The Dominion - Food

Clinton Apology to Haiti Surprises NS Activists

Moira Peters — Tue, 11 May 2010 05:21:18 +0000

Former US president calls dumping cheap rice "a mistake"

HALIFAX—Nova Scotia activists are expressing surprise that former US president Bill Clinton has apologized for flooding Haiti with cheap American rice beginning in the mid 1990s. During testimony before a US Senate committee last month, Clinton admitted that requiring Haiti to lower its tariffs on rice imports made it impossible for Haitian farmers to compete in their domestic economy. The trade policy forced farmers off land and undercut Haiti's ability to feed itself.

“It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake,” Clinton—now a UN special envoy to Haiti—told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee March 10. “I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else.”

“I would like to believe that Clinton has had a change of heart,” wrote Heidi Verheul of the Halifax Peace Coalition in an e-mail. “But he actually needs to do something to challenge the free market shock doctrine economic policies that are being designed to further subjugate and impoverish Haiti,” she added. “The policies of aid and development in Haiti have continuously served to undermine democracy [and] local economies, and have driven tens of thousands of people from their land, enslaved them in sweatshops, makeshift homes, and absolute grinding, miserable poverty.”

Clinton’s apology attracted scant media attention in the US and none in Canada. It was included as part of an Associated Press news agency report that was published March 20 by the Washington Post. The AP report from Haiti’s earthquake-ravaged capital, Port au Prince, suggests world leaders are reconsidering trade and aid policies that make poor countries dependent on rich ones. It quotes UN aid official John Holmes as saying that poor countries, like Haiti, need to become more self-sufficient by rebuilding their own food production.

“A combination of food aid, but also cheap imports have...resulted in a lack of investment in Haitian farming, and that has to be reversed,” Holmes told AP. “That's a global phenomenon, but Haiti’s a prime example. I think this is where we should start."

The Clinton administration forced Jean Bertrand Aristide to agree to cut rice tariffs drastically when the US restored the Haitian president to power in October 1994. Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, had been overthrown by a US-backed military coup in 1991. In return for $770 million in international loans and aid, Aristide was required to agree to a business-friendly “structural adjustment” program that, aside from cutting food tariffs, also included freezing the minimum wage, cutting the size of the civil service, and privatizing public utilities. (Aristide annoyed the US by being slow to implement such policies, making Clinton’s apology last month all the more surprising.)

Janet Eaton, trade and environment campaigner for Sierra Club Canada, said members of the global democracy movement have long known about the failures of the globalized food system, and Clinton’s apology to Haitians only reinforced what many activists have talked and written about for years.

“When high-profile leaders admit that economic globalization isn’t working, then it’s time for governments to get on board and look at alternatives.” Eaton added. “It is time to admit that these failures exist and put an end to the aggressive free trade frenzy that is now occurring in Canada, the US and Europe as they vie for foreign markets, raw materials and unfettered free trade.”

Eaton pointed to one alternative in Nova Scotia—a Food Policy Council, which was formally established at a meeting in Truro on April 19. Farmers, consumers, academics, policy analysts and organizations were promoting food security for all Nova Scotians by focusing on ways to grow more of our own food. Eaton contended that growing more local food would help curtail climate change, reduce dependence on increasingly expensive fossil fuels and alleviate global poverty.

She added, “Haiti should be seen as a metaphor for what can happen on a planetary level if we fail to recognize the crisis we face.”

Bruce Wark is a freelance journalist based in Fall River, NS. This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

clinton in haiti

Sea Fare

Moira Peters — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:26:08 +0000

Cooking, Nuu-chah-nulth style

TRADITIONAL TERRITORY OF SNUNEYMUXW FIRST NATION (NANAIMO, B.C.)–At first glance, despite its unfamiliar title, Čamus looks like most other cookbooks. However, Čamus is a cookbook that is about more than just cooking. Čamus is about food, nature and language; it is a reflection of a culture, a way of life, and about preserving that way of life.

On the cover is a slice of moist salmon fillet arranged on a bed of leeks, celery leaves and the leaf of a skunk cabbage. A few sprigs of green onions are laid across the fish. Below, photos of berries, crab, sea urchin and mussels indicate that seafood and nature’s foods will be prominent in the Nuu-chah-nulth style cookbook. Good taste is also important. Čamus (chum-us) is an adjective meaning the satisfaction of being well-fed.

The cookbook contains recipes from the 17 Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations found on the west coast of Vancouver Island and the Makah First Nation of Washington State. In addition to the Indigenous cuisine, the reader is also introduced to the culture, language, and philosophy of the Nuu-chah-nulth.

Tom Happynook, President of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, laments the drift away from the traditional foods. Although many elders still value the nutritional and medicinal benefits of the traditional Nuu-chah-nulth diet, eating traditionally is less common among young people.

There is scientific research linking eating traditional foods with eliminating obesity, heart disease, diabetes and other afflictions that plague Indigenous Peoples. This, says Happynook, “should be enough incentive to turn to our customary foods. Healthy people equals healthy communities.”

Happynook holds that eating is part of one’s cultural identity: “If we are to preserve our Nuu-chah-nulth-ness we must eat Nuu-chah-nulth foods.”

Dawn Foxcroft, spokeswoman for Uu-a-thluk (Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council Fisheries), sees “a lot of movement [projects, identified needs] in the communities towards a more traditional diet, eating foods from our territories and learning how to harvest and manage these resources.”

“With the cookbook we are also trying to promote the use of the resources—their use in a sustainable and respectful way—so that Nuu-chah-nulth people will go out into our territories and learn about harvesting, learn about management and the value of who they are and where they are from," says Foxcroft. "Also, we want people to go out with their families and learn how to harvest and where to harvest; this is one of the ways that keeps the culture alive and strong.”

Čamus includes a Nuu-chah-nulth Seasonal Round, a wheel that explains the territorial locales, months of the year and foods that are available for harvesting.

The cookbook cautions shellfish harvesters to check for water closures and never to harvest from water suspected of containing pollution.

Good food comes from a cared-for environment. Uu-a-thluk is devoted to the sustainability and management of the aquatic environment.

Each recipe in Čamus has a list of ingredients with instructions for combining and cooking. The cookbook is divided into three sections: ocean (with 39 fish-based recipes), beach (11 recipes) and land (15 recipes). The ocean-based recipes are tilted toward salmon (there are 15 salmon recipes); predictable, given the west coast locale and the long-intertwined history of the Nuu-chah-nulth people and salmon.

Many salmon lovers hold strong preferences between wild Pacific salmon and farmed salmon. Foxcroft finds, however, that consensus is lacking among the different Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations on this issue.

Consensus is not lacking about seafood. Fish, chiton, clam, oyster, mussel, barnacle and sea urchin recipes are found in Čamus. The land section carries recipes for duck, elk and deer. There are also recipes for the popular fried bread bannock (sapnin).

There are some meatless recipes, but Čamus is not a cookbook geared to vegetarians.

The book is an invitation to the adventurous. Some of the ingredients will be outside the average person's food repertoire—for example, salal, fish head, chitons, marinated alaria and gooseneck barnacles. Two recipes even feature whale meat: whale jerk candy and whale in the middle.

Like berries? There is also a seasonal berry chart for salmonberries, salal berries, bog cranberries, thimbleberries, huckleberries, wild strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.

The cookbook is peppered with tips like: “Salal berry leaves make a good antacid. Chew the leaf and suck juice from it.”

For the sun-dried berry candy recipe, Mamie Charles of the Hesquiaht First Nation remembers, “We used to use skunk cabbage [timuut] leaves for drying the berries, instead of cardboard.”

The Nuu-chah-nulth recipes indicate a non-wasteful, conservation ethic.

Says Foxcroft, “Nuu-chah-nulth people, like many other First Nations people, traditionally use all of an animal. I think that it is about respect for the animal and the connection to food and where the food is from. For example, when you prepare salmon, people use all of it; people eat the head, eyes, cheeks and skin. Where other people may throw away the salmon head, for many Nuu-chah-nulth it is a treat. Traditionally, the bones were put back in the river or ocean where they came from.”

Čamus offers much: from photos (black-and-white and colour) and illustrations to Nuu-chah-nulth vocabulary with each recipe and a phonetic alphabet at the back of the cookbook; there are sections devoted to canning salmon and underground baking; there is a recipe for kelp chips and a page devoted to kelp facts.

If the aphorism “you are what you eat” is valid, then Čamus is a great way to gain insight into the Nuu-chah-nulth people and at the same time reward one’s health and palate.

Bon appétit!

Kim Petersen is the Original Peoples Editor at The Dominion.

Gooseneck Barnacles

Goose Break

hillarybain — Sun, 27 May 2007 21:01:49 +0000

The changing climate and hunting in the North

It can be hard to concentrate when you're stuck inside a stuffy classroom in springtime. For the kids of Eeyou Istchee, the territory of the James Bay Cree, it can be nearly unbearable: after a long winter, the sunlight is getting warmer every day and the sound of the first Canada geese flying overhead can drive the entire classroom -- as well as the janitor, principal and everyone else in town -- to the window to gaze up at this graceful embodiment of the changing seasons.

Kids as young as four years old can do a perfect two-tone goose call. A few well-executed throaty honks, and the whole flock will change course, circle gently and alight on the lake.

In these communities, Goose Break is a big deal. It's a two-week holiday during which schools and offices close, and just about every family heads into the bush to hunt geese and hang out at the camp. Sort of like France in August, and bigger than Christmas, the communities become ghost towns as everything is put on hold to allow people to go after the geese.

But Goose Break's character -- and timing -- has changed over the past few years. Parents pull their kids out of school as much as two weeks in advance of the scheduled start of the break, because the geese don’t follow the calendar and they’re coming sooner than the school board has calculated. Experienced hunters put their snowmobiles away earlier and earlier, not willing to risk their lives on ice that is thinner with each passing spring. Even the elders, whose advice has been followed closely for decades, are not always able to predict the weather patterns. No one can be sure whether crossing the river at the regular spot is still a safe bet, and every year there are stories of seasoned hunters going through the ice. Some families opt to hire a helicopter -- not a cheap ride -- to get to and from their favourite hunting grounds, rather than travel over the lakes and rivers as they have done for generations.

Scanning the skies, hunters watch in wonder as flocks continue heading northward. Usually, Canada geese can be coaxed out of the sky if they see ice below on which to land. But this year, lakes that would normally be frozen are open water, and the geese are passing right overhead.

A Cree boy usually shoots his first goose at age nine or ten, and the whole camp celebrates with a feast in his honour. The goose's head is preserved as a keepsake -- a symbol of this transition from childhood to maturity. But some mothers are beginning to wonder how long the tradition will continue. There are plenty of geese this year -- fluttery heaps of feathers outside the camps attest to that -- but with so much changing so quickly, it's hard not to speculate about re-scheduling Goose Break for early March next year. Some worry that it will be cancelled altogether by the time this year’s first-time hunters have kids of their own.

Recipe for Shigabon (Canada goose roasted over an open fire)

-Pluck the goose

-Chop off the wings, feet and head. These can be boiled to make soup

-Run two slender pieces of wood crosswise through the goose, at the points where the wings and legs attach to the body

-Tie a string to these wooden sticks

-In the tipi, place fresh pine boughs on the floor to create a heavenly aroma

-Before building a fire at the centre of the tipi, install wooden poles horizontally at about shoulder height over the fire

-Suspend the goose by its string from the wooden poles over the fire

-Place a stainless steel bowl or tray below the goose to catch the drippings

-Roast, turning occasionally, until the goose is thoroughly cooked –- about three hours. Try hanging it with the breast side down for the first two hours, then turn to cook the other side for the final hour

-Serve along with drippings

Jaime Little works with CBC North Quebec

Geese Feet

Fuel For The Fire

hillarybain — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:08:43 +0000

Women refugees in eastern Chad are forced to risk robbery and rape in order to gather firewood for cooking

EASTERN CHAD -- There used to be trees here on the desert edge of eastern Chad, where almost a quarter-million Sudanese refugees are currently camping out. They are Darfuris who made it across the border. Now they live in sprawling tent cities 20 times the size of any of the surrounding Chadian villages.

The refugees aren’t really supposed to leave the camps. But early every morning a brightly coloured train of women and girls can be seen slowly winding its way from the cluster of canvas tents. Some have donkeys, some carry babies, all of them have a long walk ahead.

They are searching for firewood. Food, water, sanitation and schooling are all provided in the camps, but no one has taken on the responsibility of providing the refugees with fuel for cooking. And all of the food rations provided to the refugees by the World Food Programme – dried beans, wheat flour and the like – require cooking before they’re even the least bit edible. With an average of seven mouths to feed in each family, some of these women will walk 40 kilometres before they find enough dead branches and fallen twigs to last a few days.

They are lucky if they make it home with their haul. Far from the camps, often wandering alone in the brush, these women and girls become targets for angry locals who want to protect the meager wood supply for themselves. The women are threatened, beaten, robbed and raped. It is one of the gravest security threats for refugees in this region.

Here, collecting wood is considered women’s work because it is part of the process of preparing the food. Men – even the husbands and fathers of women raped during firewood collection – insist that they cannot search for the wood themselves, or even accompany the women, because it would be shameful and embarrassing. The women have a different explanation: they say if the men encountered local villagers in the bush, someone would certainly get killed. So the women and girls continue to leave the camps, and to face the risks.

Within the camps, aid agencies and women’s refugee committees are trying to find ways to reduce wood consumption. It is an effort not only to reduce the threat of violence, but also to conserve a scarce resource and to ease tensions between refugees and the local population. The aid organizations have started to distribute fuel-efficient stoves that burn much less wood than the traditional three-stone open fire used for generations in this part of the world. But a lot of the refugee women are suspicious of these new technologies. They aren’t sure how to use them, and they don’t trust that the food will end up tasting very good.

One such alternative is the solar cooker. It looks like an open cardboard box, lined on the inside with tin foil. Place a kettle at the point where the angles of reflected sunlight all meet, and you’ve got hot water for tea in 15 minutes – as long as the sun is high and bright.

Another option is an oven made of dried mud. It takes a few months for the mud to harden, and eventually it crumbles back into clods of dirt. But the materials are readily available, and when it’s working well it burns about half as much wood as a traditional open fire.

Among refugee women, the most popular alternative so far is a sheet metal contraption called the Save80. On average, it uses 80 per cent less wood than a traditional fire. Ten grams of wood – a mere handful of twigs – is enough to prepare a pot of rice. That means a woman who used to collect wood twice a week now only goes out twice a month.

And there’s another big selling point: you can use the Save80 to make boule.

Boule is the wildly popular dish eaten two to three times a day by just about every family in this region. It’s a viscous starchy glob, usually made from pounded millet that is boiled and thickened with flour. Everyone in the family gathers around the boule, reaching in with their fingers for a clump that can then be dipped into a sauce of gombo or green beans.

Boule is a staple and a comfort food. It can even be made out of the unfamiliar offerings in the WFP food rations distributed monthly in the camps. For those who find themselves living in tents far from their homeland, something familiar for supper can provide a shade of normalcy among all the loss and uncertainty. Now, with the fuel-efficient stoves, refugees are eating it every day, though they still face the risks of wood collection once or twice a month.

How to make a simple boule

Boil rice (or milled corn or millet) in a pot of water until it is pasty and the grains lose their shape.

Continue on low heat even after the water has boiled off.

Add a few spoonfuls of flour (wheat, millet, sorghum, whatever is available).

Stir slowly and deliberately with a big spoon or wooden paddle. This requires a folding or pounding motion and a lot of arm strength. When it’s well mixed, add another several spoonfuls of flour and keep stirring.

When the boule reaches desired consistency, empty it into a bowl. Swing the bowl back and forth so that the boule takes on the round shape of the bowl.

Turn it onto a plate, making a warm mound.

Eat with fingers, dipping each bite into a sauce made of gombo or green beans, or mutton with sorel or spinach.

Learning to use the Save80 stove

Making tea with a solar cooker

Locked Dumpsters Full of Mangoes

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 14:49:02 +0000

Hungry people, wasted food, and the politics of dumpster diving

Food waste needs to be rethought, reduced and rerouted. photo: Fatty Tuna

Unappeasable customers, bitter bosses and deserted lunch shifts; it is no secret that restaurant work can be soul-crushing. However, the most painful moments in the food industry -- ask anyone who has worked in a café, restaurant, bar or food store -- are moments spent throwing away good food. Those who work in supermarkets, bakeries and delis know that tossing bags of fresh bread and pastries, cases of coffee, trays of uneaten lasagne, chicken and sautéed vegetables into the dumpster out back is part of the daily reality.

Less visible is the more shocking layer of food waste that occurs even before food gets to restaurants and grocery stores. On the outskirts of towns, distributors and wholesalers operate construction dumpsters, which are regularly filled with produce which is riper, fresher, and generally of better quality than what reaches the consumer. This is the fate of the truckload of Ecuadorian mangoes that ripened before making it to the supermarket and the flat of tomatoes from Ontario with a couple of bad fruit; thrown "away" for fear the decay would spread over the whole shipment.

Spencer Mann is sensitive to food waste and food security. He is a founding member of Co-op sur Genereux in Montreal: a housing co-op of 15 members. "These giant dumpsters full of beautiful food are not located near residential areas and are therefore more difficult to access for people who use dumpsters as a source of food," he explains. Part of the solution to the injustices of food waste, says Mann, is to become part of a society that is "okay with waste," but makes that "waste" accessible to those who will make use of it.

Mann's interest in the content of dumpsters is more than cerebral. Dumpsters are the main food source for Mann and the other members of Co-op sur Genereux. "The first time we started consciously dumpster diving," he explains, "was during harvest time, at the Jean Talon market. At first we were buying our produce; then we noticed the vendors throwing away perfectly good tomatoes and eggplants." There is one hour between the market's closing time and the time the truck comes to take away dumpster contents. Mann describes the sense of conviviality among the regular divers at the market -- elderly Italian women, young locals and new immigrant families -- getting "incredible hauls," and the swapping that follows.

Keeping the food industry's "waste" accessible means supporting food redistribution efforts, and also sorting out a clear sense of the politics of dumpster-diving. "It is an art to get to know the rhythm of a dumpster," explains Mann, "to learn when it is filled and when the food is taken to the dump. Part of the etiquette of dumpster-diving is to leave food for people who are regular visitors to that dumpster. There are many families who rely on that food. One strategy is to collect food only just before the truck comes, so you know you are not taking food from someone else's mouth."

Before embarking on an urban scavenging adventure, one must know the rules. Don't rip bags; open them to look through them and then close them again. Be quiet; leave the dumpster cleaner than you found it. Be respectful in conversations with employees, managers and owners. "Eighty-five per cent of these interactions will be positive. Employees of a store tend to know only too well about the food that is being wasted in their store and tend to be supportive of that food being used instead of sent to the dump." Owners and managers, who would prefer that customers pay for food, are less tolerant. That is why it is crucial to respect the rules: you don't want to be responsible for a local dumpster -- upon which 10-15 people might depend for their daily bread -- becoming locked up.

"Sometimes it is unfathomable that things get thrown out." Mann gives the examples of a 30-lb bag of organic Fair Trade sugar, unopened bags of organic figs and sun-dried tomatoes and huge bags of dried chickpeas. Co-op sur Genereux challenged its members to one month of surviving exclusively from dumpsters, and succeeded. However, Mann acknowledges the difference between benefiting from a wasteful system and the need for waste to be rethought, reduced and rerouted.

Distributors can participate in this change by ordering on demand instead of on speculation and by getting involved with local food redistribution organizations that take their 'waste' to food banks and soup kitchens. Local businesses can order responsibly to cut down on overstock. Consumers can demand local food that will not have to survive a trip across a continent and be less picky about blemishes and discoloration that does not impact the taste or nutritional value of the food.

Awareness events, such as Montreal's "Etat d'Urgence," organized by the "urban intervention" group ATSA, seek to encourage people to confront the reality of the waste-stream. Since 1995, ATSA has co-ordinated an annual five-day "urban refugee camp" in downtown Montreal, feeding, clothing and entertaining people of all social stripes. Each year, for the last meal of the event, Co-op sur Genereux has fed more than 200 people on spoils saved from Montreal dumpsters.

Why is good food thrown away?

1. Capitalism allows for a certain margin of waste. Food waste is written into many business plans and makes up a significant portion of food cost and inventory.

2. 'Best before' standards require merchants to toss food that has 'expired.' Restrictive health by-laws, which often prevent restaurants from giving food, turn such food into a liability for the restaurant.

3. Shelf-space has value, in its being a place for product. This means a merchant needs his or her product to be of the highest value possible, or it is not 'worth' the space it takes.

4. If a merchant were to sell blemished food for, let's say, half-price, his clientele would change. He would lose rich clientele who do not want to shop alongside poorer clientele.

5. Branding. A business demands everything that leaves through its doors to be of high quality for the sake of its reputation.

Moira Peters investigates the politics of dumpster diving within a food system that results in hungry people and wasted food.

The Seed in the Stone

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 23:19:27 +0000

Growing food in the concrete jungle

City backyards are good for more than swimming pools and lawn chairs. photo: Kristen Howe

I hate to say it, but the warm months of summer are coming to a close. The Ontario tomatoes, corn and peaches, which are currently replacing tasteless international imports, are helping me get over my end-of-season nostalgia. And despite the fact that I'm living in downtown Toronto, I'm finding that the fall harvest is happening closer to my kitchen than I expected.

This year, my housemates and I planted a small garden plot in our backyard with some of our favourite foods. Judging by the view from our back balcony, which looks down on the tidy and productive gardens tended by our neighbours, we are definitely not alone.

The view from my balcony is supported by polls conducted in 2002 by Ipsos-Reid that found that 40 per cent of people in Greater Toronto live in households that produce some of their own food; urban gardeners growing vegetables, fruit, berries, nuts or herbs in backyards, balconies, or community gardens.

Although the Ipsos-Reid poll sounds promising, only a fraction of the food Canadians eat is grown locally, let alone in a personal garden. The average tomato, for example, travels a gas-guzzling 1,500 miles from field to plate.

I first realized that it is possible to grow a substantial portion of an urban diet close to where it is consumed when I visited Cuba a few years ago. Over half of the fruit and vegetables consumed in Havana are grown organically in Havana. In the house where I stayed, my host Pastorita explained that after the fall of the Soviet Union, imports of food, pesticides, fertilizers and gasoline for farm machinery and transport were halted, resulting in a 30 per cent reduction in food consumption. She showed me the buckets, bathtub and trellis on the rooftop of her house that her family tended through the toughest years when every open space in Havana sprouted culinary plants. Larger intensive production gardens on vacant lots were also opened with the support of the government and they continue to grow produce to sell to the public, schools and hospitals through collaborations between the Ministries of Agriculture, Education and Health.

Canada still lags far behind the Cuban model of urban agriculture. Cubans were forced to grow food collectively to avoid starvation. Lacking that motivation, and structural support, Canadians that do garden tend to cultivate smaller plots, and for different reasons.

According to Foodshare, a Toronto-based organization that addresses urban hunger and food issues, there are 1,000 community gardens and over 2,500 allotment gardens in the city, in addition to yard and patio gardens. The motivations of gardeners, and the environmental, health, and social benefits of their gardens are numerous, and often overlap.

Foodshare supports a market garden at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health where residents participate in growing and selling produce. Another organization, the Stop Community Food Centre, grows food to supplement its food bank services and facilitate engagement and education in its multicultural community. A small garden at the Voces Latinos community centre is motivated by the idea of fostering closer connections between people and their environment. Seeds of Diversity Canada, a grassroots seed-saving organization, cultivates a heritage vegetable garden to preserve the genetic diversity of plants that are adapted to local growing conditions, and combat the corporatization of the food supply.

This spring, as I was digging up my backyard plot, my neighbour Frank poked his head over the fence and asked in his thick Italian accent if I had planted any tomatoes. When I told him I hadn't, he returned with a bucket full of cooking and slicing tomato seedlings.

Each spring, Frank nurtures hundreds of seedlings in a homemade greenhouse, which he delivers to extended family across the Greater Toronto Area once the weather is warm enough for planting. He grows tomatoes for the incredible taste, as a hobby, and to share an essential cultural food with his family. Each year, he also saves the seeds from his best tomatoes to plant the following spring; I have literally been eating the fruits of Frank's labour from the last decade.

How to eat a tomato like a meal
–Cut a fresh, ripe tomato into thick slices lengthwise on a plate.
–Cover generously with pepper and a dash of salt to taste.
–Garnish with cheese, basil, or balsamic vinegar for extra flavour.
–Get your napkin ready, and eat with a knife and fork.

Kristen Howe is growing her favourite foods in Toronto's concrete jungle.

Weed To The Wise

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 00:41:39 +0000

One gardener's enemy is another's dinner

Recognized in the West as a lawn and garden pest, dandelion is herbalists' top choice for treating liver damage, and is an unparallelled source of vitamin A and natural potassium.

Summers ago, when my brothers and I lived under our parents' green thumbs, our mornings were spent crouched between garden beds of carrots, corn, strawberries and spinach. With our winter survival in mind, my parents worked Cape Breton's mountain soil until neat rows of peas, peppers and Brussels sprouts marched the length of the raised earth beds. We kids, armoured with hats and bug-dope, were instructed to clear away the enemy, to rip and pull the tough invading plants -- weeds! -- from the soil. The garden -- a fantastic quarter-acre of child labour -- sprouted so many weeds! My mother's mention that lambs-quarters were actually delicious greens was lost to her demands that they come out of the asparagus patch – 'every Jesus one of them.'

Little by little, I began to pay attention to the wild plants in the garden -- plants like dandelion and chickweed -- that I had so ruthlessly ripped from the ground when they threatened to overtake the baby lettuce. I slowly discovered magic in the native plants; stubborn and wise, they survive trampled pathways and cling to the edge of my workspace. It makes sense that edible weeds are among the healthiest foods, belonging to the same soil, the same ecosystem, as we do.

One of the most satisfying moments in the garden is wandering through rows of cultivated glory to pick a summer salad for supper. My favourite is a simple mixed-green salad with generous amounts of chopped fresh herbs. Early summer is ideal for throwing them damn weeds into the salad bowl, as they are still tender and at their nutritious peak.

Weed Salad

rip:
arugula
spinach
lettuce
lambs-quarters – just the tender top whorl
chickweed
sorrel - the tiny leaves add a delightful lemon zing - be sure to pick lots

mince:
parsley
mint
basil
dandelion - young plants, roots and all, should be cleaned thoroughly of dirt and minced very finely as this weed has a powerful flavour

sprinkle:
sunny dandelion petals and sweet clover heads

add:
a simple dressing: olive oil, lemon juice, sea salt (be generous – it is important to replenish our salt reserves in the summer, and salt tones down the bitterness of dandelion) & fresh pepper

To be protein-wise, add crumbled hard-boiled egg, or left-over cooked beans and grains. Enjoy!

Moira Peters exchanges her gardening gloves for a pair of salad tongs, finding the pickings for a summer salad in unlikely places.

Cheating on the Special Diet

Fri, 19 May 2006 12:55:28 +0000

McGuinty's recipe for Ontario's poor

There are 760 000 people living in Ontario who can't afford to provide for themselves or their children. photo: OCAP

"The Harris government cut welfare rates by twenty-one per cent in 1995, so today - with the cost of living higher - that's forty per cent that's missing from [social assistance] cheques," explains Rachel Huot, an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).

For over a decade, OCAP and countless other organizations have been calling on the Ontario government to raise the social assistance rates in the province. "We've seen nothing from either government - Conservative or Liberal," says Huot. "We began to feel that we were in a situation where we needed to take back some of the money that we were owed."

The situation Huot refers to is a desperate one for many people living in Ontario. "There are 760 000 people living in this province who can't afford to provide for themselves or their children. I got a call from a single mom with 8 kids who gets $600 per month to live on," says Huot. "The basic situation in Toronto is that, given the lack of rent control, and given the list of 71 000 people waiting for social housing, people can't pay rent with what they're getting."

It was only when OCAP learned of the Special Diet Allowance, however, that the group knew how it would 'take back' the cash that was desperately needed by the province's poorest people. "The Special Diet Allowance is part of provincial welfare and disability policy," explains Huot. "A government approved Special Diet is prescribed by a medical provider and then welfare and disability are required to pay for the special diet allowence.

This provision was not being advertised to welfare recipients and most had never even heard of it. As it turned out, however, just about everyone qualified for the allowance: sympathetic medical professionals understood that, if someone could not afford a healthy diet, it put them at risk of future illness. Welfare and disability recipients were eligible to receive up to $250 more a month.

"With special diet – people weren't buying Cadillacs, or anything like that - but for the first time a kid was able to eat meat or strawberries, or a teenage kid was able to get an allowance for the first time. Things that other people take for granted," says Huot.

OCAP understood the dramatic effect the Special Diet Allowance could have on people's lives, and began doing what the government was not – telling people about it.

In February 2005, OCAP began holding "Hunger Clinics." In community centres, apartment buildings and parks across the province, people could see a supportive medical provider who was able to prescribe the Special Diet Allowance.

Thousands of people signed up for the Allowance through OCAP's clinics. "Without [the clinics] the Somali ladies would not have even known about [the Special Diet Allowance]," says Amina Ali. Ali became involved with OCAP through the Hunger Clinics where she translated the forms and the doctor's questions for Somali women.

"So many of them have 6 or 7 kids. Their money from welfare was not enough," explains Ali. "Whatever you get goes to the rent, and then the rest - maybe 50 bucks - has to last. You know how stressful it is when you don't know what you're going to feed your kids tomorrow….It's not healthy.

"[The Special Diet Allowance] helped a lot," Ali continues. "They could buy fruits and vegetables and stuff that they didn't have before. They could afford to eat meat." Ali says the women she knew no longer needed the painkillers and sleeping pills they were using to cope with the stress. "The mothers were happy and the stress was less. "

"We had a few months [with the allowance] that went okay," says Ali. "Now it's back to the way it was."

In November 2005, the McGuinty government revised the application criteria for the Special Diet Allowance, drastically decreasing the number of people that are eligible. Minister of Social Services Sandra Pupatello said that people were cheating the system. "We have a problem with this because the system has to have integrity."

Huot does not see a system with integrity. " We want to be clear that when they talk about cheating, they're talking about single moms who were able to feed their children, or someone who was living on the street who could finally afford to get an apartment and keep it. These are the people who they were calling 'cheaters.'"

A Special – and Not-So-Special – Meal

"They love to eat rice and meat. Goat meat and rice and cook it for the kids. They love pasta with the sauce. Mostly they like rice and meat and vegetables and all that.

"Boil the goat meat and then you make a curry out of it. You make rice. Steam veggies and put it on top of the rice. And drink a lot of milk cause they love that too.

"Without speical diet supplement, no rice, no milk, no meat. Maybe a can of beans and bread if they can find it."

– Amina Ali on the meals her Somali friends cook for their children

Hillary Bain Lindsay learns that McGuinty's recipe for Ontario's poor has left thousands hungry for more.

Home Grown Dissent

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 20:33:19 +0000

Connecting the evening news and the evening meal

Why aren't Canadians eating food grown locally? John Bonnar

"April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain."
–T.S. Eliot, the Wasteland

On and off the fields, things have indeed been 'stirring' this spring. Thanks to the Easter weekend, grocery stores recorded some of the highest daily profits of the year. April also saw thousands of farmers literally drive their tractors into the political arena.

An estimated 10,000 farmers traveled to Parliament Hill in early April to protest their rising costs and falling incomes. They brought their tractors and the message that Canadian farmers cannot bear the burden of negative incomes produced by a dysfunctional food system.

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) reports that realized net income for the average Canadian farm is between negative $10,000 and negative $20,000 per year. Meanwhile, agribusiness corporations supplying inputs such as chemicals and seeds are making record profits. Likewise, food processors, exporters and retailers are also enjoying high profits at farmers' expense, according to the NFU.

Around the same time that Canadians were spending record amounts on groceries over the Easter long weekend, tractors began blockading food terminals in Ontario. Farmers were protesting the small amount of profits they will see from grocery stores that are flooded with foreign products.

The blockades were called off at three Ottawa terminals on April 15 after discussions with federal officials led organizers to believe that the upcoming federal budget would provide help to Canadian farmers. A second victory came on April 18, when the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors, which represents the heavyweights in the grocery industry, agreed to bolster the farmers' lobbying efforts and push for new regulations promoting Canadian produce on grocery store shelves.

Colleen Ross, the National Farmers' Union's Women's president and organic farmer, points out that recent farm protests in Canada are part of a larger international movement of farmers seeking social and economic justice. April 17 was the International Day of Farmers' Struggle, an event organized by La Via Campesina, a coalition of international farm organizations. Farm and food issues affect all people, says Ross: "The structure of the global food system is an issue that should concern everyone."

Although the farming crisis is a global one, Ross brings the issues back to the manageable level of the dinner table. Canadians can support farmers and local economies by eating locally grown food, says Ross who likes to "encourage…nay, hound!... people to boycott products that compete directly with Canadian grown and raised products." Even this can be tricky, however, as labeling laws in Canada "are so misleading, that even when people think they are buying Canadian, what they are often getting is some water and a container from Canada and the contents coming from China," says Ross. "For example, apple juice concentrates coming from China and reconstituted here [and] bottled and marked Canadian Number 1."

Over the long weekend in April, Ross cooked up a meal for her family at her home near Iroquois, Ontario. She used mainly local ingredients that can be frozen and canned from the garden, or bought at local grocery stores or directly from farmers markets. Although Ross does use some non-local ingredients, like olive oil and pepper, she says that many meals can be sourced locally. In Ontario, "you can find locally-grown apples, squash and even wines. Carrots and other vegetables grown and stored over winter can be found across the country. The list of high-quality Canadian foods that are available is endless," she says. "Unfortunately, it's not always easy to find Canadian-grown on the shelves," she adds. Ross suggests consumers ask specifically for Canadian-grown produce and Canadian-raised meat products.

In spring, when new crops are just beginning to stir in the fields, Ross recommends the following meal, which can be made with locally grown ingredients.

Colleen Ross' Spring Feast

"For the chicken we have free-range organic, which I raise here. First, season the chicken with sea salt and fresh ground pepper. Brown the whole chicken all over in a big pan with some butter and some olive oil. Then put in a casserole dish that has a lid, but not too small to crowd the chicken. You then pour over the juice of two lemons and about two cups of milk, then about 10 cloves of garlic, crushed but not minced. Season again well. Add either tarragon leaves or basil, whatever you have, best fresh. (I freeze whole leaves that I take out and use like fresh in cooking. Better than drying everything.). This is very important. Take the lid off for the last 1/2 hour. Cook in total for about two hours, depending on size of chicken. The chicken should be nicely browned."

Ross accompanies the chicken with roasted Canadian parsnips, potatoes, onions, sweet potatoes and carrots seasoned with sea salt and pepper, olive oil, herbs, and baked in a covered casserole dish in the oven with a few table spoons of water. For dessert, Ross recommends Kawartha Dairy 100% Canadian Ingredients ice cream.

In solidarity with farmers' protests in Ontario, Kristen Howe dishes up a spring feast made with local ingredients.

Against the Grain

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 00:48:01 +0000

Speerville's bioregional ethic supports local economies

A thousand acres of organic grain is now grown in the Maritimes, for the Maritimes Manitoba Government

"We feel that more people in Atlantic Canada should be eating more food that's produced in Atlantic Canada," explains Todd Grant, manager of Speerville Flour Mill.

"Eat local," is the oft repeated mantra of grassroots agriculture, environmental and food security organizations, but businesses that embody that ethic are few and far between.

The organic grains and cereals produced by Speerville Flour Mill in Speerville New Brunswick are not available outside the Maritimes. Although having more people in British Columbia or Ontario eating food produced in Atlantic Canada might increase Speerville's profit margin, Grant does not see it a choice the Mill can justify.

The average meal travels 1500 miles from field to table. Almost one third of transport trucks on Canada's highways are carrying food. Less than one per cent of the Atlantic region's available cereals and flour are actually produced in the region.

This system degrades the environment, explains Grant, and is devastating to local economies. "If you drive through Atlantic Canada, the farms are disappearing left, right and centre." Grant understands the depth of that loss more than the average city slicker: "I grew up on a farm. It's a way of life I believe in and want to see available for young people to experience." Speerville has made a significant effort to ensure that this will be the case in the Maritimes.

When the mill was founded over 20 years ago, almost no organic grain was being grown in the Maritime region. Today, with harvests destined for Speerville Mill, small farmers in the region grow almost 1000 acres of organic grain..

At the mill the grain is stone ground, a milling process that uses the entire kernel. The result is a high fibre, nutritious, delicious tasting whole grain flour, says Grant. "It's the old fashioned way of doing it."

It's obvious when talking to Grant that he believes 'the old fashioned way' has more to teach modern industrial agriculture than most would care to admit. Heavy pesticide use has resulted in land so depleted and chemicalized that "it's not able to produce healthy food any more," says Grant. But to his dismay, 'organic' no longer means healthy or natural either: "Do you know that they have organic white cake mix?!"

Speerville's Whole Wheat Bread

Place in a bowl:
1 Tbsp Baking Yeast
3 cups Warm Water
1/4 cup Honey

Add: 3 1/2 to 4 cups of Stone Ground Whole Wheat Flour

Stir the mixture (from outside inward), folding in air.
Cover with a damp cloth and set in a warm place for about an hour.

Fold in:
2 tsp Salt
1/4 cup Oil
3 to4 cups Flour

Knead for 10 minutes using 1 to 2 cups of flour and more as needed until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Place dough in a lard oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth and set in a warm place for about one hour - or until double in size.

Punch down with your fist until air is worked out of the dough.
Cut into loaves. Let sit for 5 minutes.
Shape and place in baking dish.
Cover and let rise for 15 minutes.
Bake bread at 350° F for 50 minutes.

Makes 3 large loaves.

Hillary Bain Lindsay discovers a flour mill in rural New Brunswick that is nourishing the local economy by ensuring that Maritimers eat local.

Bean Waiting

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 00:26:20 +0000

In Guatemala black beans are prepared slowly, simply and saltily

Cooking in the dirt floor kitchens of Guatemala photo: Chris Cohoon

My bean-cooking tutor, eighteen-year-old Elida, finds a sunny spot where she crouches to painstakingly sort through the dried legumes, removing cracked, chipped or otherwise imperfect beans, saving them for planting. If included, she explains, they would make the rest of the beans taste bitter. Elida rinses the selected beans and dumps them, along with an outrageous amount of salt and half a minced onion, in a barro (clay) pot filled with water. She boils them over a low fire all day long, adding firewood and water as needed.

Gastronomic heaven can be reached by blending the cooked beans with their own broth and frying them in lots of oil and more onions. Eaten before market Friday mornings on crisp, roasted tortillas with fresh cheese, frijoles colados instantly became my favorite food in Guatemala. I still make them, as an accompaniment to scrambled eggs and toast, as bean dip for parties, or sometimes, with hot corn tortillas and feta cheese, in memory of the Perfect Flavour Combo found only in dirt floor, open-fire kitchens in the Guatemalan highlands.

Central American Black Bean Dip

2 cups dried Black beans
Water
1 large or 2 medium onions, chopped
oil or lard
salt

Soak beans overnight. Drain the liquid and put soaked beans in pot with fresh water to cover. Add 1-2 tsp of salt and bring to a boil. Simmer partially covered until beans are very soft. Fry the onion in a pan with the oil or lard on medium-low heat until onions are soft and translucent. Blend with beans and some of the cooking liquid until the desired consistency is reached. Add salt to taste.

In the dirt floor, open fire kitchens of Guatemala, Moira Peters learns the fine art of cooking black beans.

Of Sturgeon and Hydro Québec

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 23:03:28 +0000

Food from the rivers we are losing

Illustration by Sylvia Nickerson

On Saturday, November the 5th, 2005, Hydro Quebec flooded another 600 square kilometres of James Bay territory to fill in a new reservoir across the Eastmain River. Hydro-electric development has destroyed the Eastmain river and with it the spawning grounds of the fish that used to swim there, including the lake sturgeon.

The sturgeon has been called "the most valuable fish in the world." Its eggs, or caviar, sell for an astonishing $7,000 a kilo. Around the world, caviar is considered a culinary delicacy and an aphrodisiac. But there's a lot more to sturgeons than their economic value and powers to increase human sexual confidence.

Sturgeons are known to be friendly and to actually like humans; they seem to enjoy human presence. They grow slowly - lake sturgeons grow to be a metre long - taking seven to eight years to reach sexual maturity. And they eat slowly. They dine on the bottom of lakes, riverbeds and oceans, tasting their way across the muddy bottoms feasting on insect larvae, worms, crayfish, snails, and other small fish as they migrate up to their spawning beds.

The species of sturgeon that inhabited the Eastmain is likely as old as the river itself. The life span of a sturgeon is anywhere from 50 to 150 years long, but sturgeons as a species are so old they knew the dinosaurs. The species is thought to be 80 million years old. They are called living fossils and act as a vital link to our pre-historic past.

Almost all kinds of sturgeon are endangered because of over-fishing, water pollution and hydroelectic development. HydroQuebec is trying to develop new spawning runs for the sturgeon and other fish whose spawning grounds have been destroyed by the Eastmain dam. But previous dam and dike developments for hydroelectricity in the James Bay have lead to unhealthy levels of mercury in the fish in the area.

This sturgeon recipe is an old one from Miss Leslie's Directions for Cookery. Written by Eliza Leslie the cookbook was first published in 1837. I chose this recipe because it is simple and I imagine it to be best enjoyed somewhere between the 51st and 54th parallel, cooked on an open fire near the shores of a mighty river, the way sturgeon was probably enjoyed by the James Bay Cree for so many thousands of years.

Carefully take off the sturgeon's skin, as its oiliness will give the fish a strong and disagreeable taste when cooked. Cut from the tail-piece slices about half an inch thick, rub them with salt, and broil them over a clear fire of bright coals. Butter them, sprinkle them with cayenne pepper, and send them to table hot, garnished with sliced lemon. Squeeze lemon over the fish before eating.

According to Environmental Defense's Oceans Alive, the most eco-friendly sturgeon to eat for its meat and for its caviar is farmed white sturgeon from the Pacific coast.

Carole Ferrari dishes up a recipe for Sturgeon with bittersweet morsels of background on the ancient fish's fate.