight or much delay at all.

The 2008 March Status Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development hints that this might be coming, even as it states that this country has no intention of developing a policy on transgenic aquatic organisms because it feels that the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (with its Animate products of biotechnology section, and the Domestic Substances List (DSL)) covers the matter nicely thank you. Lots of reading there for interested parties.

And the complexity of all of that regulatory verbage explains why most of us haven’t a clue what genetically modified foodstuffs are and aren’t being fed to us; unfortunately for us, the politicians are as confused as the rest of us. And this CBC story from 2002 is as mercilessly true today as it was when it was broadcast. Beans and rice for supper, I think…

Anyway. Nancy Willard has written a great tribute to seafood in A Wreath to the Fish.

Started off the week with a rather dispiriting set of facts from speakers at BCSEA’s monthly meeting, where the subject was peak oil. The first speaker was Ron Smyth (provincial government’s Chief Science Officer, Offshore Oil and Gas Branch and member of ASPO-USA) who ticked through the list of oil-producing countries, showing graphs that tracked the declining production of oil world-wide, and enumerated the percentage of GDP that oil represents for those countries, leaving us to imagine for ourselves the repercussions to national fiscal policies of the increasing loss of significant revenue over the next few years.

The impact, he predicted, would come in the next 5-10 years. It seems likely that instead of pouring money and research into developing sustainable energy sources, today’s short-sighted humans will keep looking for oil and turn back to carbon-unfriendly coal for the near term.

OPEC was at the heart of his presentation (with reference to Twilight in the Desert); he explained that these countries are madly developing infrastructure to secure their non-oil-rich futures: which – aluminum smelters, copper refineries and the like – require a lot of oil to build and run, and so will divert a lot of what would otherwise have been oil exports into increasing internal use. Leaving the non-OPEC world suddenly and dramatically short of oil. Again. With huge question marks dangling about self-sufficiency and living standards world-wide, given the seeming general lack of preparedness in this oil-happy era.

Consoled myself with some dim sum on Thursday, which I hadn’t eaten for quite a while. I was, in my tedious way, struck again by the perils of restaurant menus to the pure of palate. Where had these shrimp, this pork, that rice come from? Unlikely, at those prices, to have been organic or sustainably raised. Free associating now into visual feasts, note to self: must watch Eat Drink Man Woman again one of these days.

Thursday night I managed to get to the art gallery to catch the Rice is Life show, which closes today, and a talk by the curator, Paula Swart (Curator of Asian Studies at the Vancouver Museum) who showed some slides of pieces in the exhibit and photos of her travels around rice-producing nations, and recommended the book Seductions of Rice for the beauty of its photos and the range of its information and recipes. She talked about some of the religious and cultural aspects of rice: Inari shrines in Japan, Dewi Sri in Bali, Mae Phosop in Thailand. As always where food is concerned, ancient methods – sustainable and back-breaking human labour – are eclipsed by the production possibilities of mechanisation and chemical and biotech research. California’s rice growers sow their seed by plane, which is faster but costs more – unless you have a plane and an endless supply of oil, I guess. If all you have is hungry people and lots of land, traditional methods work too. And as always you get what you pay for: cheap rice carries that inevitable deferred price tag of chemical contamination of the product, the soil and the water supply; poorly-paid labour; and declining nutritional value.

Friday was Fred Stenson‘s

reading in Sidney; his co-star was not Rachel Wyatt as originally billed, but Jo-Ann Dionne who read from Little Emperors, her memoir about teaching English in China. Fred was reading from his latest, The Great Karoo, about Canadian soldiers in the Boer War.

And last night I had friends to dinner, for which I made a welcome journey out the Saanich Peninsula visiting my favourite farm shops — and saw this handsome display at Farmer Dan’s:

and served a seasonal and mostly local meal, finishing with this dessert which I’d been wanting to try for some time: pumpkin kheer, for which I used a combination of butternut and sweet mama squashes, seasoned with cardamom and topped with toasted cashews.

It was good; basically a cold, sweet soup to finish on, surprisingly filling.

Here’s a photo of an afternoon view across the parking lot of my favourite Victoria store: Capital Iron, long may it continue.

There’s a new bakery/pizzeria in my neighbourhood, which pleases me greatly as this part of Victoria has been a bit of a quality food desert. B-red Organic Bakery Patisserie & Pizzeria is a tiny place on a busy road, with two slightly dangerous parking spots (you must back out into aforementioned busy road when you leave) and a tiny counter for watching the world go by. Making efficient use of space and time, they bake by day (open for sales 10-3) and pizza by night (5-11 most nights, till 1am Fri & Sat), taking their weekends on Mondays and Tuesdays. Here’s a view of their whole wheat sourdough, called Miche, which was extremely good, with lots of flavour and crunch:

Lots going on right now. I must hurry if I want to catch the Rice is Life show at the art gallery.

GG nominee (announcement tomorrow) and excellent literary chap Fred Stenson is reading in Sidney on November 21st at the Red Brick Cafe, together with local treasure Rachel Wyatt, beloved of many alumni of the Banff Writing Studio.

Next Thursday November 27th there’s a one-day conference in Sidney that aims “to put the farm back in farmland”. The Farmland Conference: Our Foodlands, Our Future runs from 9.00 am till 6.30 pm and features plenary speakers farmer/agrologist Niels Holbek and MLA and agriculture critic Corky Evans.

Saturday 29th I’m tempted by the CRD Parks Magnificent Mushrooms outing. Or I could stay home and study all the ones that are growing in my lawn..?

Weirdness on the water: surprised to see this sight on Sunday morning. A passing dog-walker told me it was only foam from the reversing falls under Tillicum Bridge, but I’ve never seen this on the Gorge in the six years I’ve been looking at it. Something funny going on…

The Vancouver Island Slow Food Film Fest was small but tasty. Last night’s premiere was packed out, with excellent nosh

and such a keen audience of eaters that the Oyster Man

was able to go home oysterless. The screening of Island on the Edge went well and the panel discussion afterwards was lively and showed the keen awareness of the audience about local food issues. As a finale, we got to meet the chef, Michael Minshull, who took a bow with the film’s director Nick Versteeg, writer Don Genova and associate producer Jason Found.

Today’s lineup included Hijacked Future, which covered the issues around seed production and featured a great many Canadian farmers and researchers who spoke well and compellingly about the issues. There was a panel discussion afterwards, hosted by Don Genova, and featuring Sinclair Philip and the film’s producer/director David Springbett.

Gardens of Destiny, featured seed saver, forager and campaigner Dan Jason,

whose Salt Spring Seed Company has been doing a roaring trade in recent years, and who also heads the Seed and Plant Sanctuary for Canada, a network of Canadian gardeners devoted to nurturing plant diversity. The viewing ended with a bitter twist as Jason revealed, after the screening, that he had recently been given the boot from the showcase garden featured in the film by his landlords, and was currently considering his options.

The final feature, The World According to Monsanto, had some technical glitches – scratches on the dvd perhaps, or a tired dvd player (or, as one wag suggested, a Monsanto-engineered dvd player?!) – which cut things a little short. The film can be purchased fairly widely, or for the cheap and patient, it’s available for free viewing on Youtube (in 10 parts), or in 4 parts on LiveVideo.

We saw some previews as well. Here’s Eric Schlosser speaking to CBC, as part of a promo interview about the new documentary Food, Inc.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VQUPsYopRs]

And Deborah Koons Garcia, director of The Future of Food, spilling the beans about her new film whose subject is, well, dirt:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Piy4WEzN6bU]

Here’s a cheerful one for a film – not quite finished yet, I understand (though you can help to make it happen: see their website for more info) – about young farmers, called Greenhorns:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH7o3fxw6oE]

And I end this entry with the useful and appetising suggestion with which Nick Versteeg closed our meeting: invite some people to dinner, serve them some good, local food, and talk about it!

Last week I attended the opening ceremonies of the First Nations Collection at the Cowichan Valley Museum in Duncan, which includes paintings, carvings, masks and artifacts from local artists. The ceremonies consisted mainly of some drumming with dancing by local boys

and a couple of mercifully short speeches by the museum curator and the First Nations cultural coordinator, after which the overcrowded room emptied into the rest of the museum – not a huge place – to enjoy a little buffet which featured smoked salmon candy and smoked salmon & cream cheese wraps with capers and dill, and lots of sweets.

It’s local election time here, so I went to an all-candidates meeting last night, curious to hear the talk and see the one candidate (for mayor) who thought food was worth mentioning. His platform is built on the ideas of self-sufficiency and local autonomy that heated up a room in the downtown library last summer, at a town hall meeting on food security. Aside from Harald Wolf’s comments, there was no discussion of food, and no questions from the floor or the organisers. The closest they came was to talk about the berming of Panama Flats (sounds like a Woody Guthrie song title?) which all candidates who answered the question agreed was suspect activity, said they doubted the agricultural purpose of the berm, expressed concern about environmental consequences of messing with the drainage of these fields, and affirmed they planned to fight to keep the land in the much-abused Agricultural Land Reserve. In terms of what could be inferred about the 13 candidates from their appearance, one point I noticed was that only two candidates (Wolf and Brownoff) brought their own water in re-usable water bottles; 12 of the 13 had bottled water sitting in front of them – it appears only Wolf had had declined it.

Most of the talk was about better public transport, more affordable housing and methods of coping with climate change (answers to the latter were all, except Wolf, pretty much limited to better public transport!). Not a whisper about cultural issues…

One thing I enjoyed about the meeting was the timekeeping. Organisers used a yellow/red card system: a yellow card was a warning the time was nearly up; a red card meant stop talking and sit down. How I wish this had been in use in some of the poetry readings I’ve been to in my day.