Vert-à-Go

One of my fondest childhood holiday memories was driving into the city after school with my parents to go late-night shopping and then finishing up at the candy counter at the Bay. We were each allowed to pick out several different kinds of candies that we would set out around the house on Christmas Eve, each in its special little dish. We had to choose carefully, because we only got to do it once a year, but there were some permanent standbys. Peppermints, macaroons, rosettes, slowpokes, butter mints, chocolate-covered raisins and peanuts, chocolate buds, butter mints, After 8s, willow crisps…it was almost better than Halloween! (we graciously let the grownups keep the boring old unshelled nuts and wield the scary silver nutcracker themselves.)

I still enjoy having extra treats around the house at Christmas time as an adult. But what about the dark side of the chocolate trade, which exploits cocoa bean farmers and plantation workers (many of whom are children working in slavery?) Fair trade rules for cocoa bean production prohibit child labour, increase the amount of money paid to farmers, and encourage safer and more environmentally sustainable farming methods. And you can rest assure that there are plenty of ethically-produced (and locally-available) goodies to satisfy your seasonal sweet tooth.

10,000 Villages is a good starting point (not only for edibles but also for beautiful fair trade Christmas decorations and gifts)–there, you can pick up Divine fair trade chocolate-covered mint wafers (After 8-style), as well as charming chocolate advent calendars (the calendars are also available at Turning the Tide Bookstore). 10,000 Villages also carries Amazon Flame’s chocolate-covered brazil nuts (both milk and dark). You can also perk yourself up in festive fashion with Just Us holiday blend coffee, described as “robust and mellow with a hint of spice”.

Cocoa Camino has a wonderful range of large fair trade chocolate bars in various flavours (bittersweet, milk, dark, espresso, orange, white with cocoa nibs, moccachino, almond, and mint). One of my favourite quick and easy desserts is broken-up chocolate bars piled on a plate with fruit (thank you, Nigel Slater!). These would be fabulous for that. You can also get semi-sweet chocolate chips and cocoa powder for your baking, as well as hot chocolate mix (both dark and regular). Cocoa Camino products are available at a number of stores, including Dad’s Nutrition Centre, Herbs and Health, and Steep Hill Co-op (these stores carry other fair trade chocolate bar brands as well, including Endangered Species Chocolate).

You can also buy Cocoa Camino chocolate and cocoa from Nancy Allan, who runs a home-based fair trade business called Just Delights (call her on 664-6071). Nancy carries a wide variety of other fair trade products, including coffees and teas, and is often seen with all of them on display at her booth at information fairs throughout the year (like Seedy Saturday and World Food Day). She had a Christmas open house yesterday, where I picked up a couple of chocolate bars. Of course, yesterday was Buy Nothing Day, but having already decided that vegetables from the farmers’ market couldn’t possibly count, I went one further and decided that fair trade goodies didn’t count either!

You can also pick up chocolate cherry almond bark (made with local sour cherries) from Wayne and Clare Pearson at Prairie Sun Orchard (call 242-7573 or email prairiesunorchard@sasktel.net). They have a stall at the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market on Saturdays, where they also sell their stupendous ice cream. The cherry swirl, cherry chocolate, and raspberry flavours (again, made with their own fruit) are all divine.

The quintessential holiday treat, of course, is the candy cane, and you will be happy to know that you can get wonderful ones from Pure Fun (available at Dad’s Nutrition Centre). Pure Fun’s candy canes are made from organic evaporated cane jucie, organic brown rice syrup, organic fruit juice, and natural peppermint oil. They are really delicious and I (and my kids) highly recommend them. Now, if only I could convince myself that they won’t all surreptitiously disappear off the tree before the 25th!

Spotted at the 2nd Avenue 10,000 Villages store yesterday…50% off Amazon Flame fair trade chocolate-covered brazil nuts (both milk and dark chocolate). These are regularly $4/85g box and are now just $1.99/box. I’m not sure if all branches of the store have this special or just this one. You might want to call ahead (242-2991) to find out if they still have them before making a special trip.

For more information: CHEP web site

With the shaky economic outlook and increased prices on many items, including food, most people are paying closer attention to their grocery bills. In the UK, pricier organic and free range foods have taken a hit, and in the US, shoppers are abandoning the champagne-style emporium Whole Foods (often dubbed ‘Whole Paycheque’) in droves for its beer-and-skittles competitor Trader Joe’s for their organic goods.

Here in Canada, we haven’t seen the same hikes as elsewhere in the world, but food prices are still up about 5-6% from this time last year (mainly on staples like flour–I expect imported produce prices will continue to follow fuel prices pretty closely). So I’m going to start posting good deals that I’ve found around town on sustainable, organic, local, and ethical food. Let me know if you spot something so we can share it!

Safeway has organic BC Gala and Jonagold apples on sale this week for only $1.49/lb. They should be available at this price until Saturday 29 November (you’ll need to be a Safeway Club member to get this price).

“We still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. But we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free.”

- Wendell Berry, “The Pleasures of Eating” from What Are People For?

One of the main reasons I decided to grow tomatillos for the first time this spring was because of the incredible tomatillo corn chowder I tried at my sister’s house last year. I simply could not get it out of my head! It is the finest soup I have ever tasted–spicy and profoundly satisfying. It is hearty enough to enjoy on its own for supper with bread, but unusual and sophisticated enough that you could happily serve it at a winter dinner party.

I harvested about 8lbs of tomatillos from my two plants this autumn, so I decided to make a double batch of this soup and stick some away in the freezer. I have to admit that it was a bit of a production–between making a huge cauldron of stock from scratch, assembling the mountain of ingredients, and preparing and roasting the vegetables, it definitely turned into an on-and-off weekend project. But don’t let that scare you off! It is *so* worth the effort in the end.

While my hands were busy gathering and preparing the ingredients (you’d be surprised how long it takes to remove the husks from 8lbs of tomatillos), I had quite a lot of free time to think about what I was making. And it struck me that this soup is actually a pretty accurate microcosm of the modern-day food production and distribution system. The ingredients came from all over the world, via a wide variety of sources, and I found that each and every one prompted a thorny question or decision. What kind of food should I buy? Where should I buy it and how much should I pay? What about growing my own? What impact do my choices have on the environment, and my health, and even the well-being of farm workers living halfway around the world? It’s important to ask these questions and consider these issues so that we don’t simply remain passive consumers of whatever some multinational corporation decides to dish out to us. We must take responsibility for what we eat.

Let’s have a look at the ingredients in detail:

• Chicken stock: I made this myself, from a local free-range bird (using mainly local vegetables, but the organic grocery store celery was imported from California). Free-range/naturally-raised animals generally have a happier existence than their factory farm counterparts, and their environmental impact is lower. But a vegetarian meal usually has a far smaller carbon footprint than a meat-based meal and should be our first choice.

• Anaheim chilies: I got the last 3 of Grandora’s Christmas bell peppers at the farmers’ market, and that  was it for their fresh hot peppers for the year–so I had to buy another 7 conventionally-grown Mexican Anaheims from the grocery store. If I’d gotten organised to make the soup earlier in the autumn, I could have used all seasonal local ingredients instead of 70% imported.

• Tomatillos: I grew these myself in the back garden, picked them and put them into a cool room in the basement. Sadly, I didn’t deal with them fast enough and wound up losing about half of them to spoilage. I was so annoyed with myself. Expending all that energy to grow them, only to throw half on the compost pile? It was such an unnecessary waste of food–something that I’ve otherwise worked really hard to avoid over the past year. But have a look in a supermarket or restaurant’s dumpster and you’ll see that this kind of waste is part and parcel of our profligate food production and distribution system. This waste meant a lot more to me personally because I was the one who had grown it in the first place, and I’ve vowed it won’t happen again.

• Vegetable oil: I used canola oil here. But canola is a huge can of worms–83% of canola now grown on the Canadian prairies is genetically modified. Its proponents say it gives them better yields and helps them use fewer herbicides. But these GM crop varieties are also completely controlled by Monsanto, which is hyper-protective of its babies. Regardless of any benefits from a particular GM variety, I feel incredibly uneasy about the advisability of handing over such a huge amount of control over food production to a corporation: “an entity whose legally-defined mandate is to pursue relentlessly and without exception its own economic self-interest, regardless of the harmful consequences it might cause to others”–especially when their market dominance virtually crowds out any other non-GM variety from being grown.

• Onion: I used the last local onion I had, and one that the grocery store advertises as local, but which comes from at least 300 miles away. A supermarket’s definition of ‘local’ (or ‘organic’) is likely quite a bit different than yours.

• Garlic: I used one local bulb that I had on hand, and the remainder came from a jar of minced roasted garlic that I bought earlier this year because it said ‘Product of Canada’. I only later discovered that this likely means the garlic itself was grown in China (like most fresh bulbs in the grocery store) and then imported to Canada for bottling. Food origin labels don’t always tell the whole story about where something came from.

• Salt: I generally use Sifto salt, which comes from the mine in Unity, Saskatchewan. I must say I felt a tiny (if not entirely commendable) twinge of schadenfreude while reading The 100 Mile Diet, where BC-dwelling locavores Alisa Smith and J B MacKinnon bemoan the lack of proper flour and salt during their year-long experiment with local-only eating. We might not have peaches in Saskatchewan, but at least I’m not eating weevil-infested wheat! We should be aware of (and be grateful for) our local food specialties.

• Ground coriander: I’m working on a bag I bought at the supermarket many moons ago. Mysteriously, large quantities of bagged spices in the international food section often cost *way* less money than the tiny bottles found in the spice aisle. You can also often find superior quality rice at a specialty Asian market, or a get a much better deal on locally-produced organic flax seed at the SaskMade Marketplace. Despite their boasts, supermarkets don’t always offer the best value and it pays to shop around to get the most out of your food budget.

• Oregano: If I had made the soup earlier in the autumn, I could have got fresh local oregano at the market, but it was now finished. Usually I would use dried in this situation, but the recipe said the fresh herb was essential, so I bought organic oregano sealed in a plastic box and imported from California. The plastic packaging (which can only go in the garbage here unless you pay for curbside recycling services), as well as the amount of energy required to ship such a highly perishable food all the way here without it rotting in transit, really made me shudder (as did the fact that part of it was already dark and withering and I had to end up composting half of it).

• Jalapeno peppers: fresh from my garden. I picked them in late September or early October, and they kept for a month and a half in the fridge. I’d like to see a grocery store pepper beat the refrigerator shelf life of home-grown produce!

• Potatoes: I bought local organically-grown potatoes. Potatoes rank number 12 in a list of of fruits and vegetables that are most often treated with pesticides/fungicides during commercial production. Pesticide/fungicide residue on food is common, and many of these chemicals are extremely harmful to human health and contaminate the environment. We can and should grow food using more sustainable methods and reduce chemical use wherever possible.

• Corn: I used frozen corn from the grocery store. I generally prefer frozen corn to canned, partly because most canned food comes in tins lined with bisphenol A. If I had been more on the ball, I might have frozen my own corn kernels from cobs from the farmers’ market to use later on, but it’s quite a lot of work. Sometimes you really just want someone else to do the processing work for you.

• Cream: I generally buy all my milk from Dairyland, which is processed here in Saskatoon (Beatrice and Lucerne products likely come from their milk processing plants in Edmonton). Why ship milk from local dairies hundreds of miles away, put it in cartons, and then ship it all the way back here again? I’m sure Dairyland is bringing in milk from far away as well, but I still don’t think it hurts to support local food producers and processing facilities.

• Black pepper: I buy my peppercorns from the Orchard del Sol farm in Costa Rica, which emphasises ethical and ecologically sustainable farming methods (including fair worker wages). Many luxury crops such as coffee, cocoa, and spices give huge profits to landowners and corporations at a terrible cost to workers and the local environment. Fair trade, organic, shade-grown products are the most responsible consumer choice–buying them wherever possible creates pressure on ‘conventional’ growers to smarten up and improve their farming methods.

Round the world and home again for tomatillo soup

• 8 cups chicken or vegetable stock
• 5 Anaheim chilies (or whatever chili/pepper you have on hand)
• 1.5 lbs tomatillos
• 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 yellow onion (diced)
• 10 garlic cloves (minced)
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 3 Tbsp minced oregano (important that it’s fresh! This makes the soup)
• 4 jalapeno peppers (seeded and minced)
• 2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes (diced)
• 3 cups corn (fresh or frozen)
• 1 cup cream or half and half
• 1 tsp cracked black pepper
• Garnish: chopped cilantro and sliced green onion (optional)

Heat the stock and keep it warm while assembling the soup. Preheat oven to 400F.

Halve and seed chiles. Remove husks from tomatillos, rinse, and dry. In a large bowl, toss the tomatillos and chilies with a little olive oil so they are lightly coated. Place on a baking sheet and roast until the tomatillo and chili skins are slightly charred (15-20 minutes). Dice the chilies and roughly chop the tomatillos. Set aside.

In a soup pot over medium-high heat, heat the oil and sauté onion until translucent. Stir in garlic, 1 tsp salt, coriander, minced oregano and sauté until golden-ish.

Add the jalapenos, potato, and remaining salt (1 tsp) and stir to combine. Sauté for several minutes, then pour in warm stock to cover. Bring to boil, reduce heat, and simmer until the potatoes are tender.

Add the corn, chilies, and tomatillos; simmer 10 minutes. Slowly add cream and more stock to thin if necessary (don’t let it boil). Simmer and season with salt and cracked pepper to taste. Garnish with chopped cilantro and green onions just before serving.

*This soup freezes well, but reheat it slowly so cream doesn’t separate.*

Serves 8-10

19th Street is finally open again! Hoorah! This means no more detour for people coming from the east to the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market. And the Little Market Store now plans to be open 11am-7pm, Wednesdays through Saturdays, throughout the winter. This handy stall sells a variety of products from various market vendors, including eggs, focaccia, chocolates, and produce–today they had containers of fresh cherry tomatoes.

The public market businesses will now also be open up to 7 days a week as well, starting next Wednesday 26 November. Here are their opening hours:

Giuseppe’s food service
Sunday 11 am-5pm
Tuesday-Friday 9am-7pm
Saturday 8am-2pm

Bulk Cheese at the Market (fresh pasta, sauces, cheese, meats)
Sunday 11am-5pm
Monday-Friday 11am-7pm
Saturdays 8am-5pm

Jolly Juicer (juice bar and waffles)
Petal Pushers (flower shop)
Park Cafe at the Market (seafood)
Wednesday-Friday 11am-7pm
Saturday 8 am-2pm

Please use the east doors during the week (if you’re coming by car, parking is available on the east and south side of the building).

The theme of the 39th annual convention of the National Farmers Union, which starts today, is “Food and Community: Local to International”.

Keynote speakers for the convention include:

• Raj Patel (author of Stuffed and Starved): “Markets, power and the hidden battle for the world food system”
• Judy Rebick (CAW-Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University in Toronto): “Rebuilding the food system for the future”
• Bob Kingston (President of the Agriculture Union of the Public Service Alliance of Canada): “Agriculture quality and food safety”
• Larry Hill (Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Wheat Aboard): “Strengthening farmers’ market power”
• Juana Ferrer (leader with the National Confederation of Rural Women of the Dominican Republic): “Food sovereignty: feeding the pople”
• Paul Nicholson (International Representative for the Basque Farmers and Ranchers Union): “Farmers and the global food crisis”
• Elwin Hermanson (Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Grain Commmission): “Bill C-39 and changes to the Canada Grain Act”
• Jacques Laforge (President of the Daiiry Farmers of Canada): “Supply management: a system that works for everyone”
• Darrin Qualman (Director of Research for the National Farmers Union): “Building solutions to the livestock crisis”

“One of the most dazzling books I’ve read in a very long time. The product of a brilliant mind and a gift to a world hungering for justice.”

–Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine and No Logo) on Raj Patel’s book Stuffed and Starved

Here’s the cover blurb for Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System, which should give a pretty good overview about the content of the lecture:

For those with enough money - and that’s most of us in wealthier countries - life is good. We can eat almost anything we want, regardless of where it comes from, what season it is or how much it costs. The world is our dish, laden with more foods than we’ve ever seen in history and more calories than we know what to do with. A continent away, there are more bloated bellies, but this time from malnutrition - seemingly due to a scarcity of food. But these two contrasting worlds are linked, deeply and inextricably. In a timely look at the entire global food chain, Stuffed and Starved asks us to think about the way our food comes to us, to understand how our supermarket shopping makes us complicit in denying freedom to the world’s poorest and to recognize how we ourselves are poisoned by our choices.

Raj Patel, an author uniquely qualified to take a long, broad view of world food production, looks at food systems-the machine most of us don’t even know exists - and the web made up of corporations, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, farmers’ groups, government agencies and corporate lobbyists. From farm to fork, Patel travels to rural collectives in Brazil, investigates the all-powerful distribution networks, serves up the specific journeys of coffee, soy and high-fructose corn syrup, and visits the kitchens of fast-food restaurants. What he uncovers is the shocking story of commercial greed and helpless hunger that is a key ingredient in everything we eat.

Stuffed and Starved is one of the most shocking investigations into the “haves” feeding off the “have-nots” and a compelling look at how we all suffer the consequences of a food system cooked to a corporate recipe.

Copies of Stuffed and Starved will be available at the event.

Sponsored by the National Farmers Union as part of its 39th Annual National Convention

A small selection of the products available at the Saskatchewan indemand trade show

You still have one more day to check out the Saskatchewan indemand 2008 trade show–it’s open at Prairieland Exhibition until 5pm today (admission $5, children 6 and under free). I was there on Friday night and found a lot of interesting (and often delicious!) products on display.

Just a few of the highlights:

• Fresh and dried apples, as well as apple cider made by Petrofka Bridge Orchard (from the delicious new Prairie Sensation cultivar, created at the U of S)
• The flower-derived syrup made by Bedard Creek Acres–the red clover blossom syrup and black pansy syrup was a revelation and will definitely be added to my pancake/waffle roster!
• The cherry swirl ice cream and dried cherry almond bark by Prairie Sun Orchard (they have a lot of different ice creams and products using their home-grown cherries, raspberries, and other fruits)
• Crispeas–a dried pea snack made by KSL Foods
• Saskatchewan Mustard Development Commission–giving away dried mustard and mustard seed samples, as well as sausage and cabbage relish containing…mustard!
• Saskatchewan Flax Development Commission–giving away flax seed samples, as well as flax popcorn (yum)
• Willow Creek Organic Grain Company (oats, wheat, flax, lentils etc)

Chefs compete against the clock in the 1st Annual Saskatchewan CCFCC Culinary Challenge on Friday night

There were also quite a few booths selling clothing and other textiles made from alpaca wool and fleece. The socks, sweaters, and scarves looked deliciously warm, and I had my eye on a blanket, but I couldn’t walk away without a tiny toy alpaca (wearing a hat) for the Christmas tree from Just Choice Alpacas. The flax textiles made by Madelaine Walker of Fibrelaine Weaving & Knitting (892-4886) were also lovely (I really liked the tea towels with the gingerbread boy motif).

Along with all the free samples and products for sale, you can also pick up many free recipe books and pamphlets. The SaskMade Marketplace has a large stall with many items for sale, and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture has a booth with information on funding assistance and devleopment procedures for people wanting to set up a small business in the province. There will also be a fashion show, as well as two talks: on on local food, and another on meals for busy families.

The Organic Connections conference starts today in Saskatoon. Tomorrow, I’ll be checking out the trade show and taking part in some of the workshops. I’m also looking forward to the talks by farmer and alternative agriculture guru Joel Salatin (”Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal”) and peak oil expert Richard Heinberg (”Now That the Party’s Over”). Xingji Xiao will be speaking to conference delegates about organic agriculture in China (he is the leading expert on the topic and was the first organic inspector in China) on on Tuesday morning.

The three-day conference features an organic tradeshow, workshops and a strong program covering topics of interest to producers, processors, consumers and traders in the areas of marketing, healthy living and production. It is also an opportunity to celebrate good, healthy organic food and recognize the people who contribute to putting it on tables around the world. (Organic Connections web site)

Farmers interested in making the switch to organic growing methods will find the Transition to Organic workshop series invaluable, while experienced organic farmers can learn more at the Advanced Agronomic workshop. The Organic Incubator will also give everyone the chance to meet fellow producers, processors, buyers, marketers, and certifiers, as well as the speakers, in an informal environment. To schedule an impromptu meeting in the space, talk to the organisers at the Organic Connections booth.

See you there!

When: Sunday 16 November to Tuesday 18 November

Where: TCU Place, 35 22nd St E, Saskatoon (Google map)

For more information: Organic Connections web site, info@organicconnections.ca