Well that was fun...

We were back at Winnipeg Harvest today. We were honoured to cook for their round table symposium for National Hunger Awareness Day. Many different community leaders were there, from the media to non-profit agencies, to business leaders. It was nice to hear people talking about working together and finding common ground from which to move forward.

We really want to move away from disposable dishes and so this was the first time we used real dishes even though we didn't have an on-site kitchen. It struck me as we carried in 12 boxes of china that it's quite a bit more work to use the real stuff. Had we used paper, we could have carried all the dishes we needed for 40 people in one trip. We could have thrown them out at the end of the meeting and not had to worry about washing them.

But why bother with good food if you're going to eat it off of styrofoam? I hate that shivery feeling I get when my spoon scrapes the bottom of a styrofoam bowl--it makes it hard to enjoy that last bite. Anyway, now we have our own dishes for up to 100, and we will use them whenever we can. Now we're on the hunt for good silverware and our own cloth serviettes.

We really like setting a nice table and serving food to people that tastes good and is good for them. We like being able to offer something that is fresh and affordable and just a little bit different. It's a great way to be involved in National Hunger Awareness Day.

Just wondering.

I read in the paper yesterday that 100 years ago, people spent approximately six hours each day cooking and eating. In the 1950s, it took about 2 hours. Several years ago we were down to 30 minutes and today people spend about 20 minutes preparing and eating their evening meal.

The article focused on ready-to-eat food from Safeway and other grocery stores. It talked about 'healthy meals in minutes!' It's hard for me to imagine that something that was prepared miles and miles away, and preserved, and bagged, and shipped, and then chilled or warmed up at the Safeway deli could really be healthy.

I'm just skeptical, I suppose. I see their salads dripping in heavy dressings, and the meat always seems heavily sauced, as well. (What are they hiding under all that goop?) I know that whenever I eat that kind of food I wake up so thirsty my tongue feels inside out. It must have scads of sodium.

What is healthy, anyway? What does it mean to enjoy a healthy meal? Can any lifestyle that demands 20 minute suppers every night really be healthy, over-all? I know that some nights are busier than others, and some nights we have a 20 minute dinner, but I wonder if your life is on that kind of treadmill every single day, how healthy can that be?

I'm just wondering.

Do you know where that tomato came from?

I realize that when it comes to food, I don't mind buying "out of country" stuff if it is not available here at all. For instance, I don't mind using cinnamon and ginger and cloves, and I don't mind that it isn't grown in Canada.

But it really bothers me to hear that most of our apple products (anything made with concentrate, store bought applesauce, etc.) come from China. And China is the number one exporter of canned tomatoes. If you have a can of tomatoes in your pantry, chances are they were grown and processed in China. And there are sneaky ways to get around the laws governing food processing so that they can even make it look like something was produced in Canada.

It frightens me that we are so losing control of our own food supply. And it bothers me that we have no idea what the rules concerning pesticides and growing practices are out there. And I wonder not only how they treat the land, but how do they treat the people working the land?

In the meantime, the number of farmers on the Prairies is dwindling, and the average age is getting older and older. I can't say I blame people for getting out of farming... it's uncertain, the pay is often far less than you'd make working a construction site, and as soon as your product is sold more cheaply by another country, people switch to save a dollar.

Why else would Walmart be opening grocery sections in all their stores?

Slow Food

The first time I heard about the Slow Food movement, I was hooked. It didn't sound that radical to me... it sounded like the kind of food I was raised on.

When I was a kid, locally produced didn't mean much because that is what you always had. I remember the first time we saw broccoli at the grocery store when it was out of season. I also remember the first strawberries. And when they started selling asparagus year round, I felt like spring had gotten ripped off, somehow. If local grocers dared to sell fruit from other countries when that fruit was in season in the orchards all around us, my mother let them know she thought it was a stupid thing to do.

Slow Food celebrates what the local growers have to offer, it celebrates the process of cooking and preparing that food, and it celebrates eating together in community. On their website, they say that food should be good, clean, and fair.

I like that.

It's true that I sometimes get sucked in by those strawberry-like offerings sold in January, and I've eaten asparagus out of season, but slow food is much more about celebration, and moving in the right direction, rather than following a rigid set of legalistic rules about food.

I like that, too.