This week on Food For Thought, new ways for small farms to survive on the rural urban fringe. The mp3 audio file of the program is here .
In the photo, yeah, that’s me. In a field of tomatoes a few decades(!)ago. That was our back yard, and you can see the houses in the background, the subdivision that grew up around us. You’ll hear why I put this photo here by listening to the audio file.
This week on Food For Thought, a look at how to put farmers more in touch with their local markets…and how to encourage more people to buy locally-produced foods! Here’s the mp3 audio file of the program and a couple of links: The first one is for Northwestern Ontario Community Food Security Initiatives. Jarrod Gunn-McQuillan, a public health dietician in Rainy River, talked about what the community is doing to encourage more farming in an effort to regain some food security in an area that was actually very self-sufficient before roads were pushed into the area.
Also check out the efforts of Chatham Keep Farming, a small town just north of New York City that wants to hang on to its agricultural roots.
Food Security
This week on Food For Thought you get a taste of Bridging Borders Toward Food Security, a conference held in Vancouver by the Community Food Security Coalition and Food Secure Canada. You may also want to check out the website of FoodShare, a Toronto-based food security agency.
What is food security? It may not be what you think. One definition which captures the spirit of the concept would read: Food security is a strong, sustainable, local or regional food system that ensures access to affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate food to all people at all times.
It’s a mouthful, but visiting the websites posted here will lead you to an intriguing world of agencies, governments and communities all trying to reach a similar goal. To listen to an mp3 of today’s program, click here .
Ummmm…fried anchovies! Otherwise known as Cicciarelli, these are a Slow Food Presidia product fished from the ocean waters off Liguria. And they were a perfect snack with which to wander the aisles at Slow Fish in Genova, Italy, the first weekend of May.
You can hear an mp3 of my Food For Thought documentary about what some expert panelists think about aquaculture and sustainable seafood methods by clicking here .
You’ll hear from John Volpe at the University of Victoria Environmental Studies department and why he thinks the perfect formula for sustainable seafood gives equal importance to social, ecological and economic issues. Next up is Valentina Tepedino is a veterinarian specializing in marine life. She thinks aquaculture is the answer to meet the growing demand for seafood, but only if it is done the right way! She edits a magazine called ‘Eurofishmarket’, which is in Italian, but you can surf around to find some interesting info on common edible species of fish.
I also spoke with Brian Halweil, senior researcher of the WorldWatch Institute in Washington, DC. He spoke about the need for people to start eating lower on the fish food chain, small fish such as anchovies and sardines that are perfectly good food sources from sustainable fisheries, instead of using them to feed larger carnivorous species in fish farms. He also talked about raising only vegetarian fish such as catfish, monkfish and carp so we don’t use animal protein to grow more animal protein. Unfortunately people aren’t too keen on eating these kinds of fish. Brian also mentioned some fascinating experiments going on in North America regarding a ‘polyculture’ of aquaculture. This would see algae being raised on the surface of a net pen which would make up part of the feed for salmon. The salmon feces that normally settle on the ocean floor could be partly taken care of by filter feeders such as mussels and oysters being grown on strings below the salmon. I want to do some more research on these types of farms when I return to North America.
Someone else I met and interviewed was Anne Mosness, from Bellingham, Washington. She fished in the Gulf of Alaska for 28 years, now is part of the Go Wild Campaign and was also distributing some fact sheets from the Food and Water Watch. www.foodandwaterwatch.org You’ll hear from her in my next podcast.
News Flash! A committee of the British Columbia legislature has just released (May 16/07) a report on aquaculture which calls for an end to salmon farming as it is now conducted on the West Coast. Here is a link to CBC Coverage of the story and a link to the actual Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture report.
The committee was dominated in membership by the opposition party, the New Democrats. Don’t expect to see the ruling Liberal party to leap to implement the recommendations.
I have lots more links for you if you are interested in Aquaculture and Sustainable Seafood.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium in California was one of the first aquariums to link seafood sustainability to consumers in a user-friendly program:
https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/conservation-and-science/our-programs/seafood-watch
In Canada, the Vancouver Aquarium has followed suit in conjunction with the David Suzuki Foundation to create the Ocean Wise program that restaurants can join, if the majority of the fish they serve in the restaurant is deemed to be a sustainable resource.
http://www.vanaqua.org/conservation/oceanwise/
This link takes you to a company that wants to sell genetically modified fish to growers. It has actually trademarked one of its products you will see on its homepage.
http://www.aquabounty.com/
The link below leads to the homepage of the Darwin’s Nightmare documentary and what happened to a lake in Africa that ‘fell prey’ to an introduced species of fish:
http://www.darwinsnightmare.com/darwin/html/startset.htm
A review of the documentary is here:
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2005/12/02/an_alarming_look_at_the_worlds_food_chain/
And to read how one aquaculture industry puts itself out there in the world with a positive spin, check out the media pages of the British Columbia Salmon Farming Association:
http://www.salmonfarmers.org/files/media_releases.html
This week on All You Can Eat, I take you to the Greek island of Crete where I experienced an excellent week full of culinary tourism. In the program you will hear two of my Food For Thought documentaries, then a feature interview with the man who was our guide for these amazing adventures.
One day we started our morning atop a mountain where shepherds (or are they goatherds?) were milking their herd of goats.
On top of the mountain there are no milking machines, not even any electricity to run them if there were! Instead, the men use highly trained dogs to round up the goats from wherever they are on the mountain, then herd them into a pen, pushing them forward so the men can grab them and milk them by hand, rapidly squirting the milk into a large can set into a concrete holder.
Here are my classmates MJ, Bronwen and Betsy enjoying some fresh cheese and raki. This was all taking place at about 10am, and raki is a fairly powerful liquor, somewhat like Italian grappa. Hour of the day means little to the Cretans, however. When I met the grandmother of the man whose place I was staying at around 8 one morning, she quickly offered me a shot of grappa. Since I had already imbibed what seemed like 25 shots in two days of our trip, I graciously declined.
From the mountain we descended a few minutes into a village where the local cheese makers process the milk we had just seen being obtained from the goats. They make several kinds of fresh and aged cheeses there, which we got to taste…along with more raki!
Just when we thought we had had enough drinking for the day, and were chock full of cheese, it was back into our vans to visit another tiny mountain village…where the whole complement of villagers was waiting for us.
The typical dress for the men of Bis-dye-ee (phonetic spelling) are these hunter-style pants, usually black or tan, and black shirts, with a sharp knife stuck into their waistbands.
Before we went inside the village community hall we were treated to the sight and smell of goat roasting beside hot coals. This is a traditional way of roasting meat in Crete, skewering the meat on spikes and resting it on stakes pounded into the ground so the fat drips away from the meat without creating flare-ups.
When we were finished with the greetings outside, we trooped inside the village community centre to see a massive display of foods lining the perimeter of a large room. Each woman in the village had brought a different traditional dish for us to try…. over 40 in total. There were pastries made with homemade strawberry and apricot jams, tiny fried pastry pockets filled with sweet cheese, savory pockets stuffed with spinach or wild greens, pork with wild greens, cured olives, umpteen artichoke dishes, rabbit and much more. There was no way we could try everything, but we did our best, along with tasting as many homemade wines that were pressed upon us.
The days that you hear about in the documentaries are a prime example of the kind of culinary tourism Kostas Bouyouris wants to bring to Crete. As you saw on my blog last week, Kostas is an agronomist who is also involved with a Soil Health association and culinary tourism. He was with our class for the entire week and really gave us an authentic taste of Cretan life, not just through the food, but the music, art and above all, the people. If you are interested in reading more about what Kostas is involved in, visit the Mediterranean Association for Soil Health website. Much of the English side of the site is under construction, but there is an email address to contact for further information. For culinary tourism on Crete, which I highly recommend you experience at some point in your life, visit the Agrion Terra website.
SPECIAL BONUS FEATURE!!! My classmate Marta loves taking portraits, both posed and candid of all of us when we are on our field trips, or ‘stages’ as they are known in our program. I downloaded some software called Photoshow which allows you to mix music and photos together with some special effects, and so I sifted through all the photos and put together "Classic Crete" . It is a .wmv file and hopefully it will just start playing in whatever player you have on your computer once enough of it has downloaded. The file is about 50 megabytes. Enjoy!
All You Can Eat is brought to you in part by GoDaddy.com, a domain and webhosting company. And to take advantage of GoDaddy.com offers such as 10 percent off any order, use this code when you check out: eat3
This week on Food For Thought, I take you back to the Greek island of Crete where I experienced an excellent day of culinary tourism. Listen to an MP3 of the audio file by clicking here. We started our morning atop a mountain where shepherds (or are they goatherds?) were milking their herd of goats.
On top of the mountain there are no milking machines, not even any electricity to run them if there were! Instead, the men use highly trained dogs to round up the goats from wherever they are on the mountain, then herd them into a pen, pushing them forward so the men can grab them and milk them by hand, rapidly squirting the milk into a large can set into a concrete holder.
Here are my classmates MJ, Bronwen and Betsy enjoying some fresh cheese and raki. This was all taking place at about 10am, and raki is a fairly powerful liquor, somewhat like Italian grappa. Hour of the day means little to the Cretans, however. When I met the grandmother of the man whose place I was staying at around 8 one morning, she quickly offered me a shot of grappa. Since I had already imbibed what seemed like 25 shots in two days of our trip, I graciously declined.
From the mountain we descended a few minutes into a village where the local cheesemakers process the milk we had just seen being obtained from the goats. They make several kinds of fresh and aged cheeses there, which we got to taste…along with more raki!
Just when we thought we had had enough drinking for the day, and were chock full of cheese, it was back into our vans to visit another tiny mountain village…where the whole complement of villagers was waiting for us.
The typical dress for the men of Bis-dye-ee (phonetic spelling) are these hunter-style pants, usually black or tan, and black shirts, with a sharp knife stuck into their waistbands.
Before we went inside the village community hall we were treated to the sight and smell of goat roasting beside hot coals. This is a traditional way of roasting meat in Crete, skewering the meat on spikes and resting it on stakes pounded into the ground so the fat drips away from the meat without creating flare-ups.
When we were finished with the greetings outside, we trooped inside the village community centre to see a massive display of foods lining the perimeter of a large room. Each woman in the village had brought a different traditional dish for us to try…. over 40 in total. There were pastries made with homemade strawberry and apricot jams, tiny fried pastry pockets filled with sweet cheese, savory pockets stuffed with spinach or wild greens, pork with wild greens, cured olives, umpteen artichoke dishes, rabbit and much more. There was no way we could try everything, but we did our best, along with tasting as many homemade wines that were pressed upon us. I have to be honest: the homemade wines we had in Crete were not very good…downright bad, actually. They tasted more like wine vinegar than wine, and after a week of drinking them, I certainly didn’t develop a taste for them. Most of the restaurants we went to serve their own homemade wine as well, if you go you may want to ask if they have any wine made at a winery.
We did visit a Boutari winery on Crete, and I was impressed with the wines we tasted there. The webpage for this 70-acre estate says it is called "Fantaxometocho", which means "ghosts’ glebe". The name that was given to the place "Fantaxometocho" was taken by the legend that was created in order to protect the glebe from sea dogs.
That’s what the webpage says. Our guide at Boutari says the ‘ghosts’ in the name actually represent the people who used to sneak into the vineyard and steal the grapes!
The day that you hear about in the documentary above is a prime example of the kind of culinary tourism Kostas Bouyouris wants to bring to Crete. As you saw on my blog last week, Kostas is an agronomist who is also involved with a Soil Health association and culinary tourism. He was with our class for the entire week and really gave us an authentic taste of Cretan life, not just through the food, but the music, art and above all, the people. If you are interested in reading more about what Kostas is involved in, visit the Mediterranean Association for Soil Health website. Much of the English side of the site is under construction, but there is an email address to contact for further information. For culinary tourism on Crete, which I highly recommend you experience at some point in your life, visit the Agrion Terra website. My next All You Can Eat podcast will feature my full-length interview with Kostas, so please check the link within the next week or so.
SPECIAL BONUS FEATURE!!! My classmate Marta loves taking portraits, both posed and candid of all of us when we are on our field trips, or ‘stages’ as they are known in our program. I downloaded some software called Photoshow which allows you to mix music and photos together with some special effects, and so I sifted through all the photos and put together "Classic Crete" . It is a .wmv file and hopefully it will just start playing in whatever player you have on your computer once enough of it has downloaded. The file is about 50 megabytes. Enjoy!
