Edible Tulip

Website Recommendation - The Old Foodie

This is a picture of Incas harvesting potatoes c. 1565. It is featured in a gorgeously illustrated book I have called The Origins of Fruit and Vegetables by Jonathan Roberts published by Universe Publishing in 2001. As some of you who have been reading this website since it's inception (which happens to be April 2004 - Happy Birthday Edible Tulip!) I have a thing, for lack of a better word, for historical/anthropological food stories. That is how I began writing about food. I worked as a columnist for two publications and wrote articles that traced the narrative of a particular food object or tradition. Food, after all, has never had a linear path. It is imbued by all things political, social, cultural, historical, theological, etc. It holds romance and tragedy in many of its embodiments (the cacao bean, absinthe, medicinal poisons that sweeten the tip of darts). Food and its ubiquitous stories keep me alive and mentally well fed.

I got an email recently from Down Under. The Old Foodie it seems is onto something. If you might find yourself interested in what David Livingstone ate for breakfast on his trans-African journey in the year of 1854 or what you might have been served as a decadent lunch on the Japanese cruise ship the M.S. "Santos Maru" of the Osaka Shosen Kaisha Line in 1934 or what the "neurotic and hypochrondriac" Renaissance Mannerist painter Jacopo Carruci da Pontormo wrote in his diary in 1554 with respect to food and medicine then you'll find yourself visiting this blog quite often.

The Hootenanny

Hoot Hoot Hootenanny!

When my folks told me they had bought me an extra ticket to a concert they were going to at the Avening Town Hall on Saturday night I had NO IDEA it would involve striped stockings and gas face masks and a woman wearing deer antlers and playing the saw and a wolf mask peering from behind a curtain and leather pants and a beaver hat.

If I'd known it was a hootenanny well, then, I may have come prepared for the folk fest/cabaret/ vaudeville/comic book inspired musical act that it was. My father hated it. Too Appalachian communal hippie artist backwoods inspired for his taste. He grew up in Val D'Or, Quebec, and he wants that to be the last place he ever saw a beaver hat.

The musicians are from all over Canada and they are currently on one gravy train of a tour. Oh! Susanna and Jenny Whiteley were both outstanding. And the whirl of children laughing and dancing in the front of the stage was evidence that although some of the costumes and lyrics wouldn't have been out of place at an underground sex club, the kids dug it just fine.

Upcoming Performances:

April 13, 2006 @ The Vinyl - Guelph, Ont

April 14, 2006 @ The Lawless Galery - Grafton, Ont

April 15, 2006 @ The Starlight Room - Kitchener, Ont

The Last American Man

"The result is that to the frontier the American Intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness: that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good or for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes from freedom - these are the traits of the frontier..."
- Frederick Jackson Turner

Because reading is as much a part of my life as eating, I want to share what I think of as excellent literary insights into various themes of the world with others. And given that my reading is generally more vibrant and varied than my eating, this may well turn into a blog of books. More often than not, the books I gravitate towards on any given day reflect the struggles or themes of my life at that moment; they seem to illuminate the conflict or the touchstone of what I spend my time thinking about.

"The woods are alive" he said. As the walked through the forest, he explained how the forest floor works, its circularity. The leaves fall from the trees and crumble and decompose and turn into soil. The water seeps into the ground and feeds the roots of the trees; the insects and animals live on the forest floor, eating each other and all the organic material they can find, keeping the cycle going.
Excerpt from The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert; Viking Penguin, 2002.

This passage reflects a theme in the book (albeit not the major theme) that deals with locality, living off what lies beneath. Eustace Conway, the real live protagonist of the non-fiction book, lives in the Appalachian Mountains wearing skins from animals he trapped and living off the land. More importantly, it reveals his intent on exploring the concept of what it means to be a modern man in America against the backdrop of all the contradictory elements of the American landscape and identity - inventiveness, narcissism, isolation and intimacy.

For a glimpse at the first chapter of this book by Elizabeth Gilbert check out the NPR Reading Room. I suspect afterward many of you will be ordering it from your local library like I did.

On a completely personal and stream-of-consciousness aside, I continue.

Eat Local Challenge

Jen, over at Life Begins at 30, is hosting an Eat Local Challenge. She lives in San Francisco where May, her month of local devotion, produces food similiar to an Ontario August - cucumbers, summer squash, beets, carrots, tomatoes, lettuces, peas, potatoes. So I will choose the month of August to eat entirely local food.

Jen's 10 Reasons to Eat Local Food:

Eating local means more for the local economy

Locally grown produce is fresher

Local food just plain tastes better

Locally grown fruits and vegetables have longer to ripen

Eating local is better for air quality and pollution than eating organic

Buying local food keeps us in touch with the seasons

Buying locally grown food is fodder for a wonderful story (I agree - Farmer's markets, CSA food boxes, stores that carry local meats, cheeses and baked goods generally have a devotion to their food that is not apparent in larger box stores. Your food comes with a newsletter talking about the state of the maple syrup that summer or the blight that took out the tomato crop, the driest July ever or the floods that rotted the potatoes. The bakeries that hire local marginalized people in your city. It is a gift to buy a quart of blueberries straight from the weathered hands that picked them while you read your Sunday paper and drank coffee in bed)

Eating local protects us from bio-terrorism

Local food translates to more variety (I agree with Jen - my experience with the small apple producers up around Georgian Bay was two-fold; they had frustration at the supermarkets like Loblaws who wanted large yields and large oversized apples when the local producers tended to have small fist sized apples of an heirloom variety [the supermarket opted to buy big mushy shellac-ed granny smith's from Washington RIGHT DURING APPLE SEASON IN ONTARIO APPLE COUNTRY, and yes, I complained to the manager] but at the same time they served a local community of small green grocers and markets and therefore could experiment and produce many lower yield varieties)

Supporting Local providers supports responsible land development (help keep those who grow our food inspired, alive, in the black, sustainable, able to keep their family farm. Let's enable the farmers to maintain their small local business so we don't end up with a melange of tasteless imported food from large US manufacturer's on our grocery store shelves. It's one of the most social and political acts a person can do - to choose where your food comes from!)

The challenge asks that each blogger, or participant, sets ground rules he/she can live by that fall under the general umbrella of subsisting off a local foodshed for one month. When I get closer to the month I've chosen to eat locally I will write out my own ground rules detailing a) what constitutes local for me in geographical terms, b) what exemptions will I claim i.e. coffee I might choose a Canadian roaster but where will the beans come from?, c) what is my personal goal for the month.

In the mean time, to keep myself busy and distracted from the larger tasks I have at hand in this world, I will also begin documenting local finds (small businesses, interesting landmarks, quirky local folk) who make up the neighbourhood of Toronto that I live amongst. I may not always be able to eat locally (given our dang cold Canadian seasons) but I do live locally and shop locally and converse with those who make this neighbourhood tick. I'd like you to meet them all too.

Democrats Abroad Fundraiser

I get sent various press releases and I pick and choose what I will include on my website. This is primarily a food blog but because it's run by me and I happen to be a person of many conflicting and eclectic and diametric tastes and values more than not things slip onto this site that aren't food focused. Sometimes I later delete them. Because usually they were uploaded in haste, in response to a moment in time that I would rather forget than broadcast in detailed memory, but some experiences are worth savouring and airing to the larger public. This is one of those.

Roger from the organization Democrats Abroad Canada sent me an email about a fundraiser called Bites without Borders. It is being held at that fun loving Cajun/Creole restaurant on Markham Street called Southern Accent and it's to raise money for DAC (in advance of November's US elections) as well as for a New Orleans restaurant that was sadly destroyed by Hurrican Katrina. It's open to both American and Canadian citizens but I strongly suggest that you toe the blue line if you want to engage in playful debate.

The Scoop:

Date - Wednesday, April 19th, 2006
Time - 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. (not if they're serving up whiskey sours you can bet)
Grub - 12 dishes in the authentic New Orleans style i.e. Andouille sausage with chipotle maple hot sauce, blackened tiger shrimp with N'Awlins remoulade
the Damage - $45 purchased in advance by April 12th. Visit the website for details or to register.

Farm Fresh Delivery

I've often lusted after the food boxes offered for delivery by various groups and co-ops around the city i.e. FoodShare's Good Food Box. They seem to contain a perfect blend of exotic and familiar foods. I tend to get stuck in seasonal cooking (my fridge in the fall will always have a cauliflower, a head of broccoli, a green cabbage, onions, a bag of loose carrots, winter squash as well as acorn and butternuts) and the food box is a great way to force yourself (b/c if you're like me you hate to waste food) to experiment, to think out of the box just when the darkness settles at 5:00 p.m. and you think YES DAL AGAIN TONIGHT but then you see a few yams and a few pounds of fresh beets and even fresh artichokes and some rutebaga or parsnips and maybe even a turnip from the food box and you have to think creatively. So your mind stretches and your stomache is thankful to pass on that Indian curry yet again. You see? A food box isn't only good for the coop, it's good for your belly and it even acts as an intellectual exercise. Hmmm.

Another option that can be done in tandem with the good food box is ordering from a local (meaning in Ontario who delivers) organic farmer. Eggs. Asparagus. Maple Syrup. Chutneys. Sausages. and even flower bulbs. My sister is a big fan of Spring Arbour Farms and thinks the owner, Ken, is a fantastic person, someone everyone should have the opportunity to know. And even support.

I live alone. My sister has a family of 4 which is growing to 5 in 2 weeks or less. Therefore good food boxes and ordering in organics makes sense for her. For me, I pick and chose the best local suppliers I can.

Embedded below I've included the text Ken sent to my sister in an email to his customers. He comes highly recommended. Apparently his asparagus is to die for. When you live in the city, the smell of the country is more than not residual horse manure drifting across the lake. Why not invest a little and have your own fresh soil covered baby potatoes in a basket on your doorstep when you get home from work?