My uncle and aunt who live in Ottawa are dedicated environmentalists. They’ve been thinking about local food and sustainability longer than most of us. Hugh, my uncle, writes for the community paper and I always enjoy reading his pieces urging people to reduce their demand on the earth’s resources. I appreciated his last article about […]
Category: The Politics of Food
I woke up early this morning in Ottawa to head to the Queen Street CBC studio for an interview with Kathleen Petty on Ottawa Morning. I asked the cab driver how business was and he replied it was horrible. Driving a taxi, he said, is a terrible job. “My father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, they
It’s a strange world we live in. Here in Canada, we’re in full harvest mode, enjoying corn and zucchini and fresh tomatoes (sun ripened!) and beans and and and… We have so much food that we in North America throw almost half of it in the garbage. Then, on the other side of the planet,
My article about the rise of the root cellar (below) was first published by The Globe and Mail on Wed, Nov. 03, 2010. The readers comments on the Globe’s site are a wonderful window into how Canadians relate to their veg! How great to hear from so many readers across the country! They tuck them into the cold corners
Yesterday’s Jane’s Walk was incredible! Author Lorraine Johnson and I met up with 136 people who are interested in urban agriculture for a walking tour of the area around Trinity Bellwoods Park. We tasted Red Bud flowers and talked about the role of greenhouses in a local and sustainable urban foodshed. We discussed urban agriculture
I stayed up way too late last night reading Mark Kurlansky’s compilation of depression era food writing titled The Food of a Younger Land (with an extremely long subtitle). What a gem! A window into another time when people made food a big part of their lives, when cooking was something you did because you had to
My parents called me up from the farm the other day to ask me how many bushels of organic apples I wanted–for free. They had been visiting their neighbours’ organic apple farm and had witnessed a sad sight. The now-ageing farmers can’t sell their beautiful organic apples and so the fruit are falling to the
I can’t sit at my desk longer than 30 minutes this morning without resisting the temptation to pop out to the back deck to check on the progress of my apple leather that I am trying to dry in the November sun. I can’t tell if it is working yet–there is condensation the glass of
I came across an old Acadian recipe for pancakes in a back issue of The Canadian Organic Grower that calls for snow! Apparently, after a heavy snowfall, some Acadians still remark that “Il a tombe assez de neige pour faire des crepes,” or, “It’s snowed enough to make pancakes.” According to the recipe notes, provided