Local Delicious

YouTube is a dangerous place for me to visit, as it can result in me spending a great deal of time watching fascinating and enlightening TED Talks. Occasionally I follow a thread and come across other great sources of compelling information, like my recent find from Good Magazine.

This one, on drinking water, describes the health impact of contaminated water sources and notes how easy it can be to clean it up. It really makes me wonder why this is still such an issue in developing countries when the downside is so devastating.

Check out other Local Delicious posts for more on water issues:

Drink Local…Water I Mean
Who Owns Your Water
Enjoy the Luxury of Local, Drinkable Water
The Switch From Bottled Water

I read the NY best seller Skinny Bitch on the weekend expecting a cheeky, “Get your sorry ass off the couch” message. I did get that, but got even more in the way of “Stop eating crap, dumbass.”

“If you can’t take one more day of self-loathing, you’re ready to hear the truth: You cannot keep shoveling the same crap into your mouth every day and expect to lose weight.”

The book was just as cheeky as I’d hoped, but also full of tons of research and data on what’s in our “food” and why it pays to take note of what we put in our mouths. I like that it was a quick, easy read and focuses not on guilt or high minded environmentalism, but on base vanity. Frankly, whatever motivates the masses!

The book’s focus is more on organic than strictly “local” and they promote a lot of processed organic foods, but the message to eat more fruit and veggies aligns with sourcing healthy, local food. And if that gets the same result, it works for me.

Here’s how I know the food revolution is going mainstream: I chanced upon an exposé foreign indie film at Blockbuster on the weekend, which isn’t where I typically go for that kind of thing.

Our Daily Bread is the Manufactured Landscapes of the commercialized food production industry. In its disturbing and enlightening travels from lettuce to chickens to peppers to salmon and beyond, the film moves from large expanse to large expanse detailing the vast reality of how our grocery store food is manufactured. And I do mean manufactured.

On the livestock issue, I was expecting some shock and horror tactics — anyone who’s gone vegetarian after some nasty film footage knows it can work — but the film didn’t sensationalize the reality and in so doing, made the reality all the more stark. What’s done with absolute mundane, unemotional repetition is all the more horrific.

Just as bad, though perhaps less obvious, is the wholesale spraying of toxic chemical vapour on factory farmed vegetables, and the massive greenhouses that protect the plants from bugs, fungus…and sunlight.

None of the trailers I watched after the fact did the film justice. Maybe it’s just too hard to capture the full impact, the magnitude in a 2 minute clip. Food is a living organism and somehow the nature of commercial food manufacture reduces it to much less than that. It’s a little depressing.

I do have the perfect antidote, though. When you’re done watching Our Daily Bread, check out Tableland.

If you do want to see a clip, I’ll just warn you, Babe the Movie, this is not…

Learn more about food issues, both locally and internationally, at this year’s Stone Soup Film Festival. Presented by the East End Food Co-op and the Grandview Woodland Food Connection, the festival will explore health and nutrition, food economics, agricultural worker rights, and urban agriculture over two days of great films.

October 17 & 18, 2009
Britannia Community Services Centre
1661 Napier Street, Vancouver
Purchase a pass for $15: 604.718.5800

The film festival is a part of the Stone Soup Fall Food Gathering, also taking place at Britannia Centre. Events will include:

• “DIY” Food Day on October 3, a day of sessions where participants learn the art of making and preserving food
• Community Potluck on October 15 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm
• Food Justice Forum & Discussion on October 8 from 7:00 – 9:00 pm

More information (pdf)

Planning to attend? Leave a comment and let us know how it went.

I love nothing more than the taste of a warm, sun-ripened raspberry, personally hand picked at the peak of perfection. I am not, on the other hand, a lover of overly sweet liqueurs. So when I stumbled across the new raspberry liqueur from Okanagan Spirits, I was both intrigued and skeptical.

I admit, it was the classy bottle and metallic look label that first caught my eye (oh, I do love examples of quality marketing). Even in a crowded store, it stands out. And as it happened, I was in need of a gift for a friend who shares my passion for raspberries and who also has a no-such-thing-as-too-sweet sweet tooth. It seemed the perfect solution, and I could have a just enough of a wee sip to satisfy my curiosity.

Rather than being too sweet, Okanagan Spirits Raspberry Liqueur is pure, succulent, perfectly ripe raspberry. I have never tasted raspberries in liquid form before — wow! That went down smooth. Better try another one, just to be sure. Hmmm, best have one more go to confirm…

It takes a bit to impress someone who grew up gorging on raspberries right off the vine on a daily basis, and I am duly impressed. In fact, I’m a raving fan. And rumour has it, the bottle was finished in no time.

Who says “fast food” has to taste like cardboard and be full of nasty ingredients?

I was in the neighbourhood the other day with a few minutes to spare and stopped in at Quince restaurant. I’ve heard of it often, always with enthusiastic reviews, so I thought it was about time I looked in to see what all the fuss is about.

I enjoy good quality food, which I expected, but it was even more up my alley than anticipated. Many of the products available are made from local ingredients. Hurrah!

I noticed a list of cooking courses behind the counter and struck up a conversation with Andrea Jefferson, chef, sommelier, and instructor at Quince. In a heartbeat I was on a personal, guided tour of the space: fresh food cooler, take-home freezer section, and in-house quince preserves for which the restaurant-and-a-whole-lot-more is named.

My favourite were the take home selections, which offer a quick, quality alternative to eating out and/or cooking at home. I tried the Seared Thomas Reid Organic Chicken Breasts. I don’t know who Thomas Reid is, but I really like his chicken!

It took a few more than the prescribed 15 – 20 minutes to cook, but in the end my guest and I enjoyed juicy, tender, flavourful chicken breasts alongside a kale/cabbage/broccoli stir fry I made with ingredients from my garden. Now that’s eating pretty darn local.

Check out the Quince express menu for more delicious “fast food” ideas.

Verdict: Delicious and quick!