Category Archives: Food

The Global Toolkit of Skills You Will Need to Survive the Apocalypse

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Since I can’t seem to function at all when I’m hungry, I believe that keeping a happy belly is the #1 skill you will need to survive the apocalypse.

You will need to know how to throw a great dinner party wherever your apocalyptic survival plan takes you. Morale is vital to survival. Pot-lucks are great for morale.

You must know how to hunt, kill and use all parts of an animal for food and supplies. Vegan’s will not survive the apocalypse – another reason to enjoy bacon while you can.

You need to know which foods provide which vitamins. It would be pretty embarrassing to die from gangrene when there are zombies everywhere.

Survival Strategies from Around the World

By: Martin Renauld and Peter Joerdell

Martin says…

Looking back at history, I would guess Argentina would face the apocalypse using class warfare… Until now, argentinean upper class/oligarchy has reacted with force to most attempts to improve lower class living conditions, especially in tough times. Therefore, if food becomes scarce, migrations from neighboring countries start to flow in, zombies appear everywhere or even Jesus coming back to punish us (except Jehovah witnesses of course)… The rich and powerful Argentinean would do as they have done over the past 200 years, just bring a docile dictator and make sure not the share vital resources. Argentina produces a lot a food (for about 7 times its population), which I guess would help getting the rich richer if famine starts spreading around the world.

Peter says…

And welcome to the German perspective on „the Apocalypse“. And to be honest, it’s going to be a bit of a let-down. Because, frankly, us Germans, we’re quite used to the doom & gloom-perspective. I mean, just look at the end of WW2 – we’ve had the shit bombed out of us like no other nation. And ever since then, German Angst has been on the agenda (it’s no miracle that term is recognized and understood, globally). We’ve always had this imminent perdition-thing going: First it was the Cold War, then it was BSE, now the Economic Crisis and the Post-911 terror-craze… And as I said, if you go back to WW2 – everyone has their own family-stories here, to which to relate to when dealing with the apocalypse. In many ways, the final days of WW2 are the blueprint. How Uncle Willy ran away from his post, ditching his uniform and making for home through the woods. How Grandma, right after giving birth to my mum ran through the firestorm of what used to be Remscheid while the city ceased to exist, losing all her family in just one night. How my own dad stared down the gun-barrels of the Red Army as an eleven year old kid. If we’re honest, we’ve seen it all in the 20th century. Hyper-inflation, two world wars, a dictatorship made in hell, being threatened to be the first to go in nuclear holocaust…

The only new component in today’s apocalypse is that the environmental-issue is now also on the menu.

So, what would Germany do? I don’t know. Specific survival strategies have always proven to be difficult to maintain in the face of actual obliteration. Experience dictates that a lot of sheer luck is usually needed to come out alive and unscathed.

Maybe we oughta stick to the positive side: There won’t ever be a speed limit on the Autobahn after the world has ended. We won’t have to bail out Greece with our money. We’ll not be sewing T-Shirts for the Chinese market (as we might well do, according to some pessimists, in 20 years).

The best solution might actually be that of my friend Frank. His daughter was born on December 21st, 2010. He named her Maya. And he’s quite confident that her second birthday won’t be her last.

Winter

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Winter has been slow arriving this year. In a lot of ways it is hard to complain. The warmer weather is easier on our energy bills and makes for an less stressful commute, especially as a transit strike since October still has me driving when I’d much rather be reading, listening to music, or doing a better job with my gumboot posts. But at the same time there are a lot of parts of winter that I’ve been looking forward to that as a result of the warmer weather I’ve put off. But in the last couple of weeks winter has shown up in Toronto, the air is crisp and there is snow on the ground. I want to share a few things that make the dark, cold, snowy (or rainy) months something for me to enjoy and hope you too find positivity in the months ahead.

Getting (and Sleeping) Outside.

I wasn’t always a fan of spending time outside in winter until I started running a few years ago and kept on running right through winter.  (Check out Jim’s past post on the lonely community of winter runners).  I then realized that being outside in winter makes those dark vitamin D deprived months a lot better. Sure there aren’t seemly endless hours of sunshine and instead there are layers of every type of clothing imaginable, but there also aren’t sunburns or mosquitoes.  This year, Jim and I are taking our quest to embrace winter a step further with our plan to complete a whole year of camping every month.  And after sleeping outside on Dec. 23 and Dec. 24, with temperature dipping close to -20C the first night and waking up to a white Christmas the next, I can say that I’m looking forward to more outside time in the months ahead.

Seasonal Hobbies (and hobbies that adapt to the season).

When I’m not outside in winter I enjoy being curled up on a coach with cat on my lap, watching TV, which I do way more of in the winter (I’m re-watching The Wire right now).  Two additional hobbies make this better, knitting and beer.  I’m a seasonal knitter and it wasn’t until last week that I picked up the needles again, which coincided with Toronto’s first substantial snowfall.  It means that when my tendency is more towards hibernation than outside, I end up with something cozy coincidentally makes winter better.  Beer, which I’ve recently started brewing, had to undergo some adaptations for winter, which we’re still working out.  The brewery has moved from friends’  backward to our apartment for the winter, where our back deck’s overhang and ground-level bathtub (for the beer chilling) means we can brew through the cold months.  And as long as we figure out how to adjust for the higher evaporation rate in winter we’ll keep ending up with amazing beer.

Tomatoes, Endings and Beginnings

And finally, what would one of my lists be without a reference to tomatoes.  I’ve just cooked my last fresh tomatoes a couple of days ago. That’s right, tomatoes that I grew on my back deck that have been slowly ripening wrapped in newspaper in the months since they’ve been picked in the fall.  They were delicious.  And while that should make me sad, it is only a mere month and a half until I plant tomato seeds again.  In the meantime, I have cans of crushed tomatoes, homemade salsa, pizza sauce, and ketchup for the down-time in mid-winter.

What makes you happy about winter? 

Lessons in Culinary Community Building

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Picture a long festive table decked with candles and lined with  a dozen smiling faces. Surely, all the ingredients for sharing of food, laughter and good conversation? Well, not so much.

As I sat down excited to spend the evening catching up with everyone, I realized a good third of the long table was out of earshot and I was confined to chatting only with my immediate neighbour. Others dishes were also out of tasting/sharing range. By the end of the evening, I left for home feeling unfulfilled -  increasingly convinced  that other cultures, particularly in Asia, but, oddly, as close as Switzerland, know where it’s at when it comes to shared dining. Here’s why:

Circle Sitting:

Rectangular tables are recipes for isolation and are basically retrograde – some sort of throwback to medieval banqueting. They’re also hierarchical when you think about it. Why do we need a “Head of the table”, for example? Sitting in a circle does away with all that and facilitates a shared social and culinary experience. Chinese Dim-sum restaurants have got it right.

Cooking (!) the food at the table:

Last year’s Christmas highlight was having endless Swiss Raclette with my family. A stack of cheese and a two little propane fired pans set up around our coffee table was all it took to have an interactive, collaborative and leisurely meal.

Japanese 'Hot Potting'

 

This year, the highlight was my first Japanese Hot Pot experience with six friends. Again, we relaxed around two bubbling cookers, working together to keep the pots full of pre-prepared seafood, mushrooms, kim-chi and other delicacies.

Admittedly my international experience is limited and hence my examples are too. But I feel it’s safe to say the West has a lot to learn. Sure – we’re good around a campfire with wieners and marshmallows, but it’d be great to bring that communal experience more regularly into our homes. Chopping the corners off all tables square is good start!

 

 

 

Food Charters: building a food community

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As part of my work I get to be involved in some really interesting projects.  One of the latest is the development of a food charter.  A food charter is a statement of values and principles to guide a community’s food policy. People from a broad spectrum of community interests and organizations meet and discuss their concerns and desires around food and agriculture policy in order to come up with a common vision and set of principles. These form the basis of a unique, local, community food charter.

Food Charters are still fairly new.  Toronto has had one since 2000, Sudbury since 2004, and Vancouver since 2007.  In the past three years at least half a dozen other communities have adopted them and even more are starting to work on them.  When a food charter is adopted by a municipal council it becomes a public document to guide decision-making.  It also can be endorsed by other organizations and form the basis of partnerships to work toward common goals.  In many ways, the food charters adopted so far look fairly similar.  I imagine the small steering committee that I’m on could sit down and write it over an afternoon and it wouldn’t look that different from what we are likely to end up with.  But while having a statement of shared values might be the obvious outcome that we want to achieve, an even more important outcome is the relationships that the process of co-developing a Food Charter will forge.

One of the things that I like most about the Food Charter process so far is it has been a tool to bring together stakeholders from a range of different backgrounds, including health, agriculture, environment, tourism, processing, retail, transportation, local, regional and provincial government, social equity, poverty, waste management, and education.  Individuals and organizations that have never been in the same room before have come together to discuss the Food Charter.  To me, this means that even in the main goal of getting a Food Charter adopted doesn’t happen right away that’s OK.  The relationship building that is occurring during the process of meetings and community engagement is already incubating new projects.  Even after one public meeting an action plan to go along with the charter started to emerge and at the top of that list was the need to collaborate, cooperate, network and share.  A new food community is budding and I’m looking forward to being a part of it.

A Recipe for Community: No-Knead Bread

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Winter is on its way to Toronto.  The signs are here.  The last tomato flowers were brushed by frost last week.  The fair-weather runners have vanished from the streets.  Our cat has re-mastered her skill of sleeping under blankets.  And our farmers’ market has moved to winter hours, now only open every second week.  That means that the supply of amazing artisan breads from St. John’s Bakery has been cut in half.  And the rest of what our neighbourhood has to offer bread-wise is pretty dismal in comparison.  So rather than suffer with disappointing grocery store loaves, I’ve just started making bread again.

Making bread isn’t new to me.  As a grad student I made bread a lot, even keeping a sourdough starter for a while.  But my schedule was more flexible then, I often worked at home and could adapt my schedule to the rhythm of whatever bread I was making.  That isn’t the case now that I work a regular 8:30 – 4:30 job.  Add in a morning run, commute time, and making dinner and there isn’t much flexibility or time left over to accommodate most bread recipes.  Bread needs to fit my schedule, not the other way around.  And that is where this no-knead bread recipe fits in.  I can mix the ingredients before work, let it rise during the day, shape it for a second rise when I get home, cook dinner as it rises, and it bakes as I’m relaxing. Most of the work is doen by time.  The recipe has been around for a while and was introduced to me a few years ago by a friend in Kingston (who does a bread CSA).  And it wasn’t like it was from an obscure source; it was originally published in the New York Times.  So I am by no means that first who blogged about it (go ahead, Google “no knead bread” and be amazed by the reviews and variations), but I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway. 

So why is this bread a recipe for community?  First of all, it is accessible.  There isn’t any complicated skill involved in getting amazing bread with this recipe.  You need to know how to stir, fold, turn on an oven, and wait for intervals along the way.  Kneading, which is the hardest and messiest part of a lot of bread recipes, is cut out of the equation.  Second, it connects us with our past.  Not that long ago, a lot of bread was made at home or locally in smaller batches.  And that is how it has been for most of the 10,000 years or so that people have been making bread.  The process of turning the basic ingredients of flour, yeast, salt and water into bread and witnessing the steps of that transformation has inspired and astonished us for millennia (like in Christianity, where bread represents the body of Christ).  And thirdly, this bread is one that you can share with your community.  Sure, you won’t believe this when you’ve devoured the first few loaves before they’ve had a chance to fully cool off.  But, as it becomes part of your routine, you will begin to share the bread you’ve made and the recipe with your community.  Enjoy!

No-Knead Bread – New York Times

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

VanValley is delicious!

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I signed up for the VanValley Buyers Club in July and it’s been such a fabulous experience, I had to share.  We paid about $600 up front for 17 weeks of amazing produce.  Each week, we’re pretty much set for fruit and veggies except for a few extras here and there, like California grapes and avocados from Chile.  I’ve always supported the philosophy of community supported agriculture (CSA), but this is the first time I’ve been directly involved.  And it’s been awesome to be a part of.

From their website, the focus of VanValley is to provide buyers club clients with the best LOCAL produce at competitive pricing. We believe that through food and supporting sustainable LOCAL food systems we are also building relationships and community (http://vanvalley.wordpress.com).  VanValley started this year and from my perspective, it’s been a smash hit.

We’ve signed up for weekly delivery of organic produce before and I didn’t love it.  No matter how many cool-packs were included in the bin, the produce would always be a bit sad by the time I got home from work to fetch the delivery from our sunny front step.  Unfamiliar produce would often end up in the compost as I didn’t know what to do with it. And it was expensive.

In contrast, VanValley offers value, convenience and fun.  Volunteers staff a pick-up table at our local coffee house from 4 to 7pm once a week.  That means we can peacefully make our way there after work.  Most evenings, we go as a family and end up chatting with neighbours and the amazing volunteers while we’re there.  And usually, we munch on farm-fresh cucumbers from Surrey or peaches from Keremeos on the walk home.

Administration has been seamless from the start, which I must admit was a pleasant surprise.  I’m not sure why, but I expected a period of working out the kinks.  There wasn’t one and I’m still impressed by how efficient the process is.  Members of the Buyers Club receive a weekly newsletter that includes a list of the produce we’re getting, recipes featuring that produce and news from the farmers.  Plus, there’s a trades box at the pick-up location and I love that.  We have lettuce in our edible garden, so we can swap out greens from our weekly box and replace it with something that another member passed on (like blueberries – yum!).  It’s such a simple idea and it makes for an even better experience.

It’s been wonderful to eat seasonal produce.  We loved the radishes and stone fruit through summer, the tomatoes and potatoes as we approached Labour Day, and now the deep purple beets and beautiful green squashes as we settle into fall.  It’s such a natural way to eat and so incredibly satisfying because the food matches the season.

The beauty of supporting local producers and sustainable food systems has become somehow less important than the experience of participating in community in this way.  We signed up because of our politics, but interestingly, our ideological motivations have sort of faded into the background because the practice makes perfect sense and the experience is just so darn great.

Like most Vancouverites, I’m already looking forward to next summer.  And our next summer will definitely include VanValley.  In the meantime, I’ll go back to shopping on the Drive for my organic produce.  And I expect that I’ll buy California grapes and avocados from Chile less often than I did before.

Masthead photo courtesy of Augapfel.

Vacation Planning – Community Style

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As I write this I am between vacations. Yesterday I was basking in an unseasonably warm fall day in Algonquin Provincial Park. Tomorrow, I’m heading to Cape Cod and later in the week to Boston. It is my reward for a September void of days off, as work gobbled up every weekend between Labour Day and Thanksgiving.

Once the Lonely Planet or some other off the shelf travel guide was my only tool to plan trips. But increasingly, the paper books have given way to the Internet. Odds are by now you already know about the many travel websites offering deals and feedback from a community of previous vacationers. If not, you should look into it. This is increasingly the way most people I know make their travel decisions. But beyond the basics of the where to stay and what the key attractions are the Internet is offering way more. For Jim and I this means that we are getting to know and even starting to contribute to online communities around two of our current main vacation interests: canoeing and beer.

The traditional guides for canoeing in Ontario are park maps and a single prolific author on canoe routes, Kevin Callan.  These are still great resources to access, but choosing the right trip at the right time of year is the key challenge in planning a successful trip. Online paddling communities, such as Canadian Canoe Routes offer a forum to share trip routes, provide advice, and learn about seasonal differences in a region. Other sites like Virtual Algonquin and Algonquin Map provided more specific details on Algonquin for our trip planning this summer and fall. These resources have meant we were able to get off the beaten track in August when some parts of the park get booked to capacity and let us know when to check out the most popular lakes, like Canoe Lake, without being steamrolled by the crowds.  As new canoeists, it meant were were able to have multiple great vacations in our first year.

Travel guides for good beer seem to be few and far between in published form. But online there are thriving beer communities offering advice on the best places to get pints in whatever town you might be in.
My favourite is Beer Advocate – offering listings and user ratings for breweries, eateries, bars, retailers and u-brews. It offers a crash course in great craft beer no matter what city in North American you are in.  Another great resource is The Beer Mapping Project, helpful for thirsty travelers to get acquainted with the local beer landscape.  And there are what seems like countless more resources, recommendations, and reviews out there to guide the way to better beer rather than large scale commercial brews that I could just as easily find in the bar around the corner from where I live.

The Internet is now my main gateway to traveling. It lets me get closer to communities that share my interests and gain more intimate knowledge of a space that I will only be in for a short period of time. And very little of this knowledge, advice or tips would be available to me without the previous travelers or generous locals that took the time to share and document their experiences. Bon voyage!

Fresh Turkey: Breaking Thanksgiving Tradition

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Thanksgiving traditions are treasured. Thinking back though, I realize that it has been a very long time since I had a traditional Thanksgiving. Hearing people discuss their plans for the upcoming weekend of feasts had me feeling a bit dejected for the past few weeks. If you share this circumstance or have occasionally caught your lower lip jutting out towards self-pity in recent days, take heart. I am here to tell you that missing out on all the usual trimmings really isn’t the same thing as missing out on all the fun.

The Gumboot proclaimed winner of the ‘war of the holidays’ earns its crown for many reasons. Many of those things that make Thanksgiving so favored are conspicuously absent from what has become my atypical Thanksgiving.  If upholding tradition is an option, it is still probably the best option but, if not, there is still hope for your Thanksgiving weekend to be full of all the warmth and happiness it’s meant to bring.

Coming from a large matriarchal family, my Italian grandmother and her many daughters (my mom and aunts) have always been counted on to orchestrate incredible feats of holiday gatherings where food and family take center stage. Thanksgiving, however, has become the exception to this rule since the year my family elders decided they would rather roast themselves in the Palm Springs sun than roast turkeys to feed 40 people.

Since the first abandonment occurred, I have been launched from my cozy continuum of consumption and into an experiment of creating my own holiday rules. Each year a new occasion has been invented or discovered. One year was an Oregon art gallery where many new friends were eagerly introduced to the Canadian version of a holiday they also love. Another year was a potluck pool party with all the fixins. Another was simply a long table in a tiny apartment packed with close friends. Whether they were spent with old friends or new, these deviations from the thanksgiving norm that I grew up with have been filled with good company, delicious food, and the thrill of breaking free from the norm and creating something new.

The emptiness left by a tradition lost can seem much more difficult to fill than that of a hungry belly. But losing one isn’t always an occasion to grieve. It can also be an opportunity to create new experiences that will stand out from the repetition of other holidays and to create something truly memorable and soul filling. The hunt is on for this year’s adventure. I’m still not sure what it will be, but I am certain that I will find a sense of community, if not a sense of tradition, wherever I wind up.

October – the best month of them all

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Ok. I admit it. I’m biased. I happen to have a birthday that falls right at the beginning of the month. But that’s not why I like – no scratch that – love October.

Let’s start with the season itself fall. Fall seems to come into its own in October. The leaves start to change colors and here in Vancouver, that means a little more rain. The temperature cools. For Gumboot Editor-in-Chief John Horn, that means it’s time to bust out a geeky sweater. For me, it means I get to get decked out in my comfiest clothes. No more baking in the sun. When it isn’t rainy, the air is crisp and refreshing. Soon leaves will begin falling all over the city, creating a klaidescope of colour.

Weather isn’t the only thing to make October so special. The month’s also got a monopoly on some of the best holidays. October is the month of not one (Thanksgiving), but two (Halloween) great holidays! One holiday is devoted to eating and celebrating our good fortune. For anyone who loves big family meals, it doesn’t get too much better than this. Rather than the marathon that is Christmas, Thanksgiving gives you all the bounty in a far more low-key way. Then there’s Halloween. Since I was a wee-little Kurt, I enjoyed this special day. Gorging on candy, dressing up as a ghoul? Talk about awesome. As I get older, the day stays special with the help of Vancouver festivals like the Parade of Lost Souls. This year, I’ll be attending a ghost tour to really get in the Halloween spirit. There we’ll learn of the haunted tales of Vancouver’s Gastown. Muhahhahaha.

Finally, there’s the food. It’s become a bit of an annual event for me and my partner to head out to the farms surrounding Vancouver to pick fresh harvested squash, artichokes, onions and pumpkins. Decked out in gumboots, warm sweaters and scarves, it always makes fall that much more real. The bounty we take home with us allow us to cook up some of our favorite foods. Squash puff-pastry pizza, wild-mushroom pot-pie, caramelized onion soup are all favorites. It’s a great run up to the deliciousness of Thanksgiving and a reminder of all that we have to be thankful for.

*Cover photo courtesy of leopardsarespotty

Vote for Community, Provincial Edition

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Ontario is on the cusp of a provincial election.  It is one of a number of provincial and territorial elections that will be happening before the end of 2011, including Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Yukon, and Northwest Territories.  In Ontario the Liberal party has had a majority in the province for the last 8 years.  Before that the Conservative Party was in charge for just over 8 years and before that the NDP for just under 5.  Polling for this election indicates a close race between the Liberals and Conservatives, with the possibility of a minority government.

Similar to my previous post on the federal election I feel that these elections will have an impact on your community.  Provincial governments provide, support or influence a number of services including health care, education, welfare and intra-provincial transportation.  The government will make important decisions about things like how electricity is generated, how our cities grow, how much university costs, and how our healthcare system works.  They also have a lot of influence on municipal governments, deciding their areas of jurisdictions and which services or powers will be “uploaded” (responsibility shifted from municipal to provincial jurisdiction) or “downloaded” (responsibility shifted from provincial to municipal jurisdiction).

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario has been lobbying all parties to consider the current division of service delivery and seeking a funding model to make it easier for municipal governments to deliver front-line community services.  In particular AMO determined a top 12 list of priorities and provides assessments of each of the mainstream parties’ platforms against these 12 priorities.  This allows voters to assess where the parties stand on the services and investments that are made into their local government. 

But municipalities are not the only part of our community that will be impacted by the election.  A number of organizations aiming to improve the sustainability of our communities have launched campaigns to inform voters and garner the support of politicians.  My two favourites are Sustain Ontario’s “Vote ON Food & Farming” and the Heart & Stoke Foundation’s “Healthy Candidates”.  The Sustain Ontario campaign is to raise awareness around food and farming among both candidates and voters.  It is focused on the positive impacts that a sustainable food system can have on the economic, health, environment, education and community well-being of Ontario.  As well, it offers questions to ask candidates to find out more on where they stand on food and farming issues.  The Heart & Stroke Foundation’s Health Candidate Campaign is focused on getting every candidate in Ontario to pledge to invest in health promotion.  It makes it really easy to see which of your candidates has made the pledge (as seen below for my riding).  As well as offers a tool on their website to encourage your candidates to sign up.

The point of this post is not to promote a particular party, but to encourage everyone heading to a provincial election this year to consider how that election will impact what is important to them in their community.