Eating Organic is Too Expensive. Part I: Found Food.

Whenever I start going off about how easy it is to eat organic food I tend to hear one comment over and over.  It's too expensive.

Anyone who is a freelance writer or caterer will agree with me here.  We make no money.  Unless you have published a best-seller or attained celebrity-chef status or won the $100,000 prize on Top Chef, we are a poor lot.  Before you shed a tear for my plight, let me clarify.  I am ok with this.  Living simply and frugally is a clear path, unfettered with big screen tvs and status vehicles and trips to Disneyworld. Finding joy in library books and rented movies and food I have grown myself makes me very happy indeed.

Despite my love of frugality, as a chef, eating well is a luxury I refuse to part with.  Having all but eschewed Supermarket Culture, most of what I eat is local and organic, and procured from the local organic store or farmers market.  It costs me more up front, but compared to the hidden costs attached to eating cheaply from the supermarket (fossil fuel use, abuse of agricultural lands, mistreatment of farmed animals) I am paying for all I will pay for as soon as I hand my money to the farmer or CSA grower or at the organic store.  I can walk away knowing my bag of treasure is the last step in the transaction.

There are many ways I work with the higher initial costs of eating this way, but for now, here is one.  I have become an expert at "finding" food.  Let me explain.  When you open a box, say a frozen pizza, and eat the contents, it is gone.  When I buy a bag of organic potatoes, or harvest a bunch of leeks from my garden, here is what I find:

-dinner for tonight (leek and potato soup)
-dinner for another night (add some cauliflower and you have aloo gobi)
-dinner for a third night (did I mention I made a double batch of the soup?)
-trimmings for stock (scrub the potatoes first, and slice up the leek tops and bottoms.  Keep a bag in the freezer and add to it at will)
-a snack for later (scrub the potatoes, brush the peelings with a bit of olive oil and roast in the oven until crisp, and toss with some sea salt)
-an add in for a tart or mac and cheese (saute leek tops, ever so slowly in butter until very tender, and use as you wish)
-fortified water for soup stock (from boiling potatoes)
-compost (from any brown ends of the leeks or spoiled edges of potato)

The frozen pizza costs $5.99.  The organic potatoes cost me $3.99, the leeks are free.   Either way, I am fed.  But in the meatime, I don't have a box to throw away, I spent time making something from what other people might see as garbage, and nothing is wasted.  There were no chemicals of preservatives in my food. And I have a meal to put away for another day, all from a humble bag of potatoes and some leeks I grew in the spring, which gave me some exercise and time outside.  Throw the compost into the mix, and I'm adding humus to my soil, or feeding my chickens.

There are other "found" foods too.  Carrot tops are wonderful in shaved fennel salad.  Mushroom stems can be made into tapenade or ravioli filling.  Orange peels can be simmered slowly with a bit of sugar until soft, chopped, and added to granola or folded into a batch of blondies.  I didn't make this up.  Chefs and restaurants have been "finding" food all along to keep food costs low, while still delighting us with wonderful food.

Expensive you say? Not only can I (and you) afford to eat this way, in this age of enviromental awareness, "upcycling" and reusing, the dangers of packaged foods, pesticides, and genetically modified ingredients, it seems ridiculous not to.

For The Love Of Urban Agriculture

KAScott_20091120_8379b
Originally uploaded by Ken Scott

This past Friday I was fortunate enough to attend Backyard Bounty and the University of Guelph's first Urban Agriculture Symposium, held on the grounds of the beautiful and always inspiring Guelph Arboretum. Walking in the door to register, I could tell this was not going to be your usual conference. I was surrounded by an energetic and charged group of like-minded agriculturists, farmers, landscape architects, desingers, urban planners, activists, and advocates for local food, gathered together to discuss the resurgence of interest in urban agriculture, and its future in Guelph and beyond.  It was comforting to chat with complete strangers over the organic apples at the snack table, nary a business suit in sight, about the the renewed momentum of the "movement", as I heard it called.

And a renewal it is. It is only in fairly recent history that agriculture has moved out of cities and onto vast expanses of land deep in rural areas. When I imagine urban agriculture of the past, I'm always reminded of the Incan empire, and Machu Pichu, with its elegantly terraced gardens reaching to the heavens, delicate micro-climates overflowing with bounty just yeards from where people lived. Call me romantic, but the idea of communities of families and neighbours working the land, side my side, and sharing its bounty strikes a chord in my soul.

Its unfortunate that this model has been lost, or rather misplaced, in the era of SUV's and grocery store giants, but attending the symposium gave me hope that there are significant numbers of people who feel this way. The question is, is there enough momentum to convince various levels of government to divert a portion of all that stimulus money to build the infrastructure needed to create and sustain areas for urban agriculture? Who would like to see some of our city parklands re-purposed as community gardens? How about tax breaks for those who use their properties to grow their own food?

I'm definitely oversimplifying, but I have always believed if you follow what your heart and soul is telling you, the rest will follow. Grow food yourself, and set an example to our children and those around us of how it can be done. It was heartening and encouraging to meet people who are doing just that in their homes and in their work. Growing a few vegetables on our available land or raising a few chickens may seem a long way from the Incan empire, but cultivating these connections to our agricultural past may just be the way to achieve a sustainable future.

...and it keeps on giving

For all our complaining about what a disappointing summer it was, we are being rewarded with an amazing autumn.  Today, despite the rain, the temperature was in the double-digits again.  My garden is relishing the warmth, rewarding me daily with an unending supply of kale, swiss chard, parsley, leeks, celeriac, and beets.  So what do we do with it all, especially all those greens????

My answer, for anyone who knows me, is to of course keep it simple. You could alway saute them in some brown butter and salt and pepper, or cook them all up with some rich vegetable stock and some diced sweet potatoes and a bit of garam masala for an easy soup.

Tonight I threw together this very simple but killer pasta.  You can do this with any leafy green you may have, but I made it with a big whack of Swiss chard, which is looking even greener and healthier now than it did all summer.  I used a mere 6 ingredients.  It took all of 10 minutes to make,  and it rocked.

I recently discovered Delverde pasta.  It's made with 100% organically farmed durum wheat, and cut using bronze dies, which results in that wonderful rough surface which really grabs the sauce.  Here's what I did:

Cook the pasta (I used tagliatelle) and drain.  In the same pot, heat 2-3 tsp good olive oil and add a dab of butter.  Add 4 cloves minced garlic, 4-5 cups swiss chard cut into ribbons, 2 cups halved organic grape tomatoes, a pinch of crushed red pepper, and a good amount of salt & pepper.  I added a bit of whipping cream but only because I had it and it needed using. Add 1/4 cup grated organic parmesan and the drained pasta and tossing well. 

That's all there is to it.  Sprinkle with some more cheese and some organic pine nuts, if you can find them.

If you have time, roast the tomatoes first.  Halve and season with salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.  Roast in a 425F oven for 10 minutes, then reduce to 250F and cook for another 30-40 minutes, or until caramely. Roasting vegetables always adds extra flavour, and I like to keep a bunch of these in the fridge for pasta, pizza, bruschetta, omelettes, you name it.

http://www.unico.ca/cgi-bin/products.cgi?id=238

The Big Story of the Little Seed

Much to my chagrin I went out to check the garden on Monday morning to find that a killing frost had taken out all my delicate vegetables, the jalapenos and Thai basil, the nasturtiums and heirloom tomatoes.


All is not lost, because from the few tomatoes clinging to the now pathetically drooping vines, I will collect and save the precious seeds to start indoors next spring. Saving seeds from tomatoes is a process, very different from waiting for a bean to grow to bursting, its seeds to dry, and simply popping open the pod. It is a tad labour intensive, but like all labours of love, well worth the effort.

This Thursday as part of World Food Day, Hart House at the University of Toronto presents a lecture by the wonderful Vandana Shiva. Shiva is an internationally acclaimed author, ecologist, physicist, and food activist. Among her numerous affiliations and accomplishments, she founded Navdanya, a network of organic growers and seed keepers spread across 16 states in India. Shiva was raised and educated in India as well as Canada, and just happened to earn her degree in Philosophy of Science and the University of Guelph, but back to Navdanya. This organization has been instrumental in promoting organic agriculture across India as well as teaching the importance of biodiversity, and the role of seed keeping, in worldwide sustainability. A tiny seed is a powerful David & Goliath metaphor for the influence it has to shape the future of global food systems. On a smaller, yet equally important scale, saving seeds means that heirloom varieties, which have survived not by genetic modification but because savvy farmers were wise to their strengths and kept them going by saving their seeds, will continue to survive.

On a personal level, saving seed also saves me money. One tiny White Currant tomato holds upwards of 40 seeds. I will lose some, but even if one-fourth germinate and mature, 10 plants will be enough for me to grow what I need and share the rest with others. And that is one tomato from one plant variety of the dozen or so I grew this year. When all is said and done, I may even be selling heirloom tomato plants at the end of my driveway come June.

The best way to achieve success in your own urban "farm" is to practice biodiversity. The allow the natural ecology of your garden flourish is to operate in a closed loop of sustainability. Rotating legume crops with vegetative plants (like my heirloom tomatoes) feed nitrogen to the soil, which in turn will feed the next crop, whose waste will feed my chickens who will fertilize my soil with their droppings, where I will plant again, and the loop is closed. No chemical fertilizers or pesticides needed.

This year in my small but productive 150 sq.ft garden, no fewer than 40 different vegetables grew. We enjoyed organic, chemical free produce daily from this wide variety of fruit, vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers. We simply ate better, and when we eat better, we live better.

The Caretakers

KAScott_20091006_8497b
Originally uploaded by Ken Scott

One of the reasons why I love food so much is not only its inherent beauty, and how something so simple can be powerfully soul-lifting, but the way it is the one common denominator that can bring so many different people together. I can't think of anything that illustrates this better than when we have an opportunity to come face to face with the people who grow our food. They are the stewards of the land, our caretakers, our farmers. Talking with farmers, learning more about their craft, and hearing their stories is the only way to truly grasp what it takes to produce the beautiful food we enjoy every day.

For all the talk of local food, organic farming, terrior, and the near fever-pitch fashionability of embracing such things these days, our farmers have been quietly living and growing this way for hundreds of years. They are the front line soldiers in the war against mass-produced goods parading around disguised as food, genetically modified fruit and vegetable Frankensteins that may look like the real thing on the outside, but don't even come close to the art our organic farmers produce day in and day out.

The only way we can ever hope to embrace and appreciate food for what it is meant to be is to receive it directly from the soil-honed, hard-working hands of our farmers. They are all around us, when we pick up our CSA, visit the Farmers' markets, when we pick from their fields and orchards. If we are lucky enough to have this opportunity, to connect with the very person who grew the food we will be eating, then we should. Say hello, ask questions, and say thank you. Where our food systems go from here is entirely dependent on the relationship we, as individuals, have with our food, and the people who grow it.

If your heart is healthy, you are energetic and strong, and you close your eyes in bliss everytime you feast on organically grown earthy delights, you owe it to your local farmer, and all those who work our farms.

For everything good in our lives, there is someone who needs to be thanked. It may have been a while since we thought about what it actually takes for a small farm to produce food, through the hardships of weather and disease, and the unrelenting competition from factory farms who can do it bigger, cheaper, and faster. It's up to us to make sure we never lose the gift of the small, organic farm, and those who work it. Thank you, for all you do.

The Mighty Concord

Grapes
Originally uploaded by peterkelly

While watery and tasteless red and green seedless grapes seem to be the most reached-for varities, somewhere along the way we seem to have forgotten the quaint little Concord. Once upon a time, no kitchen garden would have been complete without a vine or two clinging to the house or a makeshift trellis. But over the years they somehow fell out of favour, along with growing grapes in general.

And what a shame. With a deep, sensual flavour and unparalleled colour, the Concord slips as easily into a pie as it does into ubiquitous jam. Ignore the seeds (no matter what your mother told you, if you swallow a few you will NOT grow a grape vine in your stomach) and the Concord's tart skin and succulent interior makes it a great eating grape too.

Even if you have never tried Concords in anything but commercial grape juice, if you happen upon a basket or two of these beauties at the farmers market (they should just be wrapping up now) don't pass them by. Make one batch into jam-an easier or more satisfying project there cannot be-or go all pioneer and slip some into a bit of flaky pastry, and serve it up with some vanilla ice cream. Your purple-stained lips will thank you.

Concord Grape Pie

Prepare a batch of sweet pastry for a double crust pie. Slip the skins off 2 cups of Concord grapes, and set the skins aside in a large bowl. Put the "middles" into a saucepan and cook over medium low heat for 10 minutes. Sieve out the seeds, and add the sieved pulp  to the skins in the bowl.  Now add 3/4 cup raw organic sugar, and 3 tbsp. organic all purpose flour. Roll out your pastry and use it to line a 9 inch pie plate. Turn your grape mixture into the crust, then top with a second crust. Cut vents into the top, then brush with a beaten free range egg mixed with a tsp. of fresh organic cream. Give the whole thing a sprinkle of raw sugar. Bake for 10 minutes in a 450F oven, then drop the temperature to 350F and bake 30 minutes longer. Cool to room temperature before serving with vanilla ice cream (I highly Mapleton'sOrganic Vanilla).

http://www.mapletonsorganic.ca/

Vegetables vs. Vegetation: The Argument For Vegetable Gardening

Recently I was chatting with a friend about our vegetable gardens.  While we enjoyed some heirloom tomatoes on toast, he stated  his opinion that anyone who owns their own property should be made to grow food on it.  I thought this was an interesting viewpoint, so I checked the by-laws in our city, and discovered that there are rules in place which govern everything from keeping your grass a reasonable length to removing noxious weeds and adhering to maximum plant heights. So, grass, and the appearance of a tidy property are policed by the city. How difficult would it be to put in place the "10% law", which states that 10% of your urban property must be designated for growing food?

In case you need any further evidence as to why growing a vegetable garden is beneficial to you and everyone around you, consider this:

-A properly maintained 15x20 foot garden can provide up to 300 lbs of produce in a growing season. This contrasted with an inefficient, resource-sucking  lawn that wastes human energy and produces nothing;

-Growing your own food provides healthier alternatives to carcinogen-sprayed, factory-farmed food that travels hundreds and even thousands of miles to reach its destination. More food readily available at home means less trips to the store, less pollution, and less dependency on our cars and fossil fuels;

-Like buying from a farmers market or local CSA, the act of vegetable gardening reinforces the connection between us and where our food comes from. We take ownership over food we grow ourselves, resulting in less waste and greater responsibility for using food wisely;

-Gardens provide natural habitats for wildlife, insects, and valuable organisms;

-We will be setting an example to those around us. Conversations will be initiated.   Relationships will be forged.    Food, seeds, and plants will be shared and traded. Instead of simply complaining about the state of our food system, we will be doing something to change it that is visible and tangible;

-Growing food teaches our children valuable lessons, not just about gardening, but about real food vs factory-farmed food, about taking responsibility for something, about patience, ecology, biology, and weather, about seeing a project through from start-to-finish, and about the balance between giving (work) and receiving (baskets of produce at the end of the season)  And make no mistake-children who grow vegetables eat vegetables;

-We benefit from the physical activity, as do our children. Sowing, cultivating, weeding, and harvesting is meaningful and useful work, fulfilling a basic human need and providing something concrete and essential. Growing food is work we can share with friends, our kids, our partners and spouses, while enjoying meals we have grown and made together;

-We will be utilizing a very large amount of usuable growing land in order to produce food. In a world where our resources are quickly becoming exhausted to meet the needs of a growing population, tapping into these available land stores in our cities would help alleviate this on a local level;

-Most people who use food banks are single mothers, their children, and the elderly.
We would be providing fresh, organic, and healthy produce to those in our community who need it most, supplanting a daily diet of canned fish and boxed macaroni. Those in small households or who live alone could donate their crops to a local "Urban Market" food bank. Nothing would be wasted.

-And, above all this, there are subtle, trickle down effects of growing our own food.  More variety in our diets, the resurrection of endangered and rare heirloom plant varieties,  renewed interest in cooking, freezing, and preserving; a resurgence of interest in the meal itself and the sense of family and community it promotes, and providing inspiration and support for other grassroots food movements.

Do we really need something with so many obvious benefits to be legislated?

Sometimes a simple act like inviting a friend over to see your garden can provide the inspiration they need to start their own. Less lawn and more fresh food we have grown ourselves is a goal we can all acheive!

The Taste of Dirt

Fresh Carrots
Originally uploaded by DSR 22

Today I spent the morning at the wonderful Guelph Farmers Market. I barely knew where to start. Despite the cool wet weather all the experienced and talented farmers seemed to have no problem producing some of the most beautiful produce I have seen in a long time. Having a garden myself, it really makes you respect the farmers who grow our food, who can overcome adverse weather conditions and still seem to get it right.

I came home with organic corn, Gingergold apples, tiny organic red skinned potatoes, Shepherd peppers, broccoli, cauliflower and yellow beans.

I then raided my own garden, and harvested some kale, beets, and carrots. I washed off a Nantes Red carrot in the rain barrel to munch on right there in the garden, when something occurred to me. No matter how much you wash a carrot that comes right out of the garden, it still tastes like dirt. In fact, that flavour of a vegetable that just came out of the earth is something I take for granted. I wonder how many people have the opportunity to enjoy the pleasure of something that has been picked moments ago?

Everyone should know what it is like to taste dirt!

The F-word

Ok, I'll just say it. Flexitarian.

In 2003 the American Dialect Society named it the year's most useful word. Of course it fills the need for a label, when everything and everyone these days seems to feel they need one. Unfortunately the definitions of what constitutes a Flexitarian are so willy nilly and lacking that no one is really able to apply the term correctly. A little trolling of the internet provided some insight:

"Flexitarianism is a semi-vegetarian diet focusing on vegetarian food with occasional meat consumption. A self-described flexitarian seeks to decrease meat consumption without eliminating it entirely from his or her diet. There are no guidelines for how much or how little meat one must eat before being classified a flexitarian." -courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Seems straightforward enough. But wait, there's more. This is an excerpt from an article entitled "Meet the Flexitarians" found on msnbc:'

Even after five years, Christy Pugh has no trouble sticking to her vegetarian regimen. The secret to her success? Eating meat.“Sometimes I feel like I’m a bad vegetarian, that I’m not strict enough or good enough,” the 28-year-old bookkeeper from Concord said recently. “I really like vegetarian food but I’m just not 100 percent committed. “There’s (sic) so many reasons that people are vegetarians ... I find that nobody ever gives me a hard time when I say I usually eat vegetarian. But I really like sausage,” Pugh said.'

Hold the phone there Christy. If you eat sausage, you are not a vegetarian. Not even a bad one.

So, a Flexitarian is someone who eats meat some of the time. Or maybe they are meat-eating vegetarians, as stated in the msnbc article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4541605/

Meat-eating vegetarians? What the...?

And what do vegetarians and vegans think of the f-word? Here a little sampling:

-It takes all of my self control not to scream when I hear "flexitarian".
-Damn, this makes me angry. It's this kind of crap that makes people like my grandmother ask whether I eat chicken or fish.
-I have a name for these people: Flaketarians.

Ouch.

Thankfully it's not all an us-vs-them foodfight out there. Ian MacKenzie, a writer, producer, and pop-culture blogger based in Vancouver, wrote an excellent piece called "In Defense of Flexitarianism" which is accompanied by some very well thought out comments by readers on both sides of the argument. In it he included a brief and very reasonable manifesto for responsible eating that falls very much in line with the writings of Michael Pollan, and aligns with what many who call themselves Flexitarians believe about eating.

But labels and insults aside, I do believe that if one chooses to use the word to describe themselves, they should be able to eloquently and confidently describe what their own philosophy is and reduce the risk of a perfectly decent and applicable phrase being eye-rolled because someone said something ridiculous like, "I'm a Flexitarian. A meat-eating vegetarian." If you eat meat (chicken, only chicken breasts, shellfish, tilapia, worms, escargot, foie gras, goats, beetles...you get the idea) then you are not a vegetarian, plain and simple.

Anytime someone makes a choice to reduce or eliminate meat, especially factory-farmed cows, pigs, fish, birds, eggs, and dairy from their diet, they are making a positive step in the right direction. I am of the opinion that flexitarianism is only a viable option if you are not ethically opposed to the killing of animals for food, but are trying to make more responsible choices about where your meat comes from. Like vegetarianism or veganism, the ethical issues surrounding meat consumption also happen to be better choices environmentally and health-wise as well.

You cannot be a flexitarian and eat factory farmed meat, in my opinion. Call yourself a meat-eater and then go rent Food Inc. A true Flexitarian should have a well-developed sense that what they are eating is sound for animals, themselves, and the planet. Eating this way is better for everyone, no matter what you choose to label it.

En Papillote

The French are soooo smart.

Tonight I was feeling a little Collette-ish and so I gave a vaguely Latin recipe the French treatment. Cooking en papillote (or "in parchment") is one of my favourite cooking methods, ever. It cooks food quickly. It cooks food perfectly. There are no dishes to wash. I could go on, but what for?

I took a rectangle of parchment paper, and off to one side, mounded 1/4 cup of organic barley couscous (far superior in flavour to semolina couscous, IMHO) mixed with 1/4 cup water and a pinch of salt. Atop this I perched (no pun intended) an organic Tilapia filet, seasoned well with salt and pepper. I had a nice poblano chili, which I blackened over a gas flame, and then finely diced. This was mixed with a smashed clove of garlic, two little tomatillos, olive oil, lime juice, salt and pepper. This was spooned over the fish, and then, with a few deft folds, I made the parcel:

After 20 minutes in a 425F oven, the package gets torn open from the top (careful of all that steam), and sprinkled with a few pepitas. Perfect. With no dishes to do, I can read a chapter or two of Return to Paris...