An EPICurean Ending

I must preface this blog post with a warning to readers that it *may* contain some controversial/sensitive subject matter. Do not proceed if you are staunchly opposed to strange food combinations, Americans teaching Canadians how to play hockey, or the BBQing of poultry on a special occasion.

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Sadly, my sojourn south of the border has come to close, at least for the time being. My final two and a half weeks in Vermont left me wanting for nothing, except, perhaps, a second stomach and a higher tolerance level for fine red wine. In any case, data collection continued to fill my days, and was especially interesting coming on the end, as I finally tracked down some farmers to talk to. They were, by and large, the most interesting interviewees and if I were living in Vermont, I'd be begging one of them for an internship position so I can learn how to use a ho.

Outside of official research activities, I continued to take in as much of the local food scene as possible through direct observations (i.e. copious amounts of food consumption). Luckily, by this time I'd managed to meet some people who were willing to cook, eat, and drink with me, which meant I no longer relegated myself to Friday nights sitting in Kate's kitchen alone, drinking Boyden Valley apple wine and eating local Holstein balls. To be fair, this particular scenario only occurred twice, but that was 2 times too many for this social Canadian (not to be mistaken with a socialist Canadia because, as I was informed more than once by left-winged Vermonters, 'socialist' is a dirty word in most parts of the US, which I kind of already knew, but found amusing/concerning anyways). So, in the interests of trying to finish this blog post before another turkey dinner comes my way, here are the top 3 food stories from my final weeks in Vermont. Organized, quite judiciously, in chronological order from most matured to freshest.


PIES FOR PEOPLE

On a wet Tuesday evening (Nov 17th), after a full day of interviewing that had left me with no time to eat lunch or dinner, I found myself heading to Sterling College, which is located about half an hour from Hardwick in the small town of Craftsbury. Sterling College is the smallest college in the US, with about 100 students enrolled (that's a total #, over four years!), and on this particular evening, the college's kitchen was to serve as the functional venue for pie and soup making on a rather grand scale.

The task at hand: to make approximately 120 to 150 pumpkin pies for food pantries in the local area, and to make as much soup as possible from the squash puree that had been donated courtesy of High Mowing Seeds. The people who would make it happen: volunteers from Sterling College (mostly students, but also at least one staff member) and UVM (again, a mix of students & staff) and, um, one random Canadian grad student who found herself feeling ancient amongst a group of 20 year-olds that were remarkably mature and knew their way around a kitchen. Our fearless, brillian leader: Elena, who works at the Center for an Agricultural Economy in Hardwick (the non-profit organization that spearheaded the Pies for People project this year) ) and wielded her cooking and organizing skills to great effect. Within the span of 2 and half hours we managed to prepare, from scratch, 110 pie crusts, and defreeze (thaw?) the pie filling and squash soup puree. Oh, and clean! It was a fun night, captured on camera! Not to mention: This was really the 'final piece of the pie' in an inspiring collaboration between local farms, agriculture processors and schools, that committed to bringing Pies to the People, from planting, to harvesting, to pureeing, to preparing the final product.

I think this may be the first time I’ve prepared dessert without so much as a sample tasting! Notably, it was also one of the most enjoyable baking experiences I’ve had. I was salivating (figuratively, not literally b/c that would be gross) over the wonderful expansiveness of a commercial kitchen, all decked out with professional kitchen gadgets, pots galore, sharp knives and a sound system to boot... oh yeah, we were groovin’ to all sorts of tunes. My favorite eavesdropping moment of the evening was when the Dean of Students (probably not actually his official title, but it was something like that) for Sterling College who I’d guess was in his late forties, asked the young male student whose playlist was blaring out of the speakers what the name of the band playing was. When the student replied 'Death Cab for Cutie', the Dean asked him to repeat the name and then responded with 'uh huuuhhh'. I have to admit I felt a hint of jubilation that I recognized the name of the band - maybe I'm not so old after all.

APPLE & BACON A LA CRISP

My friend, Phil, had invited me along to a birthday celebration he was going to and suggested we make a locav-or-ganic dish to take with us. I told him I had a tonne of apples to use up and some local bacon from Bonnieview Farm that I'd been assured was delicious and nitrite free, assuming he'd suggest an apple dish and we would eat the bacon ourselves. Well, it turns out I underestimated the creative cook lurking in Phil, who promptly sent me a recipe for Apple-Bacon Pie. No really, Google it - there are a number of recipes out there for this strange savory-sweet combination of vitamins and fat.

Well, I'm not going to lie, I balked at the suggestion of bringing an Apple-Bacon pie to a birthday party where I knew no one. I could just imagine what they'd think/say. 'And then this Canadian girl showed up with an apple pie that had BACON in it'. It's a well known fact that Americans have a claim on apple pie, hence the phrase 'As American as apple pie', and Canadian Bacon is held in high esteem around the world, heck there's even a movie by the name! Did I really want to be the one to suggest an assimilation of these foods, a merger of deeply rooted culinary heritages? I think not. I am not that brave.

But then I came around to the idea, mostly b/c Phil was so enthusiastic about it and I'm not keen on extinguishing creativity in the kitchen. I gave him the simple task of peeling and slicing the apples and set about making the pie crust. The recipe called for a pre-made crust, but I was intent on making a crust that was from local or organic ingredients so started from scratch with organic flour, local Amish butter, and organic sugar. It seems, however, that I'd become a little too confident in my baking abilities and assumed that I could 'wing it' on the pastry recipe since I'd helped prepare 120 pie crusts earlier in the week (I somehow ignored the fact that Elena had given us very specific ingredient amounts to work with when we made the pie crust mix). Well, in any case, the Amish hadn't packaged their butter in the conventional 'stick', so I had to eyeball the amount. It should be noted that as I patted the dough into the pie pan, I commented to Phil that I *may* have put a bit more butter in than necessary. It turns out I was right on the money in this respect, as I discovered when I checked to see that the pie crust was baking up properly. It was not. Rather, the pastry dough had turned into a soggy, oily, unsalvageable mess.

I attempted to cover my embarrassment at the disastrous results of my pastry-making attempt, by using the oldest trick in the Cook's book - improvisation.

'Sooo...I don't think we're going to be bringing an apple-bacon pie to the party after all. Umm....how about an apple-bacon crisp?' I suggested, while taking a sizeable gulp of red wine in an effort to forget about my baking debacle. It didn't work. So I took another swig and then admitted to being embarrassed by my baking blunder. Phil didn't bat an eye, although he *may* have chuckled a little bit.

I do believe the apple-bacon crisp was thoroughly enjoyed by those that tried it. We ended up with a crisp to suit the vegetarian/traditional eaters and the more adventuresome/carnivorous eaters at the party by sprinkling the bacon on half of the crisp. In the end, I'm kind of glad I messed up the pie crust, because there's no saying that goes 'As American as apple crisp', so I didn't have to worry about justifying the intermingling of culinary heritages, only about the absurdity of pairing bacon with apples. And for the record, the Bonnieview Farm bacon is the best bacon I've ever had.




SMOKEY THE TURKEY AND AMERICAN-STYLE STICK GAMES

While it's true that we have Thanksgiving in Canada, I have come to discover that our celebration of the harvest is markedly different than that of our American counterparts in many ways. First, there's the obvious - Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in mid-October, Americans in late November. When I was quizzed as to why Canadians had their turkey day so early, I had to postulate, on the spot, that our harvest is likely to end earlier given our northerly climate. This seemed to placate the American inquisitors, but then they (and by they, I mean Joe S.) came back with 'well, what are you celebrating exactly? I mean, did you have pilgrims?' Sigh, no we didn't have pilgrims and I have no idea why we celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada when it's not a British tradition, I suppose it must have been one of the few times we've been inspired by the American way.

As an aside to any Canadians visiting the States - you will be expected to know the rationale for everything that Canada and its inhabitants do or purport to be. You may, for example, be required to explain the Parliamentary system (just tell them it's like the British system with an air of assumption that everyone whose anyone understands the British system of government and they'll back off), or give them a list of Canadian foods (poutine is the obvious fallback here, but you could throw in some other French words for fun like 'tourtiere de lappin' or 'fromage souper' or 'le Horton's de Tim), or, if you're really lucky, someone will ask you what you think of single-payer (i.e. 'socialist) health care. At this point I suggest announcing that a Canadian invented basketball (they'll fight this to the tooth & nail, but just send them here to Canadian Heritage Minutes), that Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and that the Star Spangled Banner was written by Francis Scott Key upon seeing Fort McHenry heavily bombarded by the Brits during the War of 1812, which was a war the US basically lost. For extra umph, make mention that the tune of their anthem is actually that of a very popular British drinking song of the time. This should be enough to encourage a change of subject, at which point you can stop worrying about not knowing why Canadians do what they do.

So in the lead up to American Thanksgiving (Nov. 26th) I was presented with two equally tempting invitations. Kate, whom I'd been staying with in Hardwick, invited me to the afternoon dinner she was attending- her daughter and her daughter's friend would be preparing the meal and both of them were professionally trained chefs. If I stayed in Hardwick I could also take part in the community lunch, which would feature turkey and all the trimmings. Two turkey dinners in one day - very, very tempting! On the other hand, Joe had invited me to join him and his wife, Maura, at their friends' (Charles & Holly) house for a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (i.e. for those that had nowhere else to go). Charles and Holly own the Penny Cluse Cafe in Burlington, where both Maura and Charles cook up divine dishes. So, again, dinner would be prepared by two chefs. Really, I couldn't go wrong with either invitation, but in the end I opted for the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving with Joe & Maura for various reasons that may or may not have included mention of street hockey and special drink concoctions by Joe.

The day's festivities got off to a roaring start with Joe explaining to those of us standing in his driveway packing the car for the trip to Shelburne, his ingenious idea for transforming a tennis ball into a less bouncy, heavier, puck-like ball for the street hockey games that would take place later on.

'I stuffed some caulk in the balls', he stated rather proudly

And so, unsurprisingly, there was excessive use of the words 'caulk' and 'balls' throughout the day and well into the evening. By the end of the day, Joe was squeezing the caulk out of his balls - a messy job, but somebody's gotta do it.

We made a stop at the Penny Cluse to pick up Maura and a load of food that would be served up at dinner that evening, then headed for the countryside. The festivities began promptly upon arrival at Charles and Holly's with Joe mixing up some sort of cranberry-whisky (?) concoction that he dubbed 'Dirty Turkey' (I think, although I could be corrected on this). He offered me a sample. I tried to decline and failed. OK, here's the thing, I had accidentally consumed far more than my share of two bottles of fine red wine the evening before and was in no shape to be drinking anything besides water. So after one sample I bowed out of the alchol consumption (until I found myself gravitating towards a nice bottle of Riesling later on in the afternoon).

The afternoon was a blur of guests arriving and food being prepared while other food was simultaneously being thoroughly enjoyed. There was a cheese plate, a lamb sausage plate (courtesy of Bonnieview Farms - again, delicious fare!), scallop casserole , cauliflower soup, melon wrapped in prosciutto and that was just the appetizers. I kid you not.

At some point Joe, Charles, and some of the kids made their way outside for some street hockey action (it should be noted it was actually driveway hockey and that Charles had constructed end-boards so not every ball that missed the net had to be chased across the road...). I decided it was time to come into my own as a Canadian and so, for the first time in my life, I picked up stick and played hockey. Yes, yes, I am far too aware of how un-Canadian it is for me to have NEVER played hockey - street or ice - in the 29 years I've claimed citizenship of the great hockey nation. What can I say? I blame my parents. They gave me books to read and a bike to ride, but no hockey stick. Furthermore, I am well aware that Alanis would say 'isn't it ironic?' upon learning that my first hockey game was played south of the 49th parallel.

Well, in any event, I had a blast playing street hockey despite not being properly attired and completely perplexed as to why Charles was repeatedly calling me by my full name. And then, of course, there was Joe, who started calling out 'skrit' and 'ditch pig' as if I should know what the heck he was saying. Evidently I don't speak Canadian slang. I was feeling less and less like a true Canadian as the game wore on, but then, through some miracle of miracles, I scored on the net with a fantastic assist from a teammate! Woooh - there might be hope for me after all.

Meanwhile, while us humans were eating appetizers and playing in the driveway, Tom was spending his afternoon in the BBQ. At six o'clock we (approximately 12 of us) gathered around the dinner table where platters and dishes of food awaited us. I cannot even begin to recall the entire dinner - clearly Tom was the star of the show, a divine tasting turkey that had been grilled and thus had a hint of smokiness that was delightful. In addition there was stuffing which had been baked in a hollowed out pumpkin, mashed potatoes, endive casserole, some delicious roast vegetables with brussel sprouts and bacon making the dish particularly unique, scrumptious dinner rolls that Charles literally tossed to the guests (a little taste of football at the table!), cranberry relish, and other delights I am sure I am missing.

So we proceeded to stuff ourselves with deliciousness courtesy of Maura and Charles. It was, quite simply, a wonderful meal and I was so grateful to be a part of this special gathering of a closely knit group of friends, each one equally interesting, engaging, warm and welcoming. I've always maintained that friends are the family you choose, and I could see this sentiment rang very true in Charles and Holly's house that evening.

After dinner, many of us found our way back to the driveway for more street hockey. Joe had eased up on the 'skrit' name-calling, but dubbed me a 'cherry-picker'. It was neither here nor there to me, since I had no idea what the term meant. So I scored another goal and tried to avoid getting injured on my last day in a country that doesn't have universal health care. At one point, Harold, a friend of Joe's, took a time-out from playing hockey to tune up his fiddle. He sat on the sidelines playing jigs, reels and the such while we chased after Joe's caulky balls in the darkness of a late November evening.

And then we came inside for dessert and more mingling - after dinner arrivals had come in full force from their own festivities to say hello and catch up with friends and neighbors. At some point Joe and I discussed pop psychology and he pegged my Myers-Briggs personality type, which impressed me. That's when I advised him that the Star Spangled Banner was a defeatist war song, which did not impress him.

Eventually we said our goodbyes to our gracious hosts, Charles and Holly. I think I may have made a promise to come back to Burlington solely to enjoy the next Penny Cluse dinner series meal. If it means eating delicious food and enjoying the company of some of the delightful people I met at my first American Thanksgiving, then I may very well find myself back in Vermont sooner then I'd planned. And that would be perfectly fine by me.


Stuffing in Pumpkin - YUM!


Tom is grilled. Joe makes a friend.

'I Am Not A Glutton, I Am An Explorer Of Food'

I found myself suffering title-ist block as I sat down to write this blog entry. Clearly this is because my last attempt at post titling ended in me alliterating my way out of thinking up an even mildly witty title. So this time I cheated. I typed 'quotes about food' into Google's search engine and voila, found the perfect quote for this particular post (what is wrong with me? I have an addiction to alliteration!).

So a thank you to the late Erma Bombeck for offering me an escape from 1 of the 7 deadly sins through the use of creative redirection: 'I am not a glutton, I am an explorer of food.'

Indeed, I daresay if there were a Food Explorer's Club, I'd be vying for top honours in 'Greatest Number of Enviable Eating Explorations'. All I can say is that I'm holding up my end of the bargain, and thusfar Vermont has been holding up its end by offering endless opportunities to be a glutt....um...I mean a gastronomic explorer.

Here then, are accounts of my most recent food explorations, sub-titled by individual conquest.

Burlington Bluebird

Burlington is to Vermont what Charlottetown is to Prince Edward Island. Which is to say, it's the only 'city' in the state. And I use the term city very loosely. I believe the population is approximately 35,000 in the City proper, although I've been told (with great emphasis) that IF you add in the surrounding towns AND the student population of UVM it's more like 70,000. Charlottetown also has a population of approximately 35,000. Notably, Vermont has a total population of 600,000, while PEI's is only 140,000, which seems to suggest that PEI is MORE urban than Vermont. This strikes me as absurdly funny, but I suspect that might be because I am writing this under the influence of many glasses of apple cider.

Right, so my point is that both Charlottetown and Burlington residents enjoy a disproportionate number of great dining choices given their size. Off the top of my head, I would recommend the following restaurants in Charlottetown and area(depending on what one is looking for in terms of food, price, etc.): The Dunes, The Merchantman, The Pilot House, Leo's Thai Kitchen, Cedar's Eatery, Off Broadway, Churchill Arms (for cheap English curry!), and Mavor's . In Burlington, I've enjoyed meals at Penny Cluse, American Flatbread and, most recently, at a place whose name I've yet to learn the origin of (but should).

So last Saturday, after an afternoon of wine sampling at Shelburne Vineyard and an intermission to enjoy some live music at a funky bar called Radio Bean, my friend (we'll call him Phil-up-on-Food or PF for short) suggested we have dinner at Bluebird Tavern. Joe (see Shannon Had a Lot of Lamb blog post) had already recommended the restaurant and I'd been following their menu tweets on Twitter, so enthusiastically agreed. A self-described gastro-pub (basically I think that means they aim to do beer AND food equally well) located on Riverside Avenue, the tavern benefits from its proximity to the Intervale, which is home to several small-scale and incubator farms that serve the local market. The tavern's interior offered a cozy winter cabin feel, which is interesting given that the place used to house a Mexican restaurant. I felt like I should be wearing a parka and long underwear, or at least a wool sweater. Oh well. I ordered a pint of Switchback (thankfully, there are many microbreweries in VT). The menu was full of enticing options, but it quickly became evident that we should enjoy a share dinner. In breaking with tradition, I (kind of) insisted on having the chicken option purely based on the accompaniment, which was foraged wild mushrooms. We had two appetizers to start: kale sauteed in something (memory is failing me) and lamb sausage. What can I say, except that the entire meal was divine. I believe my favorite tastes were those of the foraged mushrooms, which were accented by other tasty morsels (not morels!).

Wednesday, I made a second visit to the Bluebird Tavern with Joe and his wife, Maura. We drank at the bar and sampled off the tavern menu: poutine (Quebec border is about 45 mins north!), butcher's board (meat pates and mustards), and squid (from Rhode Island - not really local, but as local as one could get with seafood in VT). The fare was tasty and the company much enjoyed. While we bevvied a number of people stopped by to say hello to Joe and Maura, which made me think of Ireland and Scotland, where the pub was always 'a third place'...a place for people to come together, say hello, catch up with old friends and, more often than not, make new friends. Maybe, given its unique location in a town and state where 'community' still seems to hold meaning and value, the Bluebird had been able to transplant the tradition of the public house to America. Did I mention I love Vermont?

Jerusalem Art-I-Choke on Soup

On Sunday afternoon I drove to the outskirts of Montpelier to meet up with another new found friend who was testing the soil in the yard of his rental accommodation, which is an impressive schoolhouse-turned-open-concept-house, to see if it was acidic/neutral/alkaline when I arrived. Neutral....just like Switzerland, as Jen Mac would say. He pointed to what looked like some tall weeds in an overgrown area that 'may' have been a garden at one point and said the landlord had told him that those plants were Jerusalem artichokes. He drove a shovel into the soil and moved some of the sod away to find the artichoke. At first neither of us could find the tuber, but eventually landed upon what looked, to me, like a radish. Neither of us was completely sure this was the artichoke in question, but we forged ahead with the artichoke harvest and ended up with about 8 tubers, some larger than others. After a hike that was thwarted by the sound of hunter's shotguns, we decided to make dinner from our foraged food. I checked google images to confirm whether our treasures were, in fact, edible. Well, to be honest, the images didn't exactly match what we'd unearthed, but that didn't stop us from making a Jerusalem Artichoke Soup, which, if I do say so myself, was quite delicious, albeit rather ugly. Best of all, it turns out we didn't mistakenly eat something poisonous. Always a bonus.

No-Economists-Land (aka - A Free Lunch)

In my first year of university, I recall my Microeconomics professor vehemently proclaiming that there is no such thing as a free lunch. He explained that there is always a cost a 'free lunch' because the time taken to eat that free lunch is considered a 'cost'. Well, I've always disagreed with this argument b/c regardless of whether someone else is treating or you are going out on your own nickel, you're still going to be taking time to eat the food, so doesn't that make the issue of 'time' a moot point? Personally, I'm not a fan of classic economic thought, it's rather reductionist and it takes the fun out of things. Except the dude who wrote Freakonomics is still in my good books - he makes economics fun!

In any case, every Thursday there is a community lunch in Hardwick., VT. It's held at one of the churches on Main St., but is not hosted by the church. I believe it was started a couple of years ago by Robin, one of the collective members at Buffalo Mountain Co-op. So I dropped in and found myself at the end of a line of about 20 or 30 people, and there were probably about 50 people already digging into what looked like a hearty, colourful lunch. There was a donation box sitting at one of the tables in a rather understated way. Once I came to the table of food I took a glass plate (yay to no paper plates) and piled some roasted veggies and couscous, then ladled some hearty beef soup into a soup bowl. Apple cake was also on offer, along with apple juice and homemade coleslaw. I sat down with Kate and her two adorable granddaughters, and was introduced to a couple of local folk, including a long-time farmer who raved about how well Quebec treats its farmers and told me neither of his children was interested in taking over the farm (the work's too hard) and another older man who is a blacksmith. And it occurred to me that we are on the brink of losing a generation of very knowledgeable people whose skills we will dearly need as the centralized, oil-dependent systems we depend on become even less stable than they currently are. The era of valuing a certain kind of left-brain thinking over all other kinds of thought and labour is, in my opinion, nearing an end. And when it does, we may or may not be in the position of having a huge gap in essential knowledge around things like how to grow food, how to build homes, how to take care of our health, etc. It would behoove us to be proactive on this front, however, I'm not entirely optimistic that the left-brain thinkers that dominate today are going to have the foresight to avert the loss of traditional knowledge bases.

In any case, I quite enjoyed my community lunch, and didn't meet any economists. I doubt there are any living in Hardwick. And that's probably a good thing. About 120 to 150 people show up for lunch each week and somehow they manage to keep this going, despite the fact that it's free.

Ice Cream from the Dairy-Air of Vermont

OK, so I've been holding out on taking a field trip to Waterbury, VT in hopes that some friend from The Great White North might come to visit me while I'm living here and then we could check out Waterbury together. More specifically, we could check out Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory, which is located in Waterbury!!!! Yes, yes, that's right folks, some of the world's best ice cream is made just half an hour from where I am currently residing, making it very local and therefore within the scope of my locav-or-ganic challenge. Oh what a burden this challenge is. Do you know how hard it is to choose between 30 different flavours of wonderfulness? It's nearly impossible.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, it should be noted that I could not hold out any longer and saw now sign of any friends from Canadia dropping in on me. So, I decided I'd go it alone, and set out on Friday afternoon - the sun was shining and my legs were sore for no particular reason. Originally my plan had been to hit up two chocolate shops, an organic bakery AND the ice cream factory in one go. At some point during the first fifteen minutes of my drive, I came to the logical conclusion that this was far too ambitious given my time frame (not to mention, far too indulgent).

Yes, it was indeed a day of strange occurrences - my legs were sore and I'd employed logic to make a decision. That's when I realised...it was Friday, the 13th. Strange things were bound to happen. Maybe, I hypothesized, Ben & Jerry's will turn into some sort of Willy Wonka-like movie, where we get to slide down mountains of ice cream, and swim in lakes of hot chocolate sundae sauce. Ooooh, and maybe Ben & Jerry didn't REALLY sell out to Unilever, but are waiting for just the right person to happen upon their factory doors and that person will inherit the dairy-dom. And clearly, that person will be me!!

But I digress.... sometimes I get a little carried away with my food fantasies. Please forgive me.

Before I reached B & J's place, I stopped in at Cold Hollow Cider Mill, which offers visitors the opportunity to see a commercial cider mill in action and, of course, plenty of apple-inspired foods to purchase and enjoy. I bought a half gallon of apple cider. That is what I am polishing off right now. It's delicious.

Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory is fun! That's really the best adjective I can think of to describe my experience there. They've done a great job of creating a comfortable, colourful and funny (in a v. corny way...or should I say 'milky way'?) experience. The factory tour was $3, and took about half an hour - the first 7 minutes of which were a video about the history of the company (they got started after taking a $5 correspondence course on ice cream making through Penn State!). Then we were taken to a viewing deck above the production floor and the guide went through the ice cream making process with us. Unfortunately, there was no ice cream production going on while I was there. Finally we were led to the tasting room, where we were given generous samples of the taste of the day - a Mint Chocolate ice cream (can't recall the exact title). It was delicious. After that, I checked out the retail store, picked up a pint of Frozen Yogurt (Half Baked) for $4.75 and then proceeded to the scoop shop for a cone of some delicious flavor. Normally, I'd go for something with PB in it, but on this day I decided to try a flavour that I'd never had before: Chocolate Chip Cookie dough. It was delicious. Unfortunately, I had been feeling progressively worse throughout the day and didn't have an appetite, so some of my B&J cone ended up on the I-89. Oh dear. Clearly I will need to pay another visit when I am feeling better, if only to stock up on more pints of ice cream to share with friends back in Kingston!


And that, I believe, is an 'almost' complete recount of my food experiences thus far. I'm still holding out on writing about the various food enterprises in Hardwick, but they will come soon, I promise!

Holsteinballs, Chocolate Stout and Other Adventures in Vermont Cuisine!

Pumpkin Lane. What a lovely name for a road! Little did I know when I decided to see where it led, that I would find myself face to face with my dinner choice. Well, OK, not technically this evening's dinner, because clearly the ground beef I'd made into meat balls earlier in the day was not from any of the Holsteins that stopped, stared and then posed for a picture. It was an idyllic farm scene - rolling green hills, cows happily grazing on grass and enjoying the hay that had been put out for them. Across from the field sat a large, white farmhouse. The front lawn was filled with pumpkins of all sizes, green and orange, with a sign that said 'Self Serve'. Adjacent to the driveway was a large sign announcing that this was the 'Snug Valley Farm'.

Hmmm, that's familiar, I thought to myself. Why does that name seem so familiar?

At first I figured it was because I'd been compiling a list of local farms to contact for my research project, but then I realized that, in fact, I'd opened a package of hamburger meat with the Snug Valley label on it earlier in the day to prep for dinner. So there I was, standing face to face with these adorable, curious cows who had stopped grazing on grass to come say hello to me. And it dawned on me that this was probably the closest I'd ever been to seeing my protein dinner choice before it ended up in cellophane. It wasn't a traumatic experience, particularly since I didn't see the cows being slaughtered, but rather saw them enjoying a cow life. And they weren't in one of those horrible CAFOs where most beef cattle spend a good chunk of their life standing around in cramped paddocks, where the ground is a bed of dirt and feces and they are fed diet high in corn and given loads of antibiotics (to treat them for illnesses related directly to their living conditions and diet, ironically).

But this did give me pause for thought about my dinner and its origins. And that, is in fact, precisely what the first few days of my Locav-or-ganic Challenge have given me - more to think about, at every meal. Beyond the obvious questions that you'd expect when taking on a challenge like this, such as 'where am I going to find local meat?' and 'how am I going to survive without chocolate', after only three days I've found myself asking other questions, such as:

'Is eating locally, sustainably raised meat really worse for the environment than eating a diet that is, perhaps, void of meat but full of processed foods and foods that have been shipped from distant fields?'

'How many meals do I really need to eat each day?'

'What is my body telling me about my changing diet, now that I'm eating way more meat and no refined sugars, and minimal gluten?'

Yes, it's most definitely been an interesting few days. My first day, Sunday, I decided to go for a 10k run before eating anything. Or maybe I did have an apple, but not my usual oatmeal breakfast that's for sure! I got through the run, had my almond milk shake (as per my rule, the almond milk was 'stocked food' that I'd brought with me to Vermont). Then, mid-afternoon I decided to dive into making something out of the local ground pork I'd purchased at the co-op the day before. I quickly decided to make burgers - tossed in some onions, spices, an egg and some local, homemade garden ketchup, pattied them up and put them in the oven to bake. About 20 minutes later the fire alarm went off. Oops - so much fat was jumping out of the baking dish I was rather taken aback. I can't recall the last time I'd cooked anything with so many fat drippings. I topped it with some onion and more homemade ketchup, made a nice garden salad with it and then dug in. Wow. The burger was soooo delicious - I think this was partly because the meat was juicy and full of flavor, partly b/c that ketchup I bought as so yum!

In the evening I went to Vermont's state capital, Montpelier, to meet up with a cohort in the local food movement (yes, I need friends!). We enjoyed a pint of local, organic beer at the Langdon St. Cafe, then he needed to grab a bite to eat. I wasn't the least bit hungry and didn't want to burden him with finding a place that served local food in any case, so I watched him eat. Then we went to another bar and I enjoyed a local(ish) chocolate stout. Woohoo ! Myth # 1 debunked - You can 'go local' and still have your chocolate...and in alcoholic form nonetheless!

Yesterday, I headed to Burlington at noon, enjoying a leftover pork burger and salad just before I headed out on my trip. My afternoon was spent meeting folks at UVM - the university has been collaborating with Hardwick's Center for an Agricultural Economy on several local food projects. Two of the staff members took me for a tour of the Intervale - 350 acres of farmland in the city limits (adjacent to the unviersity) that have been preserved in a land trust and that serve to feed residents of the city through various means. There are community garden plots, a number of CSA operations, incubator farms, small scale farms. I even saw pigs on one piece of land!

In the evening I hung out with a self-proclaimed clean energy geek that showed me around town (on bikes of course!), then took me to a pizza place called American Flatbread with a twist - all the doughs are made from organic wheat and the restaurant endeavours to source its ingredients from local and/or organic suppliers. Close enough for me to be acceptable, given the circumstances. We shared the vegetarian special which had a potato leek sauce. Also enjoyed some beer brewed on the premises. Next, my new friend took me to a meeting he was attending of the Burlington Permaculture group. Seriously, I should be living in this city!! To round out the evening, I did some grocery shopping at the City Market, a co-op grocery store with a full line of foods.

Today, as I've already related, I made meatballs, or Holsteinballs, as I've decided to call them after my accidental viewing of the alive version of my meal. Dinner was rice pasta (also from stocked food), which was a last resort after I searched the town high and low for spaghetti squash (this was why I'd ventured down Pumpkin Lane in the first place!), with organic marinara sauce, meatballs and salad. Lunch was a pork burger and salad. Breakfast was a protein shake.

OK, so clearly I'm not a purist, but my diet has changed significantly nonetheless over the past few days and already I've noticed some very interesting things

First, I've been waay less hungry/inclined to eat than usual. I'm not sure why this is - I suspect it's because I've cut sugars and most carbs out of my diet (partly b/c this locav-or-ganic deems that necessary, partly b/c I've been reading up on the GI Diet, Primal Diet, etc.), while at the same time increased my 'happy' meat consumption significantly.

Secondly, I enjoy eating meat. I didn't think I did for a long time, so my dinners were often tofu stir-frys, omelettes and the like. Now that I'm eating more meat, I find myself looking forward to trying new recipes out and so far I've been rewarded with delicious meals!

Thirdly, I'm not sure I'm spending more money, overall, than I would be if I was eating my normal diet. This is partly b/c I am not eating as much for lack of hunger, and partly because I'm not going to grocery stores and picking up items I don't need. However, I have also made the observation that my 1.25 lbs of ground pork cost me $8.00. Not sure how that compares to conventional meat here in the States, but I made four burgers from that meat, and think $2 for one serving of meat is pretty decent. If I were to guess, I'd say the salad and other ingredients for my burger and meal were approximately $2 , so....$4 for a meal does not seem v. expensive to me.

In a nutshell, I am thoroughly enjoying this new locav-or-ganic experience tremendously. I've previously dubbed it a challenge, but the truth is that it is really a remarkable opportunity - an opportunity for me to try new recipes, to meet the people (and cows) who make it possible for me to eat daily, to try new food and drink, to listen more closely to my body and give it things that make it feel good, to visit unique grocery stores and restaurants, and to become more engaged and connected with every meal I prepare. I'm looking forward to more adventures in local food and am SO glad that I am temporarily living in Vermont, which is far ahead of the the rest of the States and Canada with respect to developing its local food systems!


Below are the before and after pictures of my sustainable & local Holsteinballs meal.

Girl Gone Locav-or-ganic

Well, technically the title of this post should be 'Girl Going Locav-or-ganic', because, despite having spent the past year immersing myself in the scholarly and popular literature concerned with local food and preaching the tenents of 'going local' to anyone that would listen to me, the truth is I have been, by and large, a hypocrite. Here's my story....until now:

Baby Steps
I've spent most of my food dollars over the past year on imported fruits & vegetables and industrialized cuts of meat at the Food Basics that is a five minute walk from my house in Kingston, Ontario. Of course I visited the farmer's market every Saturday and some weekdays too, but the purchases I made there were minimal in comparison to those I made at chain grocery stores. This summer I became a loca-veg-ore, which is to say that I sourced about 95% of my vegetables from the community garden plot I co-tended and a local CSA operation (Vegetables Unplugged) on Wolfe Island, where I worked three hours a week in exchange for a week's worth (often more than one person could eat) of delicious, organically grown vegetables. And I did tend towards vegetarianism during the months of August and September, purely in an effort to minimize wastage from thes two local sources of food, which didn't always have a long shelf life. Still, the fact is that I continued to buy the rest of my food from the store - my bananas, salad dressings, tofu, chicken, rice, quinoa, raisins, etc. And I rarely, if ever, chose the oranic option, party b/c Food Basics doesn't carry the broadest range of food options (i.e. organic was hard to come by) but mostly because I've become disillusioned about industrial organic and find myself almost as skeptical of large organic brands as I am of Wal-Mart's claim that it's going green (green consumerism seems rather oxmoronical to me, but perhaps that's just me).


Which Weigh to Go?
In addition to studying up on local food systems as of late, I've also been reading much more about nutrition for personal interest.

I've decided that there must be something I've been missing in my attempts to slim down in the past, because I definitely, definitely exercise more than the vast majority of people and, for the most part, eat unprocessed, healthy foods in reasonable portions. A visit to a holistic nutritionist in June was the beginning of a wide awakening to the amount of contradictory information that is, literally, being fed to the public . She suggested, as a start, that I eliminate gluten and dairy from my diet, eat organic whenever possible and take supplements (whey protein, greens and fish oil). All of this after she reviewed my current eating diary and told me it was much, much better than the average person's ?! OK, so apparently I've been eating better than most people, but still can't seem to shed the weight

On top of that, every time I read another book or see a film about food, I find myself sickened by the thought of eating 'sick' meat and eggs (sick because the animals that they come from are treated inhumanely from birth until death and injected with endless antibiotics to keep them from dying from the ill treatment and improper diet they are receiving). Then there's the poison-laced fruits and vegetables (hey, if pesticides are meant to kill insects, I'm a bit wary about what they're doing to my internal organs), and the genetically modified grains (e.g. corn, soy), not to mention the highly processed food-like products that are more a product of modern chemistry than of the ancient, mysterious wisdom of Mother nature.

Eyes or No-Eyes? 'Eye' Don't Know :(
To top it all off, I find myself utterly confused as to whether a vegetarian or omnivore diet is better for the planet and for my health. And, within the omnivore diet, is it better to avoid grains and other foods that are, essentially, a product of mankind's relatively recent forays into agriculture. I've come across some pretty convincing arguments that suggest a diet rich in protein, vegetables and fats is far better for the individual than a diet that contains processed grains (i.e. flours,), sugars and is low in fats.

A Locav-or-ganic Emerges

I am not ready to give up meat yet. This is not because I am a meat-lover. In fact, a much greater proportion of my current meals are vegetarian or some variant thereof (not clear on what you call someone who eats eggs a lot...). There are two reasons I'm not ready to give up meat First, I have yet to be convinced that a vegetarian diet is superior or even comparable to an omnivore diet. Recently I interviewed a young farmer/activist who had been a vegan and then started to get involved in local food movements and found himself swayed towards eating meat (locally produced of course). Secondly, I am not so sure that a vegetarian diet (eaten in Canada) is necessarily less harmful to the planet than an omnivore diet that consists of meat raised in natural conditions. Polyface Farms and its owner, Joe Salatin, make a strong argument for the need for livestock as part of a closed system of agriculture.

So, with the decision about meat vs. vegetarianism made, the 'what next' for my diet has become pretty clear: I have to start eating what I preach, I have to 'go local and organic'. I have to make a commitment to ensuring the vast majority of the food I put in my body is produced/raised manner that is sustainable and healthful for all involved - for the planet (land, soil, water, air, biodiversity etc), for the livestock being raised, for the producers/farmers and farm workers, for the local communities where the food is produced, and for the health of those that choose to eat it.

I know myself well enough to know that any sort of purist commitment will be too much to bear when I can't commit the entirety of my energy to this new way of eating, so instead of going 100% local, I am giving myself a couple of caveats.

• Firstly, if (and only if) I can't find something that I am absolutey craving (e.g. a banana for my morning shake) from a local source, I will buy the organic version. That being said, I do intend to let the season dictate my eating choices for the most part, but I suspect I'll have some challenges with breakfast and that's where the organic option will likely be a saving grace.
  
• Secondly, I'll allow myself to use up the existing foods I have, regardless of their source. It should be noted, however, that I've just moved, so have very little food stocked, althogh I did bring about 10 cartons of almond milk with me, as well as a jar of whey protein, bottle of fish oil, bag of pecans and bag of rolled oats.
• Thirdly, I'm still going to use salt, pepper and other spices. Like I said, I'm not a purist
• Finally, if I am served a non-local meal at someone's house or taken to a restaurant where non-local food is the only option, I'm OK with that. When I make a dining out choice, however, it will always be for a local/organic restaurant

So, in summary, I'm planning to go Local or Organic, hence the witty merging of the words Locavore and Organic :)

Lucky for me, I came to this conclusion about my future food diet at around the same time (today, in fact!!!) I landed in Hardwick, Vermont. How is that lucky? Well, it just so happens that Vermont has been cited, by Michael Pollan nonetheless, as being 30 years ahead of the rest of the nation in terms of the development of its local food system. Hardwick, a small village of 3,000 people in the Northeastern Kingdom,is one of two locations I've selected to do my case study research on for my Masters thesis. There is an extremely strong sense of community here (based on my impressions from a 14 hour visit I made earlier this month), plenty of producers in the surrounding countryside, and some great in-town sources of local food that I know I will be frequenting often, including Buffalo Mountain Co-operative (local and organic groceries) and Claire's Cafe (locally sourced, absolutely delicious meals at reasonable prices).

So, without further adieu, I enter a new chapter in my relationship with food. I am hopeful, bordering on confident, that this burgeoning relationship will bring me more enjoyment, energy and positive challenges than any past relationship has. I'll check in on a semi-regular basis with how things are going - the good, the frustrating, and the delicious.

*First local/organic meal consumed while writing this post. 3 egg omelette (eggs purchsed at farmer's market in Bangor, ME, en route to VT), raw milk cheddar cheese (NE Kingdom, VT), spinach (farmer's market, Bangor, ME), organic mushrooms (Pennsylvania), tomato (farmer's market Bangor, ME), carrot (farmer's market, Bangor, ME) and red onion (farmer's market, Bangor, ME)