Vert-à-Go

First Family/Inauguration Cookie Pack from Little Rae’s Bakery

With only 10 days, 13 hours, and 6 minutes to go in Bush’s time in office (but who’s counting?), pretty much everyone is already casting their eyes forward to US President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on 20 January.

So what do we know about Obama’s likely approach to food issues?

• Much speculation has been made over the fact that Obama both read and responded to Michael Pollan’s open letter in the New York Times to the ‘Farmer-in-Chief’.
• Sustainable food advocates have been campaigning for Obama to turn part of the White House lawn into an organic garden, and it turns out that the White House already has a rooftop garden that helped provide both the Clinton and Bush families with very local produce.
• The Obamas plan to keep the current White House executive chef Cristeta Comerford, who creates “original dishes with American flavor” and who shares the Obamas “perspective on the importance of healthy eating and healthy families”.
• Reaction from the left has been decidedly negative to Obama’s pick for Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack–a big advocate of biofuels, GMOs, and biotechnology who used Monsanto’s private jet while he was governor of Iowa. Should we be dismayed? Or maybe he isn’t the agricultural antichrist after all?

For more up-to-the-minute info on the “Obama Foodscape”, check out Obama Foodorama. And if you’re in the catchment area for Little Rae’s Bakery in Seattle, don’t  miss the First Family/Inauguration pack of cookies, designed “to honor the entire first family to show our support and hope that when we stick together, when we lean on those closest, we are strongest.” Because the Obamas couldn’t adopt a dog from the animal shelter due to allergies, Little Rae’s is donating a portion of every sale to the Humane Society. It doesn’t get much sweeter than that.

photo by Sandy Pederson of Urban Land Army

September and early October were a complete washout for me on the blog posting front, so I really missed out on commenting on the Canadian election. I will be focusing much more on the Canadian food politics scene in the weeks ahead. But today (along with almost everyone else), I’m looking south of the border for the results of the US presidential election. It’s one night that I certainly won’t apologise for being glued to the TV!

Election Fever Pizza

• plain round focaccia bread (Bulk Cheese Warehouse) I had planned to try making homemade pizza dough today, but somehow forgot to buy yeast. Oops! Next time.
• homemade tomato sauce (from some of my roasted garden tomatoes)
• mild Italian sausage (Pine View Farms), pre-cooked
• green pepper (Grandora Gardens)
• onion (Saskatoon Farmers’ Market)
• mushrooms (Loveday Mushroom Farms, Manitoba)
• jalapeno peppers (my garden)
• part-skim mozzarella (Bulk Cheese Warehouse)

Assemble in the traditional fashion. Bake. Eat (preferably while exuberantly celebrating a major change of administration!).

Red, White & Blue Fool (I name no names)

• 1/2 cup strawberries (Strawberry Ranch)
• 1/8 cup blueberries (K-5 Market Farms)
• 1/8 cup raspberries (Rhodes’s Raspberry Patch)
• 1/2 cup whipping cream or plain (Balkan) full-fat yoghurt
• 1/2 cup full-fat vanilla yoghurt
• berry (castor) sugar to taste (optional)

(all the measurements and proportions for a fool are really up to you–you should really just chuck it together according to your mood and what you have on hand!)

Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks and fold in the yoghurt (or just mix the two yoghurts together). Sweeten with berry sugar to taste (if you like). Chop the strawberries with a fork (I used frozen fruit, so there was a fair amount of juice after defrosting. If you want the white part to stay mostly white rather than vaguely…(socialist commie) pink(o)…drain off the juice from all the berries first).  Stir in the strawberries and spoon into glass dishes. Top with raspberries and blueberries and refrigerate for at least an hour. Eat while gloating.

I’ll be opening a bottle of Liberty School (a Californian cabernet sauvignon), and have put a bottle of President Canadian champagne in the fridge. I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll have a very good excuse to pop the cork later tonight!