September: Waste Not, Want Not?

In a land of abundance, there is no region more abundant than ours at this time of year.  We are among the most fortunate people in the world when it comes to the availability of good, fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables.  The many Farmers’ Markets in Niagara are bursting with produce, and shoppers are thronging to them in record numbers.  Increasingly, the big chain supermarkets are paying attention to consumer demand and we’re seeing local produce and products on their shelves… a most welcome change from days past when it was rare to see anything local in our supermarkets.  In addition, we have been seeing a significant increase in organic, heritage, and sustainable food being grown in our region.

That’s all good news.  The bad news is that so much of that food goes to waste.  In Canada, we waste about $27 billion worth of food every year, according to a report from theValue Chain Management Centre (VCMC).  What is worse, it is not food production, food packaging, food transportation, food service, or food storage that is to blame for the bulk of that wastage;  household waste… food thrown in the garbage by consumers like you and me… accounts for more than half.  In a land of abundance, we have become so used to buying more than we can eat that we don’t even think about how much we throw away.

To look at the issue another way, we throw away almost 40 per cent of the food we buy, or around 172 kg per person per year… in a nation where 9 per cent of the population is called “food insecure” and about 870,000 people rely on food banks month by month. 

This is a complex issue, and the simple answer (“Stop wasting food, and everyone will have enough”) is simply not true.  Even if we suddenly stopped wasting so much food, that wouldn’t put the surplus food on the tables of those who need it.  In fact, I suspect the problem is insoluble.  The only thing we can do, if we care enough, is become conscious of the issue and each of us in his or her own way, resolve to do better.

One way of doing better is to take surplus fresh food to organizations that exist to redistribute donated foods to those who need it.  Pelham Cares is such an organization and they welcome fresh food for their program of providing for those in need.  Is your garden overrun with tomatoes or cucumbers or zucchini?  Were you too ambitious when you bought three bushels of peaches to preserve?  Take the excess to Pelham Cares and let them give it to people who need it.

Another way to reduce the waste is to recognize what “best before dates” really mean.  These dates are not about safety, but about peak quality.  Canned and packaged goods can be safely eaten long after their best before dates have expired, and even dairy products, if properly stored, will last well after their best before dates.  For a complete list of what you can keep and how long, refer to an article in the Globe and Mail, published Nov. 19, 2012 and available on line.  And if eating “expired” foods turns you off, consider taking them (so long as the packaging is in good shape) to Pelham Cares.

August: Packing Light

A wilderness canoe trip is one of the most relaxing activities available to us.  Oh, it’s not relaxing in the “put your feet up and do nothing” way, but it’s one of the only ways to escape the stresses that are part of everyday life and decompress in the quiet and beauty of natural surroundings.  This is especially true for people who are surgically attached to their Blackberries and other devices that allow them to take their work and other stressors with them wherever they go.  Smart phones don’t work in the bush; there are no radios, televisions, video games, or computers.  

               Valerie and I just got back from a magical ten days in the interior of Algonquin Park, where we saw an average of about three people a day  (and those usually at a distance across a lake), and were completely out of touch with anything electronic.  The weather cooperated magnificently for the entire trip, and we paddled across calm lakes, set up camp on isolated islands, swam whenever we got warm, saw moose and loons with their new offspring, and even fished a bit.

               Whenever we talk about our canoe trips with friends who don’t venture into the wilderness, we are asked about food.  Ten days or two weeks without a refrigerator can present a challenge to people who love their food, but over the years we have developed a few tricks and techniques that enable us to enjoy good camp meals… maybe not strictly according to Slow Food principles, but nonetheless, good compromises.  Remember, we are carrying our food with us, so not only does it have to be able to go without refrigeration, but it ought to be light, compact, and easy to prepare since we use either a campfire or single burner camp stove as our only heat source.

               The first couple of days into the trip, we enjoy pre-prepared and frozen meals, kept cool in a collapsible, soft sided cooler bag that can be compressed and stowed when it’s empty.  Chili, stew, curry, smoked chicken, ribs all are available to us during this period and we’ll typically take corn on the cob for the first evening meal.

               Once the cooler is empty, we rely on packaged or dried foods for the most part.  Pasta is an important staple, and we will use our home-made pesto or a packaged sauce with it.  Gourmet Mac and Cheese is easy to carry, light, nourishing, and tasty for dinner.  Oriental and Indian cuisine figures largely in our menu, since the ingredients are often dried or packaged in such a way that makes for easy rehydration and light cooking.  The only down side of these packaged meals is the amount of sodium they contain, so we try to alternate packaged with non-packaged meals.

               One treat we always look forward to is Valerie’s Mexican Fiesta.  We take dried refried beans, salsa, nacho cheese sauce in a pouch, tortillas (we have even experimented with making our own from corn flour), and taco seasonings which we combine to produce a very tasty and filling taco feast.  Instead of salad greens to top the tacos (since salad would long ago have rotted) we sprout our own seeds in a plastic tube.  Soaking the seeds a couple of times a day causes them to germinate and grow into fresh and delicious sprouts… our camp salad content.

               By the end of a long trip, we resort to freeze-dried meals.  These are specially prepared for campers, canoeists, cyclists, and hikers and typically are compactly packaged meals in a pouch that can be prepared very simply by rehydrating and cooking for a few minutes… or in some cases, just by adding boiling water.  As unappetizing as these sound, some of them are actually really good, especially near the end of an extended trip in the bush.  How about chicken and dumplings, or Hawaiian pineapple chicken, or Cuban coconut black beans and rice, followed with freeze dried crème brulé or mint chocolate chip ice cream? (Really!) 

Camp meals are certainly not the same as you might expect at home or in a restaurant, but if they allow us to experience a glorious couple of weeks in the lakes and rivers of Algonquin or Quetico or Killarney, then, Slow Food or not, they are gourmet fare.

July: Food in the news

 

Two very closely related but very different food related items caught my attention last month.  The first is a study of preschoolers that clearly shows eating in front of a TV or computer has serious health consequences.  The second was an interview by Jian Gomeshi on the CBC radio programme Q with food writer Michael Polen, who stressed the importance (and the decline) of home cooking.

The study of preschoolers by St. Michael’s Hospital doctor Navrinda Persaud and his team set out to determine if the levels of bad cholesterol (HDL) were affected not by what you eat, but how you eat it.  Elevated levels of HDL in preschoolers is a key indicator of health issues like cardiovascular problems in later life.  The study determined that kids who eat in front of the TV or computer monitor have higher levels of this dangerous cholesterol.  In fact, Dr. Persaud actually made the point that there was a stronger correlation between eating behaviour and high cholesterol than between what was eaten and high cholesterol. 

While this may be counter-intuitive on the surface, the study team points out that kids who eat while watching TV are not paying attention to what they eat, and tend to ignore the cues that tell them they’ve had enough.  “They’re just kind of shoveling it in,” says Dr. Persaud.  The study concludes that “evidence suggests promoting responsive feeding, where adults provide appropriate access to healthy foods and children use internal cues (not parent directed cues or cues from the television) to determine the timing, pace, and amount they consume.”  In other words, sit down and eat a family meal without the distractions of TV, smart phone, computer, or iPod and set an example of healthy, convivial mealtimes. 

Michael Polen is the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a call to eat locally produced foods wherever possible that was a bestseller when it came out in 2006.  His new book is called Cooked: a Natural History of Transformation and he is on the book circuit to promote it.  His conversation with Gomeshi touched on many aspects of our food culture, but centred on the question of “who’s doing the cooking?”  When we eat food produced by corporations, whether it’s prepackaged pizza or canned soup or frozen dinners, we are eating food made from cheap, industrially produced ingredients that include large amounts of salt (to make the crappy ingredients taste better), sugar, fat, and chemicals that make it last a long, long time so it can be shipped from afar and sit on a shelf until purchased.  When you eat industrial food, Polen pointed out, you are supporting industrial agriculture.

When Gomeshi mentioned our current fascination with star chefs and televised cooking programmes, Polen explained what he calls the cooking paradox: “We're spending more time watching other people cook food on television than we are cooking ourselves.  I think on some level we understand how important cooking is and we miss it in our lives.”

The Slow Food Movement is all about good, healthy, local ingredients prepared at home by people who care about what they eat, and consumed in a convivial, social setting.  Dr. Persaud and Michael Polen seem to be on exactly the same page. 

June: "Local" Food

Our government has now revised the official definition of local food to include any food produced in Ontario.  This change was driven by restaurateurs and others who found the 50 km definition too restrictive.  A Toronto cheese store could not list Upper Canada Cheese (made here in Jordan Station) as local, nor could a butcher in London say that organic chicken from Fenwood Farm near Ancaster was a local product.  The problem was especially difficult for farmers’ markets where farmers from further than 50 km. could not participate as a “local” producer.   In an age of quick and easy transportation, these restrictions may seem excessive and the media certainly featured many examples of food producers who were negatively affected.

We here in Niagara are perhaps less affected by such a restriction than other less fortunate spots.  Our market gardens produce a seasonal abundance, which can be found at any of the many farmers’ markets in our towns.  Fruit?  Of course.  Niagara is famous for the quality of our peaches and apples, pears, apricots, cherries, and grapes.  As one of the few locations in Canada that has a climate where tender fruit production is possible, we benefit not only from the delicious fruit that is available for our tables, but from the spectacular orchards and vineyards that are the backdrop of our region. 

As for drink, no one in Niagara has to travel 50 km. to get local wine, and the wine on offer is as good as anywhere in the world.  We even have two distilleries that most Niagara residents can get to in less than 50 km. for those who favour whisky, and my tippling contacts tell me that the quality of the rye whisky produced at both Forty Creek in Grimsby and Dillan’s in Beamsville, is world class.  Even local craft beer is available to us at Niagara College’s teaching brewery.  If you have not tried their small batch specialty beers, available only at the college and only in tiny quantities, you are missing a treat.  And two craft breweries have sprung up nearby along Niagara Stone Road:  Silversmith and Oast House… both producing delicious beer that makes them delightful additions to the wine tour.

Our artisans make excellent cheese, outstanding charcuterie, unique breads, and much, much more.  We are a region where “local” is hardly a restriction at all.  Of course, olive oil and citrus fruit are still out of reach (until global warming really gets rolling) so we will always have to go beyond our provincial borders for some of the things that make our meals enjoyable, but for those of us in Niagara, the semantics of local food are not awfully relevant. 

May: Kitchen renovations

We are in the throes of kitchen renovations.  The living room is full of cardboard boxes that contain our kitchen “stuff,” piled high and covered with dusty plastic.  All the other rooms have refugee plants and furniture crowded in, and no matter how careful we or the workmen are, everything is coated with fine white plaster dust.  The dog is a nervous wreck.  Among all this chaos, we have almost completely lost sight of the gorgeous kitchen that we envisaged when we were in the planning stages about five months ago… and we have at least a month to go before we move into the result.

However, we have to cling to the promise of a wonderful new space for our cooking and entertaining or we’ll lose our minds.  It will be a wonderful new space… it will be a wonderful new space… it will….  Among the things we look forward to in our wonderful new space is a new cook top. 

I have always wanted a gas cook top for its instant heat and easy adjustment; it just seems like a more pleasing and efficient cook surface than electric elements for someone who is serious about good cooking.  Then, I was having a coffee with Michael and Anna Olson in their spectacular kitchen at their home in Welland and noticed the cook top was not gas; in fact, it looked like that electrical element under a glass ceramic surface that I find both difficult and inefficient.  I was shocked.  However, Michael reassured me that the stove top was induction, and his enthusiasm for the thing was infectious.

Induction works by producing a magnetic field that “induces” an electric current in the pot, creating heat from the pot’s resistance.  This means that only steel pots can be used on an induction stove top, but the effect is impressive.  We watched a demonstration where a large pot was filled with ice cubes and put on the induction “burner”; within seconds the ice cubes had liquefied and the water was boiling.  Further, the pot was removed from the “burner” and a paper towel put down on the cooking surface and the pot returned, on top of the towel.  The water continued to boil, and the paper towel wasn’t so much as singed.  As neat as this trick is, the real value of induction heat is that it is infinitely regulate-able, just like gas, but has none of gas’s odours or residue… and it is much faster and more fuel efficient. 

I haven’t entirely given up on gas cooking; I think the flame up the sides of a wok makes for a better heat in that application, and we have a small collection of ceramic cookware that wouldn’t work on the induction surface, so we are getting two induction burners and two gas burners side by side.  That’s certainly something to look forward to.

Then there’s the soapstone counter top, a smooth, warm-feeling stone without the glossy shine of granite or quartz.  And the combination microwave-toaster oven called a “speed oven” that I look forward to experimenting with… though I must admit, with some trepidation.

By mid-summer we’ll have mostly forgotten the trauma and disruption of the renovations, the meals in the basement, the dust and noise, the invasion of workmen in and out every day, and the ongoing detail decisions that keep cropping up.  Maybe our dog will have forgotten and forgiven, too, as unlikely as that seems right now.  Anyway, by then we’ll be able to comfort ourselves by cooking some lovely slow food meals in our wonderful new surroundings.

April: Our March Meeting

Slow Food Pelham is a small Convivium that has attracted a widely diverse group of food lovers from across the Niagara Region.  We are teachers and civil servants, retailers and marketers, independent business people and artists, retired and employed.  What draws us together is a love of good food and a concern about the increasing pressure to consume bad food… whether from fast food chains, agri-business conglomerates, or manufacturers that push over-processed junk food at us.  But mostly, we just enjoy each other’s company and sharing the food that we make.

Our “meetings” are pretty informal affairs.  We gather at someone’s home, each bringing our contribution to the evening’s main event: a pot-luck tasting menu around a theme.  The food is spread on a table or kept warm in the oven and we gather for a brief meeting before tucking in. 

At our most recent meeting, our food theme was “favorite comfort food,” which was appropriate for a cool evening right at the beginning of March.  We had coq au vin, chili (two varieties), pork hocks, tapenade, pulled pork , tourtiére, date squares, pie, sinfully rich chocolate cupcakes, and much more.  As usual, we shared the cost of a local wine to wash it all down.  One of our members, Dennis, had recently been to the South of France where he discovered a gourmet olive oil producer, and brought back three bottles of this special oil for us to taste.  Each bottle was from a different olive, and the difference between them was remarkable.  We were given the opportunity to take advantage of Dennis’s contact in Nice to order bottles for ourselves.
As for the “meeting” part of the meeting, we discussed events that we’d like to plan for the year.  Our late summer lamb roast at Featherstone Winery is our signature event and has a permanent place on our calendar.  We enjoy special dinners at restaurants throughout the region that are “Slow Food friendly” and discussed where our next such event might take place.  The Good Earth Bistro received unanimous approval, and they have by now been approached for a special dinner for our members and guests scheduled for May 15.

An issue that generated a great deal of concern was the desire by Slow Food that we turn over a portion of any fundraising money to the central office.  They suggested $16 per person in the Convivium as a target.  Pelham Slow Food has never been in the fundraising game; our lamb roast and special dinners cover costs and little more, and that’s the way we like it.  Members’ reactions ranged from annoyance to outrage at this suggestion, as the membership fee for Slow Food is already high.  This discussion will be ongoing.

Having calmed down and eased our blood pressure with a sip of red wine, we returned to more pleasant topics, and feted Renée Girard, our founding president and the force behind our group for five years.  New president, Valerie Grabove acknowledged that she had large shoes to fill. 

And then it was over to the food and the real reason we assemble from time to time… delicious home-cooked meals made with local ingredients where possible, served in the most convivial surroundings with interesting conversation and good cheer.

March: Longevity

There’s a very old joke that if you eat right, drink in moderation, exercise daily, avoid stress, and quit smoking, you will either live to be a hundred, or feel like you have.  A recent program on CBC’s Ideas series alerted me to research that, for good or ill, suggests that all the factors in this joke are, indeed, supportive of longevity.  Not really a surprise, but what is interesting is the extent to which research is providing concrete, achievable guidelines to a long, productive life.  Also interesting is the fact that virtually all of the guidelines are already long-held principles of the Slow Food Movement.

Most of the research on this subject seems to come from Dan Buettner, a National Geographic writer who has just released the second edition of his book Blue Zones: Lessons for living longer from people who’ve lived the longest.  Buettner and other researchers have discovered five “Blue Zones,” each culturally, genetically, and socially different from the others, but sharing the characteristic of amazingly long-lived residents.  Sardinias’ Nuoro province, for example, has the highest concentration of male centenarians anywhere… and they live active, productive lives.  Ikaria, Greece has the greatest population of people who live to be over 90 of anywhere else on earth; their rate of heart disease is less than 50 per cent that of the rest of the planet, and they suffer from almost no dementia.  Other “Blue Zones” are Okinawa, Japan (highest average age of a population), the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, and Loma Linda, California, a centre for Seventh Day Adventists.

               Of course, genetics play a part, but studies by some scientists that tried to isolate the influence of heredity on long life, found that it played a much less important role than previously thought.  The common factors among all these diverse cultures were mostly predictable: daily exercise; a low-stress environment, almost always rural; meat as a condiment, not a feature of the meal; a glass or two of red wine daily; a close and engaged family and community.

               While this bare-bones summary does not do justice to Buettner’s work, and I highly recommend his book for its fascinating examination of these happily long-lived folks as much as for its conclusions, we can clearly see in broad strokes what it takes to live healthy and maybe even long lives.  The Slow Food Movement has always advocated good, clean, well prepared food, eaten in a convivial setting with friends and family.  While the movement has never claimed to be a path to longevity, it does claim that healthy eating produces healthy lives; that longevity is a by-product should be no surprise.

               There’s one other notable observation in the research into Blue Zones:  the rural areas where most of these long-lived people reside are coming increasingly urbanized.  The good news is that access to nearby modern medical facilities has actually had a positive influence on their longevity.  The bad news is that even with the availability of health care, the length of life these people can expect has begun to decline.  The culprits, of course, are the availability of supermarket foods and the encroachment of fast food outlets, along with increased stress of traffic and a general erosion of the rural, family-oriented social framework.

To learn more about Pelham Slow Food (your path to a longer life?) contact Valerie Grabove at vgrabove@sympatico.ca