Vert-à-Go

The Chinese melamine poisoning scandal caused a lot of people to take a closer look at their Halloween candy this year. I suspect that a lot of candy labelled ‘Made in China’ was simply thrown away by nervous parents after their kids brought it home. I know that I culled a fair amount of my kids’ treats–some because it was made in China and didn’t have any ingredients listed, some because it was overwhelmingly composed of corn syrup and modified palm oil. Other stuff got axed because it was just too ridiculously sugary for little kids (such as…tubes of powdered sugar). I didn’t really fancy dealing with a squishy-style bender, and preschoolers aren’t known for the thoroughness of their toothbrushing technique (besides, I just really fancied those Twizzlers).

But health considerations aside, there are other reasons that we need to look twice at that mound of brightly-wrapped chocolate. Most cocoa beans (from which chocolate is made) are grown by farmers and plantation workers who live in dire poverty and often suffer appalling working conditions. Over 100,000 of those workers are children–and most of them are working against their will.

The US Department of State has estimated that more than 109,000 children in Cote d’Ivoire’s cocoa industry work under “the worst forms of child labor,” and that some 10,000 or more are victims of human trafficking or enslavement. These child workers labor for long, punishing hours, using dangerous tools and facing frequent exposure to dangerous pesticides as they travel great distances in the grueling heat. Those who labor as slaves must also suffer frequent beatings and other cruel treatment.

–“The Cocoa Protocol: Success or Failure?”, June 2008, International Labour Rights Forum

Although the cocoa industry agreed to abolish child labour seven years ago, little or no improvement has been made. Cocoa companies promised to make their cocoa “child labour-free” by 2005, and when they completely missed that target, promised to

make 50% of farms child labour-free by 2008. That hasn’t happened either. In the meantime, tens of thousands of children and their families suffer in grinding poverty–earning only about 1 cent from the dollar or so we pay for a chocolate bar.

So what can we do to help the children who are the victims of the international cocoa trade, especially at this prime candy-buying time of year?

• Buy fair trade chocolate. Certified fair trade chocolate production prohibits child labour, increases the amount of money paid to farmers, and encourages safer and more environmentally sustainable farming methods. I bought mini Cocoa Camino chocolates to give away to trick-or-treaters this year. Try 10,000 Villages, Steep Hill Co-op, Herbs and Health, or Just Delights (664-6071).

• Go Reverse Trick-or-Treating. This Global Exchange campaign sets kids up with samples of free trade chocolate and postcards detailing the benefits of buying fairly traded chocolate, which they can hand out as they make their rounds. It’s a great chance to sweetly introduce people to the concept of fair trade!

• Think homemade (if and where possible). Homemade treats have mostly gone the way of the dodo bird, due to fear of tampering by unknown nutters. But you could still give out your great popcorn balls or cookies to the kids and parents you know well. It’s a sad state of affairs when people are so afraid of their own neighbours that they won’t let their kid eat a home-made treat from someone they see every day, but will let them scarf all the trans-fat laden, non-identifiable mystery-ingredient junk they can stomach. Maybe you could make it a personal challenge to get to know as many of the families on your block as you can and break down that distrust–a summer block party can be a great way to get people to open up to their neighbours.

• Try alternatives to chocolate. When I was a kid, we used to get apples. How delightfully retro! We weren’t always overjoyed, but we still ate them. This year I gave out little boxes of raisins along with the chocolate. You could also try something like Pure Fun candies–organic, kosher, vegan, fair trade candies made in Canada and the USA. They make lollipops, as well as individually wrapped sweets. Dad’s and Nutters carry their products–ask them to bring in the Halloween pack! There’s also peanuts in the shell (I wouldn’t hand these out unless there is a parent right there to say it was ok, in case of allergies), fruit leather, chips, pretzels, savoury snacks, juice boxes, applesauce/fruit cups…

• Politely pester retailers to carry fair trade candy. Stores won’t bring it in unless enough people ask them for it. So ask for it! We need to create alternatives to the mainstream chocolate and candy trade so that they know what they should be doing when their customers abandon them for their unethical business decisions.

photo by naathas

I went through the fridge today and finally dealt with a weird assortment of things that had been lying there neglected for some time, including:

• a 1L container of partly-cooked pumpkin (about 1 week old)
• about 2 cups of buttermilk (waaaaay past its best-by date–but buttermilk can stay good for weeks. Just make sure it hasn’t permanently separated)
• 1/2 cup of half and half (expiring today)
• 2 links of garlic farmer sausage (1.5 weeks old–I’d bought it fresh at the farmers’ market, so I wasn’t worried about it)
• rather limp-at-the-end green onion (1.5 weeks old)
• some beets, complete with starting-to-wilt greens (1.5 weeks old)

First I took the pumpkin (we had roasted it and used half for soup last week before running out of ambition–a whole pumpkin can be rather overfacing all at once!) and cooked it for about another 10 minutes in the microwave because it was still rather hard. Then I puréed it, getting about 3 cups worth. The purée, along with the buttermilk, was just what I needed for these fabulous and fibre-rich pumpkin chocolate chip muffins (I stuck the other two portions of pumpkin in the freezer for future use):

A most virtuous pumpkin chocolate chip muffin

Dry ingredients (combine in a large bowl)

• 1-1/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup wheat bran
• 3/4 cup ground flaxseed
• 2Tb wheat germ
• 1Tb cinnamon
• 1Tb baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup chocolate chips (I used Cocoa Camino’s fair trade organic chocolate chips for the first time, which were delicious and completely worth the extra 80 cents)

Wet ingredients (combine in a medium bowl)

• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup pumpkin purée
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup All Bran Buds cereal

Add the wet ingredients to the dry, stirring until just mixed. Bake at 400F for 20-25 minutes. Keep a close eye on them–I have found 400F to be a little hot for them in my oven and had good results at 375F today for 20 minutes only. You don’t want them to get dried out. My original recipe says that it makes 12, but I today got 12 large ones as well as a full pan of mini-muffins (based on 12, they are 210 calories each, with 6 grams of fat and 8 grams of fibre). I took the mini-muffins out at the 15-minute mark.

Afternoon snack out of the way, I used up the rest of the (shall we say mature?) ingredients in a hearty soup for supper. I combined two different recipes (here and here) to approximate a favourite restaurant dish of mine:

At-home Summa Borscht (because you can’t go to Taunte Maria’s every day)

• 3 cups of 1/2-inch cubed potatoes
• about 4 cups of water (if you had a ham stock or a bone to throw in, that would work well)
• 2 links farmer sausage, casings removed
• 1/2 cup green onion, chopped
• dill to taste (1/4 cup of fresh dill is best, but I used the last of the dried stuff from the garden because that was what I had on hand)
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup half-and-half
• 1 cup chopped beet greens
• salt to taste

Put the potatoes in a large saucepan with the water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the potatoes are tender. While they are cooking, cook the farmer sausage in a frying pan (break it up with a spoon, but keep it fairly chunky). When the potatoes are ready, stir in the sausage, the green onions, dill, beet greens, and buttermilk. Bring it back to a simmer (until the beet greens are tender–you don’t want them to turn to sludge). Season to taste–depending on the saltiness of the sausage, you may not need to add any salt at all. Stir in the half and half before serving with some lovely bread & butter (and don’t forget the dill pickles!).

Cleaning out the fridge=good food. Go see what you can rescue before it’s too late!

photo by looseends

Interested in learning how to start composting indoors with worms? On Thursday 13 November, the Saskatchewan Waste Reduction Council will be giving a free presentation on how to turn kitchen scraps into “black gold” compost using red wiggler worms.

Vermicomposting is an ideal composting choice for people who don’t have a lot of space (such as those living in apartments or working in offices) or who just don’t want to use a traditional outdoor compost bin. It will also help you greatly cut down on the amount of waste you produce–and keeping organic waste out of the landfill helps prevent methane (a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO2) from forming.

It’s also fun just to watch the little wiggly critters at work, and your plants will love you for it!

When: Thursday 13 November, 2pm

Where: Room 3, Frances Morrison Library, Saskatoon (Google map)

Cost: FREE!

Presented in partnership with the Saskatoon Public Library and the Saskatchewan Waste Reduction Council

Farmer, author (You Can Farm; Everything I Want to Do is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front), and alternative agriculture guru Joel Salatin will be swinging down to Regina on 18 November for a public lecture entitled “How to Eat Well AND Save Our Planet” (he’s in the province to take part in the Organic Connections conference in Saskatoon on the 17th). If you haven’t heard of Salatin before, I urge you to check out Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Part two of the book concentrates on the exciting integrated livestock management techniques that Salatin uses on Polyface Farm. If there was ever someone to make you yearn to raise chickens, it’s this guy:

Joel Salatin is a full-time third generation alternative farmer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Polyface Farm serves more than 1,000 families, 4 retail outlets and 30 restaurants through ongoing farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs with salad bar beef, pastured poultry, eggmobile eggs, pigaerator pork, forage-based rabbits, pastured turkey and forestry products, all through ‘relationship marketing’. The Farm has been featured on National Geographic, and countless other radio, television and print media. (Organic Connections speaker biographies)

Salatin is an inspirational, funny, and lively speaker who is living proof that there are humane and ecologically sustainable alternatives to the factory livestock farming model. You shouldn’t miss this opportunity to hear him in person! The lecture will be followed by a Q&A and book signing, and there will be door prizes too.

When: Tuesday 18 November, 7:30pm

Where: Education Auditorium, 3737 Wascana Parkway, University of Regina, Regina. Free parking available in Lot 15M. (Google map)

Cost: $10 (available starting 28 October at the U of R Bookstore, Book and Brier Patch, Cafe Orange, Eat Healthy Foods, and Willow on Wascana–any remaining tickets will be sold at the door on the night).

For more information: Facebook event page; Daryl Hepting (daryl.hepting@uregina.ca)

I once read a recipe that suggested using your leftover jack-o-lantern to make pumpkin soup. Well…maybe if you hadn’t already put a lit candle in it for hours on end! I don’t personally think that the wax and soot build-up would be particularly tasty or healthy*, so I toss our old jack-o-lanterns onto the compost pile to decompose. It can be quite amusing to watch them cheerfully moulder away over the next few months (their high water content also helps balance the dry leaves already on the pile). But wouldn’t it be nice for them to have one more blaze of post-Halloween glory before heading off to that great pumpkin patch in the sky?

On Saturday 1 November, bring your old jack-o-lanterns to the Peace Flame in Rotary Park to help create a beautiful pumpkin-lit trail for everyone to enjoy (tealights will be provided). The pumpkins will be hauled away for composting afterward, keeping them out of both the landfill and your guilty conscience–so they definitely won’t come back to haunt you. Nothing scary about that!

The First Annual Pumpkins in the Park Festival

When: Saturday 1 November 2008, 6:30-8:30pm

Where: Rotary Park, Saskatoon, SK (Google Maps)

For more information: call Reta Derksen at 653-2783

Sponsored by the Nutana Community Association

* If you do want to cook a jack-o-lantern after Halloween, you should really draw on the pumpkin rather than actually cutting right into it. Check out these tips on how to cook them and how to put the ‘green’  into Halloween.

(right: Roma, Tigerella, Thai Pink Egg, Sweet Gold, Sweet Millions, and Green Zebra tomatoes)

We are now well into autumn, and the last of the food has been harvested from our various garden patches. Everything has been eaten fresh, canned, frozen, or put into cold storage. But how did the growing season measure up? It’s important to keep a yearly record of what you grew, where, and how it fared–otherwise, you may find yourself staring at a bunch of seed packets and plants next spring, thinking, ‘What on earth was that thing I grew last year? Where did I put it? Did it actually grow, or was that the other one?’ I call it gardeners’ amnesia–it’s astonishing how easily all your years of gardening can run together in your memory, making you waste time replanting something that wasn’t very successful in the past (or force you to rack your brains for days trying to remember what on earth that fabulously productive and drought-resistant plant was and where on earth you found it).

Your records don’t need to be fancy (if they’re too fancy, you won’t have time to actually garden!). Draw up a quick map showing where you put everything, and then make a list of all the individual plants with a note or two about how they grew. Once that’s done, jot down a few general notes. Did you make particular soil amendments? Use a specific fertiliser? What were the weather conditions like? Were you hit by any plagues of pests, and if so, what did you do to combat them? If you had any ideas for how to improve something in the garden next year, write it down now! You’re pretty much guaranteed to forget some detail or other. I also went round with a camera and took a photo of everything in an attempt to keep myself from impatiently digging up all my perennials in June and shifting them around (only to discover in July that there was a very GOOD reason I hadn’t put it there–there was already another plant still waiting to come up!) For more advice on specifics, Mother Earth has a good article on garden record keeping here.

Here’s a rundown of 2008’s successes and disappointments:

Back garden

Tomatillos

See, I’m already running into trouble here–I bought two from different nurseries and one ended up maturing much earlier and had much larger fruit than the other variety. But the varieties weren’t listed on the sticks and I can’t actually remember which was which.

Tomatoes

Tigerella (along garage wall) — disappointing producer, probably due to poor sun/heat conditions (Shaughnessy Gardens)

Thai Pink Egg (along garage wall) — nice fruit, but not huge numbers of them, see above (Shaughnessy Gardens)

Sweet Gold (along chain link fence) — amazing taste!! fabulous producer. definitely get again (Floral Acres)

Sweet Millions (along garage wall) — great as usual (Floral Acres)

Green Zebra (along chain link fence) — took forever to mature and didn’t produce much, but would probably give it another chance

Prairie Pride (in 5-gallon pails by fence) — bought them quite advanced, they burned out a bit quickly but would try again

Chillies

I put in jalapenos and a bell-shaped green-purple variety in the large container as usual. They did pretty well, considering the lack of sun.

Raspberries

Did amazingly well–if next year isn’t as rainy, try to give them as much water as I can as it obviously helped

Strawberries

The plants really took off in their new raised bed and I’m expecting a lot more fruit next year, once their established. Keep on top of the quack grass!!

Cucumbers

I bought a few bush-style cucumbers and put them in 5-gallon pails by the fence. They did not do well…but I was also perhaps (definitely) rather neglectful of them.

Green beans

Bush-style, from Early’s–I planted these in front of the tomatoes and they did quite well (better on the chain link fence side); I’d do that again–there weren’t really enough for freezing but we ate quite a few fresh and I put quite a lot into soup. Probably got the equivalent of $25 worth.

Dill

This never comes back, but it always does fine when I plant it every year.

Lettuce

I seeded the containers quite early (early May) and they did great. I didn’t get the Strela Green seeds in time (Salt Spring Seeds) for the first planting–try them next year!

Front garden

Lettuce

I chose several different varieties (buttercrunch, salad bowl red, rocket (arugula), perpetual spinach, mesclun) to add different colour and texture to the front beds. I staggered two plantings and they did really well (grew faster before tree canopy came in, but then stayed nice and didn’t bolt in the heat later). I loved going out front to pick.

Carrots

I put in two rows of carrots at the front. Next time I wouldn’t stagger the plantings because I ended up just leaving them till the very end of the season anyway. As they don’t get much sun there, they didn’t grow very big,  but the foliage was pretty, they did produce a modest quantity of carrots, and carrot seed is cheap. I’d probably look for the shortest maturity time when picking carrot seed next year.

Chives

The chives I put in the front did well and looked quite nice even as an ornamental feature.

Chillies

I put a couple of extra jalapeno plants out front mainly to add some colour. Considering their puny growth rate, they ended up with a decent amount of fruit.

Scarlet runner beans

These looked ok, but took FOREVER to come up and just never got enough sun to really bush out. I think I’ll try some other kind of flowering vine next time.

Strawberries

I put a couple of strawberry plants in the front and they didn’t do anything; that’s to be expected in the first year so I guess I’ll leave them be for another one and see what happens.

Herb spiral

Rosemary, curly parsley, Italian parsley (they grew very slowly, but were healthy enough)

Oregano, sage, thyme (grew very large and prolific)

Cilantro (this is the first time I’ve *ever* managed to get it to grow without bolting within 5 minutes. I scattered the dried seeds below the obelisk and am hoping some plants will come up there; if not, I’ll get 2 plants for the spiral? they were a little tall in comparison to the other plants, though)

Basil–regular, lemon, lime, Thai (they got pretty spindly…probably not enough sun out front. Might be worth trying it again, especially if I started my own basil and could put more in at the back for volume rather than odd leaves for cooking here and there.)

Ripping out the front lawn and putting in the herb spiral, the new walkways and beds was the best thing I could have possibly done. I wish I’d done it years ago. I LOVED having the herb spiral and chives, etc, out front. It was both handy and attractive, gave the space focus, and brought us out to the front garden much more often. It feels so much more neighbourly now, and many passers-by commented on how they liked it. I also think it is a great idea to challenge people’s notion of what you can and can’t plant in a front yard. Why not plant vegetables or fruit? Why remain a slave to a lawn that you don’t even use?

Community garden

Potatoes

The foliage in the middle of the patch mysteriously turned brown at the beginning of August and looked very sickly. We couldn’t really identify the problem, and those plants didn’t produce much of anything. The other ones around the edges did quite well, though.

Carrots

Did great, but really needed more thinning as they didn’t have enough room to grow large and straight

Beets

could also have been thinned more to give them more space to grow.

Parsnips

These were tasty, but small. We left them in the ground until mid-October, but they just didn’t seem to get much of a chance to grow. I think they came from seed–it might be worthwhile starting the seeds inside earlier so that they would have a better chance to mature.

Swiss chard (Bright Lights)

This was so successful–prolific, long-lasting, drought resistant, and tasty!

Corn

Something seriously weird happened here. The cobs just didn’t appear (those that did, were small or mutated). I wonder if there was a problem with the seed, as the same thing happened to my mom’s crop and we used her leftover seed.

Basil, roma tomatoes, jalapeno peppers

These were too overshadowed by the potatoes. Plant the basil and peppers on the north/east edges in future rather than further in.

Butternut squash

This just didn’t do anything. I think it was a bad year for squash (probably needed more sun and room)

Bell peppers

These did pretty well, but would probably have done even better along the edges of the plot. Overall, I think that the community garden space is best left for stuff that can be planted and then just merely tended until a fell-swoop harvest. Green beans would have been nice, but it can be hard to catch stuff at its peak ripeness when it isn’t right outside your door.

Weather: A very cool and wet summer (there were several weeks when it rained nearly every day to some degree, and it was really quite grey), although it smartened up a bit in August. Lots of things were late (tomatoes especially) because of the lack of heat, but September was gorgeous and there wasn’t a killing frost until the middle of October. I only had to use the hose to water a couple of times the entire summer–the rain barrels kept everything happy. Get that other rain barrel organised for next year!

Fertiliser: I used organic tomato spikes and earthworm casing fertiliser. What I really need to do is go take some soil samples before it snows to measure nutrient levels.

Soil amendments: I worked in a dozen bags of well-composted manure from the Cyclones before planting

Pests/other problems: This was a particularly pest-free year. Very few canker worms or aphids. Slug problem has disappeared since moving lettuce into pots in back yard and into ground at front (please don’t let them find it there!).  There were ZILLIONS of wasps, however–lots in the front; I wonder if they were driven there by the fake wasps nests hanging at the back. Some blossom end rot on the community garden tomatoes and that unexplained potato blight, as well as the corn debacle.

And how did everyone else’s gardens fare?

This past weekend, the six members of the Number One Ladies Jam Collective got together to exchange the (preserved) fruit of their labours: strawberry, raspberry, pear ginger, apricot, and peach/raspberry jam. Delicious! We will definitely be doing this again next year.

We enjoyed a few wines during the evening, including an organic Chilean cabernet sauvignon (Cono Sur) and a French merlot packaged in the more environmentally-friendly tetrapack (French Rabbit). We sampled homemade/Saskatchewan-grown salsa, pickles, and hummus, and to top it off, I served chocolate beet cake, made from some of my beets from the community garden plot. My recipe came from the City Gardeners Cookbook, but this recipe is virtually identical (except that they sprinkled chocolate chips on the top and used canned beets and beet juice instead of 1.5 cups of fresh beet puree).

I made two 8-inch round cakes instead of one 9×13 sheet and spread peach-raspberry jam between the layers. Then I mixed up 1/2 cup of sour cream, 6oz melted semi-sweet chocolate, and 1/8tsp of salt for a quick icing. Topped with the very last surviving sprig of white and purple pansies from the garden and a few small bunches of Concord grapes from a vine at my mom and dad’s farm, it made an elegant-looking dessert that quite belied its humble roots. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of it before we devoured it!

Oxfam Canada, Saskatoon Food Coalition, CHEP Good Food Inc, and Beyond Factory Farming are hosting Saskatoon’s World Food Day event this Saturday night at Third Avenue United Church.

From 6-7:30pm, you will be able to buy delicious appetizers dished up by Saskatoon restaurants and the CHEP Community Kitchen–all featuring locally grown ingredients. During that time you can also browse the good food fair information displays, which will tell you more about good food initiatives going on in the city. The Mendel Art Caravan will be providing a craft activity area for children.

From 7:30pm, three speakers from around the world will share stories about their community’s local food challenges and successes and demonstrate how people can act globally by thinking locally.

• “From Hunger to Health: Food production and environmental sustainablity in Ethiopia” - Muktar Abduke Ahmed of SOS Sahel, Ethiopia
• “Reclaiming Indigenous Food Culture: the Muskoday First Nation vision” - Harvey Knight, Muskoday Organic Workers Co-op, Muskoday First Nation
• “Feeding the Heart of the City: the core neighbourhoods build good food alternatives” - Karen Archibald, CHEP, Saskatoon

Be sure to come out to this fun, informative, and inspirational evening, and bring your friends!

When: Saturday 18 October 2008, 6:00-9:30pm

Where: Third Avenue United Church (lower level), 304 3rd Ave N, Saskatoon (Google map)

For more information: Call Michelle Beveridge on 242-4097, or visit Oxfam Canada’s Take a Bite Out of Climate Change web site.