It was more of a sour grapes than an emerald green.

On Saturday we decided to have a family day and go to the Green Living Show. We were hoping to see something that we would be able to incorporate into the house. I was really hoping that there would be something on worm composting as I was hoping to start one this summer (assuming that the Strata lets me, I do know that there are rats, raccoons, coyotes and other wildlife living around us.) I was also hoping that there might be some booths devoted to food, cleaning and well things to do with living. What we got was rather disappointing. There was really not much of anything. We wandered around and looked at stuff, ate overpriced food and left with a sense of blah.

Talking about it afterwards we both realised that we were frustrated by the lack of anything new and the dismal showing of local businesses. WalMart, Chevrolet and Home Depot were there (I know the first people I think of when I am thinking of green businesses, though to be fair WalMart actually does have some very green practices as they actually result in cost savings.) but there was no representation from the local farmer’s markets, organic food chains (including SPUDS) or really any new ideas for living green. Having been researching environmentally friendly paints and other green building supplies it amazed me that there was nothing on green renovations.

The question is was this lack of representation and innovative ideas because of the marketers of the show or was it the lack of interest on the part of potential vendors? Sometimes I wish I had gone into marketing rather than teaching as it kills me to see good ideas and concepts under-utilised and is the kind of projects that I love to do. Thinking about it makes me get angry about New Westminster Quay all over again. There is a place that could do with an overhaul and is such a sad place and yet there is so much potential if the off-shore owners, community and city council actually decided to do something about it. Of course we are talking about the New West city council that was worried about having the farmer’s market at City Hall because of the garbage but have absolutely no problems in handing land to condo developers with no real benefit to the denizens of the city. (How about a new park, funding for the Mundy Park Pool …).

I have also been thinking about the concerns about the cost of food that has been in the news lately. I don’t know why anyone is particularly surprised about the increase in cost. Considering the cost of oil has gone up (which is used to make fertilisers, pesticides and run the machinery and transport the goods) and that more crops are being used as bio fuel. Why we thought using bio fuel would be better is beyond me. The crops used for bio fuel are still being grown with a dependency on oil which means that we are still reliant on the very thing that the bio fuel is supposed to be replacing. What I am hoping is that the increase cost in oil and the resulting increase in costs for farmers (and the corporations) will actually mean that more farmers may start looking at changing their farming practices. Especially if the difference in price between organically or biodynamically grown food and ‘regularily’ grown food is diminished.

I also find it mildly amusing that our incredibly forward-thinking government is promoting eating local foods and at the same time remove land from the agriculture land reserve and closed down farm run slaughter houses.

Kale not to be found

Monday I roasted a chicken. Roasting has got to be one of the easiest things ever. It always tastes like you spent hours but really it is just a matter of sticking it in the oven and then walking away. It was a tiny little bird but very yummy. The only part I hate is scraping out the kidneys before. I have a neurosis about salmonella which results in my hands being washed 20x and everything that could have possibly been touched by chicken juice being scoured and sterilized.

So this was the menu on Monday : Roast chicken with lemon and rosemary, Rainbow Swiss Chard, roasted squash and rice that had a dollop of chicken au jus that had been reduced with the left over white wine in the fridge.

Rainbow Swiss Chard has become a staple since the beginning of October as it is one of the few BC vegetables still in season. I have become even more hyper aware of eating locally and in season. This is partly to do with having a sister and brother-in-law who own a farm and reading the 100 Mile Diet. Currently I am reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma and R half jokingly asked me to stop as he is afraid that we will not be eating anything but what we can grow on our north facing balcony. He looked a little panicked when I told him that I had found a place to order grass fed beef but that we had to buy it in 50lb quantities. It wasn’t the quantity as much as the picture in his mind of a deep freeze becoming our new TV stand.

I think this swiss chard might have also been organic but that is not as important to me as the fact that it is local. I am lazy in my cooking of it. Generally, I saute some onions and garlic with a generous dash of red pepper flakes and a bit of salt and then throw the chard in when everything is soft. 5 minutes later it is done.

The squash was a sweet dumpling (not from BC). I am very fussy about squash, acorn is not welcome in my oven as I find it stringy and watery. Butternut is the standard, but the dumpling is a good alternative. Both of them have a meatier, drier flesh. I also like their nutty flavour, it means that you don’t have to do anything to them but they can stand up to other flavours if they are in a casserole. The chicken was already in the oven at 400 and so half way through its cooking time, I threw in the squash (scraped, cut in half with the flesh side down on the dish).

Yesterday was chicken soup. I had thrown the remains of the bird into the crockpot with onion, garlic, rosemary, peppercorns, carrots and celery and had let it simmer all night. (Got to love the crockpot), by the time I got around to it the next morning the broth was a dark, toffee colour mostly because I never actually bother peeling the onion so the onion skin always leeches its colour into the broth. There was very little chicken left from the day before so I decided to make kale, white bean and chorizo soup.

Off in the rain Miss Pumpkin and I went to find kale. No kale could be found. I had to substitute spinach which is fine but I find that kale, because it is tougher, stands up better to soup. The deli did have dried chorizo, which was good as it lends a smoky flavour to the soup and that means less time is spent staring at the spices and determining which ones to put in. Miss Pumpkin stared at the world while trying to catch rain drops with her feet – I hadn’t bothered to put her rain cover on because it didn’t look like it was raining. She with her usual patience put up with it as we had already that day had a conversation about rain and its place in her future growing up on the West Coast.

And so home we went, slightly damp, spinach instead of kale and two chorizo sausages tucked into the pumpkin mobile. The soup was made and all was well.

Sometimes it’s just so hard

I have been drinking fair trade coffee for a number of years now.  I had decided that it was one very small thing that I could do to make the world a better place.  It also assuaged the middle class guilt that I was feeling about slurping my coffee on my way to work to teach kids knowing that the people who were providing my morning fix likely didn’t have the opportunity to send their own children to school.  It is expensive, sure, but we can afford it and I have never been a big fan of the big tins of coffee that you can buy in the grocery store, so it really isn’t much more expensive than what I was buying previously.  (It really is shameful how snobby I can be.)

Since then I have also tried to buy other fair trade products; chocolate, sugar and other baking goods.  My latest attempt at being socially conscious in my eating habits is the desire to purchase fair trade tea.  This is when more of the snobbery comes out.  I don’t like tea bags.  I’ll do it if I have to but it is not my preferred method of tea drinking.  I was raised by parents who have their own traditions and rituals around the art of brewing of tea that may not be on the same level as the Japanese Tea Ceremony but it is close.  Also, we have begun to drink tea in the evening at home.  A tea bag is something you use when you are running off somewhere, not something that you put into the teapot so that you can enjoy a leisurely cup and let the day wind down.  So hence the problem.

It is impossible to find loose black (blended or unblended) fair trade tea!  I have spent a number of hours on the internet and various specialty food stores looking for loose fair trade tea.  I don’t know why I thought I would find loose fair trade tea at the grocery store as it is rare to find any loose tea on the shelves.  My mother, who also drinks fair trade coffee that she mixes coffee from a local roaster because she believes that you also have to support the local small businesses, buys her tea at Murchies and a store on Main street.  Now Murchies says that they only purchase their coffees and teas from growers that pay good wages and provide medical and educational facilities but I prefer to have a bit more proof than that, especially since there is a body that certifies fair trade products.

So on the internet I go, where I search and find a couple of places but usually there is a lot of green tea or rooibus and not the strong black teas that I like.  I also have a penchant for Earl Grey, as there is something so lovely and calming about sipping on bergamot. Furthermore, everything is sold in ounces so I am constantly getting up to compare quantities with whatever I can find in my cupboard that is measured in ounces.  The common quantity that the tea is sold is 2  or 4 ounces.  That would hardly keep us in tea for a month.  It is also considerably more expensive than fair trade coffee but I have already decided to put my money where my mouth is.  Of course, if I also include the amount of time that I have put into locating the tea, the price is jacked up even more.  Thank goodness for long naps in the afternoon.

I also am frustrated by the lack of Canadian companies selling loose fair trade tea.  It kills me that I am going to have to buy tea from a company in the States.  I approached the Salt Spring Coffee Co. but they only have tea bags.  So, I think that I have narrowed down my choices between two companies.  They are Brown’s Coffee located in Seattle and Choice Organics also located in Seattle.  I have decided to bring Seattle into my own sphere of local geography and so don’t feel as badly as I would if I was purchasing from companies in New York.  I am leaning towards Choice simply because they also purchase renewable energy certificates to offset 100% of the energy used at their plant.  Maybe I’ll buy from both and then do a comparison.

I’ll keep you posted.

Roast beef on Sunday, Curry on Monday

Sunday was always family dinner in my house. Mum generally cooked something that took time. The oven would send out hot waves of comfort and I knew all was right in the world – at least for a moment. It was typical to sit down to a roast dinner of some sort. Roast beef meant that Monday was curry night. Mum would set aside some of the roast beef for dad and the rest of us would sit down to a warm, spice laden dinner. As my mouth embraced the rich headiness of coriander, turmeric, ginger and chili it would also be soothed by the sweetness of the plump raisins that were tumbled through the dish. In my own home, over the years, I too have adopted Sunday night as family night.
Over the years, depending on who my family the dishes have changed. It has only been in the last few that I have made roast beef. Ryan is joyous about the roast beef. For me, it is all about the curry on Monday. When I make roast chicken, it means soup at some point with homemade stock that has sat simmering on the stove Sunday night making the air thick with its herb-infused steam. I often put lemons in with the stock. They lend a tanginess to the soups that remind me of summer when I most need to be reminded that the rain will stop and the grey sky will become blue again.
As I have become older, it has become more and more apparent that I am my mother’s daughter. Last night I had a dream that someone had taken a picture of me and in it I was my mother. I turned to Ryan and said “Look at how much I look like her.” It wasn’t a horrible moment; in fact it was quite wonderful. Now, if you had told me twenty years ago that I would be like my mother I would have coiled away, spitting assurances that that would never happen. The teenage angst has passed and I am proud of being my mother’s daughter.
Along with the Sunday dinners, my mum gave me a sense of how important family is, whether they are family by blood or by choice. I am surrounded by an amazing network of aunts who always provided a good backdrop to my mother. They are linked together by their love for one another and us children but have made different choices and have different ideas of the world. They often provided me with another view that was much needed. My daughter too is surrounded by aunts, who I hope will help guide her as she unfolds into the woman she will become.