Seasonal Ontario Food

"Today's menu: Hamburger, wheat buns, tator tots, fruit jello, chocolate milk.

I ate everything. The patty was how do you say nothing like any hamburger I have ever eaten. Mystery meat in every sense. I also really wanted more than just six tator tots. The fruit cup was NOT FROZEN, so I ate it. I also drank the chocolate milk, which was ok.

I sort-of want to stop drinking milk at lunch. I normally don't drink milk at lunch. In fact, I used to have milk only on my morning cereal, but this winter I've been opting for a hot breakfast of instant oatmeal and so prior to doing this "experiment" I would go without milk for whole days. So now that I've added a lunchtime milk, I've noticed some interesting changes in my body. I think I'm getting a little lactose-intolerant in my old age.

This lunch was better than other lunches in that there was more protein and I wasn't as desperately hungry after school like I have been in the past. But overall it still isn't enough for the kids who eat this one meal at school and that's it for the whole day. There is significant poverty at my school and some of the kids are very thin (and others are very, very chunky). No matter what size you are you should be able to eat healthy at school. "

If you check out the exciting links at the side of this blog - you should, they're exciting! - you will have read about this new blog at Marion Nestle's site, Food Politics.

Fed Up With School Lunches is a blog written by an American public school teacher in Illinois. For the rest of the school year she plans to eat the lunch that's available at her school for the kids who attend it. Of course the point of eating these lunches is to record them for posterity, so there is a photo and a description of each lunch. Mmm, yummy. NOT. I look at the picture of the meat patty that came with the meal described above, and think about the fact that it will have been treated with ammonia in an effort to keep the bacteria down to a dull roar. I don't think I could have gotten it into my mouth.

It makes me wonder. What are Canadian (Ontario in particular) school lunches like these days? Never having had a dog in this particular fight, I have been out of touch with them since my own school days. The ones I remember date back to the 1970's when I was in high school, and since I mostly brought my own lunch I don't remember too much about them. On the other hand the things I do remember are french fries (good french fries mind you, although generally ordered awash in bad gravy), which were consumed in vast quantities by pretty much all present , and Margaret's chocolate "creme" doughnuts, which were the fakest things in creation, and of which I was inordinately fond. So not exactly a golden age of yore. However, I'm pretty sure that besides the french fries there were usually a couple of choices for main dishes, and vegetables and salads were on offer, if not enthusiastically received.

Anyway, those of you who do have kids going to public school these days: what are their school lunches like?

I talked a lot about varieties of heirloom vegetables this summer, as opposed to the ubiquitous hybrids that crowd our grocery store shelves. Or is that really true? Are heirloom vegetables not hybrids? Are hybrids not eligible to be heirlooms? What's the difference?

The first question then is, what is a hybrid, exactly? Dictionary.com describes it as "the offspring of two animals or plants of different breeds, varieties, species, or genera, esp. as produced through human manipulation for specific genetic characteristics."

There are two problems with this definition; the first is that it is actually quite accurate. The second is that it is also breathtakingly vague. Offspring of breeds, varieties, species or genera? Well that covers the waterfront. Cross two of just about anything, then, and you've got a hybrid, more or less. So why do some things get described as hybrids, and other things not? Like so many things, it boils down to politics and laziness, or at least verbal shorthand.

It's pretty safe to say that when we talk about hybrid vegetables, they are almost always crosses between varieties. It's definitions 6 and 7 that are pertinent to vegetables. In fact, I would be inclined to combine them and say that, when it comes to vegetables, a variety *is* a plant produced by selection to form a category within a species, based on some hereditary difference. New varieties, then, are created by crossing other older varieties, or very occasionally other but related species. Once the cross is sufficiently stable that the offspring of the offspring of the offspring are reasonably uniform in quality, you have a new variety. This process of crossing and selecting to create new varieties has been going on for milennia, and the varieties that are "old" may be known as heirlooms. Old in this case meaning that they've been around for a hundred years or so, or perhaps even less.

Hey, wait! I've just said that heirlooms are hybrids.

Ayup. Sorta.

Once a hybrid vegetable is reliably reproducing offspring similar to itself - a process achieved by people with more knowledge of plant breeding than me - we tend to forget it's a hybrid, and reserve the term strictly for crosses which do not reliably reproduce offspring similar to the parents. There's a whole bunch about that process here; it's pretty technical but what it boils down to is that the varieties we call hybrids tend not to produce offspring of similar quality as themselves, and thus whoever wishes to grow said variety must go back to the producer of the hybrid each year for new seeds. It isn't feasible to produce seed yourself. In short, the problem is not whether a plant is a hybrid or not, the problem is who has control of the means of production - a concept that didn't used to apply to vegetables. If you could raise a plant to reproductive maturity, you had seeds. If not exactly easy-peasy, then at least accessible to everyone with a garden, some basic skills and co-operation from the weather.

A lot of people want to confuse hybrids with genetically modified organisms, but they are not the same thing. Plant hybridization simply involves acting as a matchmaker to plants which might not otherwise meet in nature, but letting natural reproductive processes take it from there. Genetic modification, or engineering, requires direct interference into the genes, often moving DNA from one species to another, in a way that would simply not be possible in nature.

There is a lot of question about what the long term effects of this sort of playing god will have. Proponents swear up and down that it's safe, but pretty much by definition, we just don't know. If it turns out to have been a crap idea - and there's a certain amount of evidence pointing in that direction - well, oops, too bad, so sad.

But as far as I'm concerned, the real problem with genetically modified organisms is obvious: it takes food access out of the hands of anyone who can farm or garden, and puts it SOLELY in the hands of the corporations who own the patents on the modified genetic material and the plants and animals in which it is inserted.

It doesn't take any knowledge of science to see that that is a recipe for complete and utter disaster on a four-horsemen-of-the-apocalypse scale: a little knowledge of human nature will be quite sufficient.

I'm not a big fan of marketing boards, or perhaps it would be better to say that I have reservations about them. I have a lot of sympathy for their original rationale; a union for farmers. But it seems to me they have gone from being a union for farmers, to being an exclusive club for certain farmers, to being damn near farming mafia*. They've been (and still are) a blight and a fungus on the development of organic foods in Ontario, that seems quite clear.

But every so often I'm reminded that it's an ill wind that blows no good. At least we don't have to deal with the abominable abortion that is "Dairy Drink" in Ontario, and I'm pretty sure that's due to the nature of the Milk Marketing Board, and not because our various governments are so much dedicated to the quality and healthfulness of our food, given the evidence in other areas of food production. "Dairy Drink", in case you didn't click through, consists of skim milk, sugar and water, and it sells for half the price of regular milk. Yay! Just what the North American diet needs; more sugar. In particular the diet of poor people who are already inundated with crappy sugary, starchy, fatty CRAP.

I was reminded by this product that when I lived in the U.S., none of the pizzerias I went to had real cheese on their pizzas; it was all oily, plasticky soy-crap. It was a shock, because I was used to pizzas in Ontario which weren't necessarily great, but which at least had actual cheese on them. Of course you could get excellent pizzas in the U.S. - far better than any Canadian pizzas I've had - but not in the small towns and poor neighbourhoods that I was living in and not on my budget.

The most accurate way to describe food in the U.S. is to say that it is not homogenized, if you will excuse the pun. It has separated into two layers: a rich creamy layer of some of the best food in the world, made by small farmers and artisanal manufacturers dedicated to their craft and with prices to match, and the lowest common denominator of highly processed food-like substances made by humongous, manufacturers - who also own frequently own the "farms" - engaged in selling the least possible product for what appears to be a low price, but which is in fact gross and obscene price gouging when the actual costs of the goods are considered. I think this process has probably been exacerbated by the disappearance of the American middle class; as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, food follows the same pattern.

What I want for a food system is one where I can choose between good, better and best, not between superb and crap. If you don't have a lot of money to spend on food you should still be able to get food that is reasonably priced, inspected for safety, of decent quality and truthfully and completely labelled. The marketing boards have - in their own self-interest - prevented the bottom from falling out so far as quality is concerned to the degree that has happened in the U.S. But they've also created a situation in which there is little room for the small, the unique, or the lovingly crafted. They've managed to put the lid on the best, muscling out those would-be dedicated small farmers and artisanal manufacturers to a truely depressing degree.

Not completely, thank goodness. If the production of cows milk is so regulated that none but the wealthy or the heirs of dairy farmers can take up dairy farming - and it is; Ontario practically has a dairy farming caste system - small farmers and cheese makers in Onario have taken to raising, milking and cheesemaking with alternative diary animals: goats, sheep and even water buffalo. Enthusiastic consumer response shows that there is room for the better and the best in this province, and I'd like to see a lot more encouragement for it from the government and the marketing boards.

But today, a great big THANK YOU to the Milk Marketing Board for saving us from "Dairy Drink".




*And I'm lumping them all together, which is not really fair. They do vary quite a bit.

"If you receive an email from the Health Department warning you not to eat tinned pork products, delete it.

It's just Spam."

- current joke

Okay, that one cracked me up, I admit it. Almost all disasters are coped with through a certain amount of humour and once people had absorbed the appearance of a new pandemic disease, it wasn't long before the jokes flew.

Of course, I don't even need to say - do I? - that you can't get swine flu, or H1N1 flu as the pork marketers would like you to call it, from eating pork. (Am I the only one who wants to pronounce that "hinny"? Or should it be "hinie"?) You probably can't even get it from hanging out with pigs. But the association of pigs with this particular strain of influenza has opened a rich vein of humour, and the jokes have been passed around almost as fast as the virus.

Mind you, swine flu isn't a problem for the actual pigs; after all they're going to be cured anyway. And what is the difference between bird flu and swine flu? (You need tweetment for bird flu, and oinkment for swine flu.) You can't get that information from the health department; all you get when you call is crackling on the line. A lot of people are calling in sick with swine flu, but many of them are telling porkies; they're not actually breaking out in rashers. Pandemics of this scale only happen when pigs fly. Oh wait... swine flu.

Seriously, there are a lot of arguments for avoiding factory-farmed pork, but this isn't one of them. In the mean time, thus far, swine flu has turned out to be quite contagious (hence the pandemic part) but not particularly deadly. If you do eat pork, there are some good deals to be had, according to the weekly flyers. Apparently this has hit pork producers hard. And that's no joke.

"Once the rains stopped in April the chantarelles were done for the year, and there wouldn't be another important mushroom to hunt until the morels came up in May. I used the time before then to read about mushrooms and talk to mycologists, hoping to answer some of the questions I had collected about fungi, a life form I was beginning to regard as deeply mysterious. What made mushrooms mushroom when and where they did? Why do chantarelles associate with oaks and morels with pines? Why under this tree and not that one? How long do they live? Why do some mushrooms manufacture deadly toxins, not to mention powerful hallucinogens and a range of delicious flavours? I brought the gardener's perspective to these plantlike objects, but of course they're not plants, and plant knowledge is all but useless in understanding fungi, which are in fact more closely related to animals than they are to plants."

Michael Pollan, from "The Omnivore's Dilemma"

Don't have much to add to that. People get obsessed with mushroom hunting. It's wildly exciting to find edible wild mushrooms - hey, free food! Two of my favourite things in one place. But they do seem mysterious, even magical, in that they will show themselves to you or not.

I note, however, that when Mr. Ferdzy and I were in Spain a few years ago I had minor cause (unrelated to mushrooms) to visit the emergency room in Pamplona. We were amused and a bit horrified to see that the main decorative features of the room were 2 gigantic posters identifying different species of poisonous mushrooms - presumably so that expiring visitors could point as they gasped their last, "este, fue este". On the other hand, Mr Ferdzy's dad has been an assiduous mushroom hunter for years. It makes our hair stand on end, but he's still around and kicking, and hasn't even had any bad experiences that we've heard of. It can be done, with a bit of care and a good guide.

"Well, the house is filthy. I think I'll make a pie."

- My grandmother, at least according to my father

So what is there to say about that? Other than that I am in some ways plainly more related to my grandmother - although I have never been that blatant about connecting my distaste for housecleaning with my interest in cooking - than my father, who has been known to claim that it's a tough life when you're the neatest person in the commune, and presumably he would know. Not that he ever lived in a commune; his ventures in the army and student life had to stand in for what would have been a trendier option by the time I was old enough for him to be telling such things to me.

My own opinion is that people will remember a good slice of pie long after they have forgotten that the floor wasn't swept and the counter was sticky. (So was the table; somebody got pie on it.) Just be sure you wiped the counter before you rolled out the pie-crust.

I was at Keady earlier this week, picking up supplies to make Pesto and Dill Pickles by the Jar, and I happened to wander by one of the stands selling used books. I was amused and a bit astonished to see that the vendor had divided the books into several sections, one of which was labelled "Male Authors" and one of which was labelled "Female Authors".

I'm darned if I can find the quote, so this is a Quote of the Week without the actual quote, but I'm pretty sure that there was a Victorian writer who advocated keeping works by men and women on separate shelves, for the sake of propriety. I can remember running across mention of this when I was a teenager, and snickering mightily at the thought.

Lately, however, I am not so sure that she wasn't on to something. I mean, where do all these books come from, anyway? Here's my latest theory: I have been letting my books mingle promiscuously, without thought to their subject matter, never mind the sex of their authors. This resulted at first in the arrival of unconsidered stacks, here and there, of leaflets and pamphlets - the charming infants of the book world; I barely noticed them. The next stage after that was when the living room, bathroom and night-table became home to gawky stacks of glossy, floppy, slothful magazines - teenager-hood in printed form, you will all agree. And finally, I got up one day and realized that I was up to my ankles in books pretty much all through the house. Romances, gardening books, and books on Quakerism tend to gather in the bedrooms, though they form cliques and eye each other askance, and giggle. At least the romances do. The books on arts and crafts tend to linger in the basement craft room; oddly, so does the fantasy and science fiction. The cookbooks crowd around my computer desk, peering over my shoulder and giving me advice on cooking. Weightier tomes on geography, history, economics, politics and so forth tend to be loners, but they get around and can be found in just about any room of the house.

I swear, I didn't buy all these books, magazines and pamphlets. They've just been reproducing. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. But I don't know why the book vendor was segregating her books - surely, if you are a book vendor, more books are a good thing?

Much as I had seen and heard of the badness of the roads in Canada, I was not prepared for such a one as we travelled along this day: indeed, it hardly deserved the name of a road, being little more than an opening hewed out through the woods, the trees being felled and drawn aside, so as to admit a wheeled carriage passing along.

The swamps and little forest streams, that occasionally gush across the path, are rendered passable by logs placed side by side. From the ridgy and striped appearance of these bridges they are aptly enough termed corduroy.

Over these abominable corduroys the vehicle jolts, jumping from log to log, with a shock that must be endured with as good a grace as possible. If you could bear these knocks, and pitiless thumpings and bumpings, without wry faces, your patience and philosophy would far exceed mine;-- sometimes I laughed because I would not cry.

Imagine you see me perched up on a seat composed of carpet-bags, trunks, and sundry packages, in a vehicle little better than a great rough deal box set on wheels, the sides being merely pegged in so that more than once I found myself in rather an awkward predicament, owing to the said sides jumping out. In the very midst of a deep mud-hole out went the front board, and with the shock went the teamster (driver), who looked rather confounded at finding himself lodged just in the middle of a slough as bad as the "Slough of Despond." For my part, as I could do no good, I kept my seat, and patiently awaited the restoration to order. This was soon effected, and all went on well again till a jolt against a huge pine-tree gave such a jar to the ill-set vehicle, that one of the boards danced out that composed the bottom, and a sack of flour and bag of salted pork, which was on its way to a settler's, whose clearing we had to pass in the way, were ejected. A good teamster is seldom taken aback by such trifles as these.

He is, or should be, provided with an axe. No waggon, team, or any other travelling equipage should be unprovided with an instrument of this kind; as no one can answer for the obstacles that may impede his progress in the bush. The disasters we met fortunately required but little skill in remedying. The sides need only a stout peg, and the loosened planks that form the bottom being quickly replaced, away you go again over root, stump, and stone, mud-hole, and corduroy; now against the trunk of some standing tree, now mounting over some fallen one, with an impulse that would annihilate any lighter equipage than a Canadian waggon, which is admirably fitted by its very roughness for such roads as we have in the bush.

The sagacity of the horses of this country is truly admirable. Their patience in surmounting the difficulties they have to encounter, their skill in avoiding the holes and stones, and in making their footing sure over the round and slippery timbers of the log-bridges, renders them very valuable. If they want the spirit and fleetness of some of our high-bred blood-horses, they make up in gentleness, strength, and patience. This renders them most truly valuable, as they will travel in such places that no British horse would, with equal safety to their drivers. Nor are the Canadian horses, when well fed and groomed, at all deficient in beauty of colour, size, or form. They are not very often used in logging; the ox is preferred in all rough and heavy labour of this kind.

Catherine Parr Trail - The Backwoods of Canada

On Saturday we went out for a drive and to visit Holstein Farmers Market. We have a very detailed map-book and we enjoy driving down different side-roads in search of mild adventure. We found one on this trip when the road we were following crossed another road, and changed in nature. "Glenelg Heritage Road" said the sign; there was nothing to indicate that it was not a through road, nor any sign that it was not maintained in winter.

However, it quickly became clear that what they meant by "heritage road" was that no work has been done on it since the 1880's or so. The trees pressed in on either side; there was no shoulder or verge, and the road was only wide enough for one vehicle.

The road itself consisted of a blend of sand, coarse gravel and stone that I think was simply the underlying glacial till exposed by the removal of the trees and earth to form the road. The hills and dips had not been flattened in any way, and we found ourselves going down to first gear to get up some of them. There was only one cottage that we passed, no houses, and one farm field which I could not tell whether it was still in use or not.

Eventually we reached the point in the picture above. If we had had a 4-wheel drive vehicle we would have continued, but the ford was about a foot deep in spots, and we did not think it prudent to drive our poor abused little compact car through it, so we were obliged to turn back. It was a fascinating spot though; when we got out to look at the water and see how deep it was, a dozen tiny green frogs leapt away from the road, and we saw some campanula americana in bloom along the roadside. I would really like to go back, with some rubber boots, and spend some time poking around.

It's interesting to see how many funny little roads there are out there. Why one road becomes busy and eventually paved, and another dwindles into a track for farm equipment and off-roaders, I cannot figure out. That one factor is fairly large tracts of land that are too poor to farm, and thus there are no farms or traffic on it, is pretty clear; but we travel along several roads that are minor highways and which suffer from the same disadvantages. However, I'm very happy to find these roads less taken, and imagine for a few minutes what travelling was like in the past.

I've been cooking quite a bit with cilantro this week, since I bought a huge bunch of it. Every time I smell it I think of Mexico, but I also think of what used to be my favourite vegetable store when I lived near Kensington market, many years ago. Actually, we lived near Kensington market when I was 6 and 7, and I remember the same store was there then. I think that store is still there, although I haven't been in in a long time.

What made this place the perfect vegetable store wasn't just the vegetables, or the prices, which after all I didn't care about as a child; it was the smell. Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful smell. I loved that smell, because it smelled exactly* like a Mexican market.

So what does a Mexican market smell like? Well, it's a blend of cilantro, way way (seriously way) overripe bananas, a hint of chiles, dust, citrus fruits, slightly fermenty pineapple and no doubt much, much more. I suspect it's a smell that isn't likely to appeal to anyone who isn't instantly transported back to a happy childhood by the first whiff of this odour. On the other hand, that store was (has been?) there for a long, long time, so I can't be the only one who likes it.





*Okay, not completely exactly. No urine odour. No tortillas either, for that matter. But pretty close.

"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!"

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward FitzGerald

Hope you all are having a nice long weekend. I am not lolling about, but finally planting some clematis I got for 60% off last week, before they die. Mr. Ferdzy is also not fond of "Verses", in a Book or otherwise, and wine gives me indigestion. He does, however, have a bowl full of bread dough rising on the counter and maybe if it's less hot and muggy we will go sit under a bough later and eat it*, with some of the jam I have been making this week and butter, and some lemon-ade. No singing, by request.



*Once it has passed through the oven. By the way, this is by far the most famous translation of this bit of Verse, but it's extremely interesting to click through to the Wikipedia site and see how other people have translated it.

Domestic Expenditure.

The mistress of a family should always remember, that the welfare and good management of the house depend on the eye of the superior; and consequently that nothing is too trifling for her notice, whereby waste may be avoided. If a lady has never been accustomed while single to think of family management, let her not on that account fear that she cannot attain it. She may consult others who are experienced, and acquaint herself with the necessary quantities of the several articles of family expenditure, in proportion to the number it consists of, together with the value of the articles it may be necessary to procure. A minute account of the annual income, and the times of payment, should be taken in writing; likewise an estimate of the supposed amount of each item of expense. Those who are early accustomed to calculations of this kind, will acquire so accurate a knowledge of what their establishment demands, as will suggest the happy medium between prodigality and parsimony, without in the least subjecting themselves to the charge of meanness.

Few branches of female education are so useful as great readiness at figures, though nothing is more commonly neglected. Accounts should be regularly kept, and not the smallest item be omitted to be entered. If balanced every week, or month at longest, the income and outgoings will easily be ascertained, and their proportions to each other be duly observed. Some people fix on stated sums to be appropriated to each different article, and keep the money separate for that purpose; as house, clothes, pocket, education of children, &c. Whichever way accounts be entered, a certain mode should be adopted, and strictly adhered to. Many women are unfortunately ignorant of the state of their husband's income; and others are only made acquainted with it when some speculative project, or profitable transaction, leads them to make a false estimate of what can be afforded. It too often happens also that both parties, far from consulting each other, squander money in ways that they would even wish to forget: whereas marriage should be a state of mutual and perfect confidence, with a similarity of pursuits, which would secure that happiness it was intended to bestow.

There are so many valuable women who excel as wives, that it is fair to infer there would be few extravagant ones, if they were consulted by their husbands on subjects that concern the mutual interest of both parties. Many families have been reduced to poverty by the want of openness in the man, on the subject of his affairs; and though on these occasions the women are generally blamed, it has afterwards appeared that they never were allowed to make particular enquiries, nor suffered to reason upon what sometimes appeared to them imprudent. Many families have fully as much been indebted to the propriety of female management, for the degree of prosperity they have enjoyed, as to the knowledge and activity of the husband and the father.

Ready money should be paid for all such things as come not into weekly bills, and even for them some sort of check is necessary. The best places for purchasing goods should also be attended to. On some articles a discount of five per cent is allowed in London and other large cities, and those who thus pay are usually best served. Under an idea of buying cheap, many go to new shops; but it is safest to deal with people of established credit, who do not dispose of goods by underselling. To make tradesmen wait for their money is very injurious, besides that a higher price must be paid: and in long bills, articles never bought are often charged. If goods are purchased at ready-money price, and regularly entered, the exact state of the expenditure will be known with ease; for it is delay of payment that occasions so much confusion. A common-place book should always be at hand, in which to enter such hints of useful knowledge, and other observations, as are given by sensible experienced people. Want of attention to what is advised, or supposing things to be too minute to be worth regarding, are the causes why so much ignorance prevails on necessary subjects, among those who are not backward in frivolous ones.

It is very necessary for the mistress of a family to be informed of the price and quality of all articles in common use, and of the best times and places for purchasing them. She should also be acquainted with the comparative prices of provisions, in order that she may be able to substitute those that are most reasonable, when they will answer as well, for others of the same kind, but which are more costly. A false notion of economy leads many to purchase as bargains, what is not wanted, and sometimes never is used. Were this error avoided, more money would remain of course for other purposes. It is not unusual among lower dealers to put off a larger quantity of goods, by assurances that they are advancing in price; and many who supply fancy articles are so successful in persuasion, that purchasers not unfrequently go beyond their original intention, and suffer inconvenience by it. Some things are certainly better for keeping, and should be laid in accordingly; but this applies only to articles in constant consumption. Unvarying rules cannot be given, for people ought to form their conduct on their circumstances. Some ladies charge their account with giving out to a superintending servant such quantities of household articles, as by observation and calculation they know to be sufficient, reserving for their own key the large stock of things usually laid in for extensive families in the country. Should there be more visitors than usual, they can easily account for an increased consumption, and vice versa. Such a degree of judgment will be respectable even in the eye of domestics, if not interested in the ignorance of their employers; and if they are, their services will not compensate the want of honesty.

A bill of parcels and receipt should be required, even if the money be paid at the time of purchase; and to avoid mistakes, let the goods be compared with these when brought home. Though it is very disagreeable to suspect any one's honesty, and perhaps mistakes are often unintentional; yet it is proper to weigh meat and grocery articles when brought in, and compare them with the charge. The butcher should be ordered to send the weight with the meat, and the checks regularly filed and examined. A ticket should be exchanged for every loaf of bread, which when returned will shew the number to be paid for, as tallies may be altered, unless one is kept by each party. Those who are served with brewer's beer, or any other articles not paid for weekly or on delivery, should keep a book for entering the dates: which will not only serve to prevent overcharges, but will show the whole year's consumption at one view. `Poole's complete Housekeeper's Account book,' is very well adapted to this purpose.

From The Cook and Housekeepers Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, In All Its Various Branches, Adapted to the Use of Private Families, Also a Variety of Original and Valuable Information. By Mary Eaton, and published in 1823. Actually, the title was longer than that, but I got tired of writing it out. I do love a good old-fashioned book title. No messing around in those days. I also love Project Gutenberg, which gives access to so many wonderful old books.

Personal finances are a topic that have been much in the news and in people's minds these last few years, and it's extremely interesting to see what changes have occurred and what things remain constant.

Our ideas about sex and money - what belongs to who between men and women, and how it is apportioned and managed - have changed drastically since the time this book was written. (And yet, Mary Eaton's expectations about it would not have been completely out-of-date as few as 30 years ago.) What has changed even more drastically is the way in which we relate to servants. What servants? Precisely.

On the other hand, I read her ideas about keeping track of household expenditures with recognition and approval. Of course I use Quickbooks, and not Poole's Complete Housekeepers Account Book, but presumably the intent and results are very similar. As for keeping track of all receipts properly - well, duh. One of the reasons I actually like to use debit and credit cards is that at the end of the month I can compare the receipts and the printed bills, and make sure they match. I'm always astonished to see the number of people at ATMs or check-out counters who leave their receipts behind. How on earth do they keep track of their expenditures? I have to assume they don't, really.

Seeing the "whole year's consumption at one view" is also highly instructive. People are often surprised when we (can!) tell them that we spent $5,573.26 last year on our car, not including depreciation (i.e, the car itself,) even though our car is old and long since paid for. That's because an awful lot of people think of their car expenses as the monthly payment, and fail to add up their gas, oil changes, maintenance and repairs, car washes, parking and insurance. If more people kept track of their real car expenses, we might be much less of a car-owning culture. I don't think it's unusual for people to spend one third or more of their working lives supporting their cars. How many of them even know it?

To pull this back to the subject of food, it really is instructive to see how much money we spend on food, and what proportion of that is spent on groceries, and what proportion is spent on restaurants. I feel like we eat out at restaurants a great deal less than many people, and yet when we compare the figures we are inevitably shocked and vow to eat out even less. And we are not at all prone to buying much in the way of drinks and snacks at coffee shops - how much money can evaporate there without people even realizing it?

Now that it's summer, it's time to go camping (or boating). Things have not changed all that much from the 1880's, when Jerome K. Jerome wrote "Three Men in a Boat".

"To return to our present trip: nothing exciting happened, and we tugged steadily on to a little below Monkey Island, where we drew up and lunched. We tackled the cold beef for lunch, and then we found that we had forgotten to bring any mustard. I don't think I ever in my life, before or since, felt I wanted mustard as badly as I felt I wanted it then. I don't care for mustard as a rule, and it is very seldom that I take it at all, but I would have given worlds for it then.

I don't know how many worlds there may be in the universe, but anyone who had brought me a spoonful of mustard at that precise moment could have had them all. I grow reckless like that when I want a thing and can't get it.

Harris said he would have given worlds for mustard too. It would have been a good thing for anybody who had come up to that spot with a can of mustard, then: he would have been set up in worlds for the rest of his life.

But there! I daresay both Harris and I would have tried to back out of the bargain after we had got the mustard. One makes these extravagant offers in moments of excitement, but, of course, when one comes to think of it, one sees how absurdly out of proportion they are with the value of the required article. I heard a man, going up a mountain in Switzerland, once say he would give worlds for a glass of beer, and, when he came to a little shanty where they kept it, he kicked up a most fearful row because they charged him five francs for a bottle of Bass. He said it was a scandalous imposition, and he wrote to the TIMES about it.

It cast a gloom over the boat, there being no mustard. We ate our beef in silence. Existence seemed hollow and uninteresting. We thought of the happy days of childhood, and sighed. We brightened up a bit, however, over the apple-tart, and, when George drew out a tin of pine-apple from the bottom of the hamper, and rolled it into the middle of the boat, we felt that life was worth living after all.

We are very fond of pine-apple, all three of us. We looked at the picture on the tin; we thought of the juice. We smiled at one another, and Harris got a spoon ready.

Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with. We turned out everything in the hamper. We turned out the bags. We pulled up the boards at the bottom of the boat. We took everything out on to the bank and shook it. There was no tin-opener to be found.

Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out. While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured, and broke a teacup.

Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank, and Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against the top of it, and I took the mast and poised it high up in the air, and gathered up all my strength and brought it down.

It was George's straw hat that saved his life that day. He keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of a winter's evening, when the pipes are lit and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they have passed through, George brings it down and shows it round, and the stirring tale is told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time.

Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.

After that, I took the tin off myself, and hammered at it with the mast till I was worn out and sick at heart, whereupon Harris took it in hand.

We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every form known to geometry - but we could not make a hole in it. Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the mast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass and looked at it.

There was one great dent across the top that had the appearance of a mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so that Harris rushed at the thing, and caught it up, and flung it far into the middle of the river, and as it sank we hurled our curses at it, and we got into the boat and rowed away from the spot, and never paused till we reached Maidenhead."

I'm at a wedding today - the second one this month. I noticed that in both cases guests were offered a choice of chicken, beef or vegetarian entrees, with appetizers before and dessert after, followed by another round of dessert when the wedding cake is served.

I thought I would look up a wedding menu from an old cookbook of mine: Mrs. A.B. Marshall's Cookery Book. There is no date in this book, but judging from the illustrations it's from the late 1870's or early 1880's. Mrs Marshall was the Martha Stewart of her day, running a successful cooking school and mail-order business in London, as well as publishing a cookbook that went through many editions, right into the 1930's.

At any rate I didn't find a menu for a wedding, and so will have to leave you with a menu for a ball. Let us suppose it is a wedding-ball.



Goodness. That'll keep the scullery maid hopping.

It's interesting to see that some of it is, by modern standards, far too fancy to consider serving to "400 or 500" poeople; things like the Mayonnaise de Homard a la Gelée, or the Perdreau a la Souvaroff, while other things are perfectly possible, although possibly deemed not fancy enough; sandwiches, pickled herrings, anchovy straws and olives. The last two are probably festive enough, just not worth actually putting on the menu.

And what the heck are "Jumeaux Siamois"? Yes, I know they're Siamese (conjoined) twins, but presumably not actual Siamese twins. That would be... disconcerting, to say the least. I don't think even the Victorians were quite that decadent.

Well, I'm off for my apps-chicken-dessert-cake wedding dinner. I don't think I'll be coming away hungry, although I will spare a pang for the Bavarois aux Pistaches, which I'm sure was fab.

"The slogan “Farmers Feed Cities!” was created as a placard for a 2005 rally and is now a successful public awareness campaign in its second year. The Farmers Feed Cities! campaign seeks to make a stronger link between farm and non-farm families by talking about the things we all have in common – the benefits we all enjoy that depend on a healthy agriculture sector.

Coordinated by Ontario Grains & Oilseeds, the campaign is focused on securing a long-term solution to the farm income crisis plaguing the grains and oilseeds sector.

The bright yellow signs, flags and banners can be seen at events, fairs, festivals and parades across Ontario, challenging everyone to ‘picture yourself getting involved.’ It’s working. Rural and urban families from every walk of life are taking the time to learn more about agriculture, grains & oilseeds and the challenges facing farm families. Building this kind of awareness is critical. While it’s clear that farmers feed cities, it’s also true that farmers need cities – to show their support of domestic agriculture.

Thanks for visiting this site, and for taking the time to learn more about us. Farm families have been growing food for generations, and we’re proud to provide safe, reliable food that tastes great."

From the Farmers Feed Cities campaign history.

Harumph.

Maybe it's the fact that I spent my first 30 years living in Toronto. Maybe it's my extreme allergy to propaganda in general and slogans in particular. Maybe* I'm just a cranky old cynic. But from the first time I saw one of those chirpy, smug little yellow "Farmers Feed Cities" sign, I have felt nothing but irritation.

Guys, do you hear yourselves? That's right, farmers feed CITIES. They don't feed fellow farmers, villagers and small towners. Well they do, of course, but that amounts to taking in each others' economic laundry. If it wasn't for cities, 80% of farmers couldn't be farmers. At least, that's the percentage of Canadians living in cities, those cities that Canadian farmers feed. Actually, I imagine that a pretty precise formula could be written estimating the number of farmers required as a percentage of the population, if you could control for variables like imported produce and the season of the year.

A healthy agriculture sector sounds like a good idea to me. I'm all in favour of a stronger link between farm and non-farm families. Hell, that's what this blog is all about. But - you knew there was going to be a but, right? - I can tell you, as a basically urban person, that slapping up what looks like a smug little reprimand to your urban customers is not the way to win friends and influence people.

There is a tension between urban and rural life that goes back as long as history. Certainly the Romans wrote about it. On the whole, urbanites have been able to dominate the debate, since they've been the ones with the printing presses (actual or metaphorical) for most of that time. Urbane, courteous, polite: words that literally mean "from the city", and would surely not apply to rural dwellers, who were beyond the pale. Literally. And how are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paree? City air makes free. On the other hand, going back to the Romans again, there has long been a view of cities as polluted, both physically and morally, and the countryside as being pure and clean, again both actually and morally.

It's interesting to note that the link to the biography of Virgil suggests that the Georgics "was actually a subtle propaganda piece for Octavian. In writing about a farmer working on his land, the idea was to give a much needed boost to the Roman Agricultural Industry".

The more things change...

Farmers need cities for much more than "to show their support of domestic agriculture". Especially if by "domestic agriculture" what is meant is a continuation of the disastrous developments of the last 70 years or so. Farming has always been a chancy occupation, subject to factors beyond the farmers control, from weather to politics, to war**. The big problems now, as I see it, are not the consumers. They are the suppliers (such as Monsanto) and the processors of raw farm commodities, wherein a few cents worth - to the farmer - of grains are magically transformed into a box of cereal that sells for $4 in a grocery store.

Many farmers are starting to think about the problems inherent in commodity farming, and are no longer treating the products of their farm as commodities, instead focusing on producing the kind of goods that appeal to particular customers. But this is absolutely a two-way street, where farmers cannot continue producing whatever they want and having a "take it or leave it" attitude towards their customers - and then being astonished and affronted when customers leave it.

Customers - that is to say, people who eat food - also have to stop and think about what they are actually putting into their mouths. The multinational food processors who now dominate every shelf of every supermarket and corner store have worked very hard to make their product ubiquitous and their methods and processes invisible, with the result that for most people food isn't even a product, in the sense of something produced through growth or work, but a substance that appears magically, like manna. The only way to circumvent this sleight of hand is to really examine the whole chain that food travels, from field to fork, and the easiest way to do this is to deal directly with farmers and small producers.

But scolding won't work. I like another bumper-sticker I saw recently, that simply asked an open-ended question, like a Quaker query: Who's your farmer?





* Maybe?

**Which shapes modern agriculture far more than most people realize.

"Peter Henderson once lamented that it was the demise of the "particular customer" that eventually changed the way market gardeners did business. Boston and Philadelphia had been bastions of the type of consumers who demanded to know the background of their produce, how it was cultivated, and the comparitive tastes of different varieties, and tolerated no compromises in freshness and quality. This gave rise to hundreds of vegetables that sold themselves by virtue of having passed through this critical gauntlet: Boston lettuce, Philadelphia Market tomato, and much more. The New York market was different. As long as the produce looked good, it was possible to sell it. Henderson's greatest fear was that this standard should prevail nationwide once vast quantities of produce began moving across the country rather than coming from nearby farms. He was to be proved correct."

From Heirloom Vegetable Gardening, by William Woys Weaver.

It's time for my annual strawberry rant. This year, I'm going to urge you to become, if you are not already, a particular customer, not just of strawberries, but of all produce.

However, to get back to the strawberries: once upon a time, there were basically two types of edible strawberries; the small wild berries well-known in Europe and North America and a fleeting pleasure of early summer, and also a yellow strawberry that grew in Peru which was very large but insipid to the point of tastelessness. It was by crossing these two plants that the modern strawberry was invented - it acquired size from its Peruvian parent, and flavour from the (mostly) European wild parents.

Unfortunately, the link between size and flavour has proven to be very durable. The larger the strawberry, the blander and more insipid in flavour. The smaller the berries, the more they retain the rich flavour of their wild antecedants. It may be that in future some breeder will chance upon a berry that combines both features, but in the meantime all varieties of strawberries are to some degree a compromise between size and flavour.

I have in the past contemptuously referred to the large berries favoured first by growers in California as "California" strawberries. You know the ones; large, firm, beautifully coloured with a slight scent and the flavour and texture of acidulated cardboard. They are available all year, thanks to grossly exploited farm labour and hair-raisingly horrible cultivation practices, involving vast quantities of chemicals of dubious safety.

At least there were the local strawberries, in season, which were smaller, deliciously flavoured, softer and without much shelf-life, and entirely worth waiting 10 months from the end of one season to the beginning of the next. It is with perfect horror though, that I have seen that they are starting to be replaced with "California" strawberries, locally grown. NOOOOO!!!!!!

I urge you to avoid these strawberry zombies. Don't buy them. Don't pick them. If you accidentally buy some, take them back and complain bitterly, loudly and long. Be a particular customer. The world will thank you, or at least I will.

I've spent all evening working on First Day (Sunday) school lessons for tomorrow, so in the spirit of simplicity (a testimony!*) I'm going to make it do double duty.

Also in the spirit of simplicity, my lesson plan for my class** this year consists of my supplying them with a printed quotes, with author if known. They then get to read them and discuss which testimony they belong to. Eventually we will paste them up, with appropriate illustrations if any can be found or made, onto a display board. This ingenious plan - if I do say so myself - combines their desire to do things with their hands with their parents desire to have some knowledge of Quakerism imparted to them.

Here's a few of the quotes I have found:

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. - Hans Hoffman."

"Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. - Ursula K. Leguin."

"When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to becoming his equal. When you meet someone not as good as you are, look within and examine your own self. - Confucius (K'ung Fu Tsu)"

"Use what you need. Need what you use. - sign next to a water fountain.***"

"I you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. - Dalai Lama."

"Before you say anything you should ask yourself three questions: 'Is it true?' "Is it kind?' 'Is it necessary?' - Quaker saying"

"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. - Andre Gide."

"You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation. - Marian Wright Edelman."****

"What cannot be achieved in one lifetime will happen when one lifetime is joined to another. - Harold Kushner."

*Quakers are adamant about not having any creed, to the point that it's probably a creed. We do have testimonies, which are points we can mostly all agree on, more or less, on a good day when we are feeling particularly agreeable, although there is no authoritative list of just what the testimonies are. I picked a few that seem popular: Community, Equality, Integrity, Justice, Love, Peace (the best-known one), Simplicity and Truth.


** Which sounds so grand. Two kids, generally.


***They really liked this one!


****Trick quote! Is this 'Justice' or is it 'Community'? (Actually they're almost all trick quotes that way.

'Twas early in the spring when I decide to go,
For to work up in the woods in North Ontario;
And the unemployment office said they'd see me through
To the Little Abitibi with the survey crew.

And the black flies, the little black flies
Always the black fly no matter where you go
I'll die with the black fly a-pickin' on my bones
In North Ontario, io, in North Ontario.

Now the man Black Toby was the captain of the crew,
And he said "I'm gonna tell you boys what we're gonna do;
They want to build a power dam and we must find a way
For to make the little Ab flow around the other way."

Chorus

So we survey to the east and we survey to the west,
And we couldn't make our minds up how to do it best.
Little Ab, Little Ab, what shall I do?
For I'm all but goin' crazy on the survey crew.

Chorus

It was blackfly, blackfly, blackfly, everywhere,
A-crawlin in your whiskers, a- crawlin in your hair;
A-swimmin' in the soup and a-swimmin' in the tea
Oh the Devil take the blackfly and leave me be.

Chorus

Black Toby fell to swearin' cuz the work went slow,
And the state of our morale was a-gettin' mighty low,
And the flies swarmed heavy; it was hard to catch a breath,
As you staggered up and down the trail, talkin' to yourself.

Chorus

Now the bull cook's name was Blind River Joe;
If it hadn't been for him, we'd've never pulled through.
For he bound up our bruises and he kidded us for fun,
And he lathered us with bacon grease and balsam gum.

Chorus

At last the job was over; Black Toby said "We're through
With the Little Abitibi and the survey crew."
T'was a wonderful experience and this I know,
I'll never go again to North Ontario.

Chorus

Wade Hemsworth


Well, so much for that theory. I mean the one I had that there weren't that many mosquitos here, and no blackflies to speak of. There's a shit-load of the little bastards, both of them. I've just managed to avoid coming up to visit Mom when they were at their peak, or maybe she doesn't have 'em. I dunno.

Mosquitos are annoying, but black flies are of the devil. It's not just the biting, it's the swarms of them that crowd around you, trying to get into your eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Fortunately it's been sunny the last few days; like other vampires they prefer not to be out in the full light of the sun.

I find they don't make me quite as itchy as they did when I was a kid and we used to go to our cottage in Muskoka. There were a lot more of them there, too. I figured for every wild strawberry I picked I got a mosquito or black fly bite. When I got bitten then I would swell up in red welts the size of a quarter, with a bleeding hole in the middle that would trickle for what seemed like hours. Now the bites are no worse than mosquito bites, which is not to say I haven't spent hours scratching. It must be my tired old immune system; it can't be arsed anymore. Just as well. I couldn't figure out though, why I wasn't bleeding now. I thought they injected an anti-coagulant to keep the supply flowing.

I was congratulating myself on having escaped that aspect of it, when I absent-mindedly put up my hand to scratch the back of my head, and found a little line of lumpy clots gluing my hair to the back of my neck.

Well, so much for that theory.

" Goodman: I was a whole grain baker in Maine, and I would consider the coup to be to get our whole grain organic breads in the schools of Maine for the kids, but we just couldn't compete with Wonder Bread which could stay on the shelf -- I don't know if it was a year.

Pollan: That's amazing.

Goodman: Ours, after a few days, of course, would get moldy, because it was alive.

Pollan: Right. And, in fact, one of my tips is, don't eat any food that's incapable of rotting. If the food can't rot eventually, there's something wrong."

From an Interview of Michael Pollan with Amy Goodman.

Back in the early days of my career as a landlord, we had a tenant who was the mother of two small children who spent a lot of time running around outside. She kept them fueled with a steady stream of snacks; more than they could eat really, so we were frequently picking up discarded food that they had dropped.

At one point, sometime in May, one of them opened then dropped, uneaten, a Handi-Snack packet.

I noticed it on the ground as I rushed from the car into the apartment, but I had my hands full and couldn't pick it up right away. Later, I forgot about it. I noticed it again, a few days later, but again I had my hands full, or was in a rush, or something, and I left it.

After a couple of weeks of noticing this thing, but failing to pick it up, I noticed something else. I noticed that the open contents of this little plastic packet looked exactly the same as the first time I saw it. It was strange (and orange.)

I began not picking it up on purpose. I wondered when it would begin to decompose, since it was obviously going unrecognized as food by the local cat, squirrel, dog, mouse, skunk, racoon, ant, beetle, insects generally, mold, fungus and bacteria populations.

Sometime in the fall I gave up on waiting, and picked it up and threw it away, still looking just as "good" as the day it was dropped.

29 And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint: 30 And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. 31 And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. 32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? 33 And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

Genesis, King James Bible

If it dismays you to see Canada selling your birthright for a mess of pottage to the likes of Monsanto, please contact your M.P. to urge them to support Bill C-343.

M.P. Alex Atamanenko has reintroduced a Private Members Bill (C-343) to ban the release, sale, importation and use of Terminator technology.

Terminator technology refers to genetically modified seed which has been designed to produce sterile seed; farmers cannot keep seed from one season to the next, but must re-purchase it every year. Combined with Monsanto's concerted efforts (frighteningly effective, thus far) to control every aspect of food seed production in North America, if not the world, this is pretty chilling stuff.

You can find more information here, and here.

Thanks to Red Jenny for alerting me to this Bill.

The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House

One without looks in tonight
Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in tonight
As we sit and think
By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes
Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
Wandering, aglow
Four-footed, tiptoe.

Thomas Hardy

As a break from all of this weeks digging, we went for a long walk in the woods behind our house. It confirmed my observation that there was nothing but acres of trout lilies back there, practically none of them blooming. Nothing besides trees, I mean.

Well, I exaggerate. There is also some marshy grass in the low flat areas by the streams, and a lot of some member of the ranunculus family that isn't buttercups, but I don't know what it is. There is a smallish patch of maianthemum canadense, and a sprinkling of purple and yellow violets. I think there will be some cup-plants by the stream sides. No doubt there are other things, too.

However, I can say without exaggeration that this is the least diverse forest floor I have ever seen, and I have been a regular walker of woods since my years were in single digits. It's pretty clear that the reason is the deer. I hadn't considered it before, but we did a bit of driving around yesterday, and I observed that in comparison to other local woods, ours has practically no underbrush. There are numerous well-trampled paths through our woods, and I have to assume that the whole area is so over-grazed and trampled that many plants have died out. Even many plants too toxic to be browsed by the deer have succumbed to the endless trampling.

From our observations, the herd of deer which lives back there is no larger than 5 or 6 individuals, but their habitat is very constricted, between apple farms and suburban streets. I admit to having very mixed feelings about these deer. We will have to keep them out of our garden area, if we are to have a garden at all; but this may reduce their grazing area by as much as 10 %, and they are already clearly hard pressed for space. We saw one, in our walk, and as always it was a moment of excitement and pleasure. It's not a moment of excitement and pleasure though, when we go out and find another shrub half-shredded, and if (when) they get into our veggies, I'm sure the thought of learning to hunt will pass through my mind. (Won't do it, mainly because I'm pretty sure I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn door; besides if I did get one, then what?)

Eh well, nothing is perfect. We'll see how all this transpires. Expect posts on putting up electric fence over the summer, and a report on whether it actually keeps them out.