Church & State

Church & State... no, not more theology. Just a winery we visited on our way home from Vancouver Island today. It is definitely set up for the tourist market (located on the road to Butchart Gardens) but brought back fond memories of our wine trailing with Rhoda and Phil in NZ and Chile.

The wine itself was good. The sav blanc was quite different from the NZ savs, and the pinot not so rich. We did end up buying the Merlot/Cab Sav and a bottle of Cab Blanc - very moreish!

We dined on the deck with our hodge-podge of picnicky leftovers from the weekend away: hard-boiled eggs, baby carrots, corn chips, bread and butter, yellow tomato, and oranges. How's that for haliday fare? April hasn't yet developed a taste for wine so she graciously accepted the role of designated driver! Thanks, Ape.

P.S. Food Course: Other Resources

Films

• Babette's Feast
• Eat Drink Man Woman
• Big Night
• The New World
• Fiddler on the Roof
• Garbage
• The Future of Food

Children's Books

• Jam: A True Story - Margaret Mahy
• Whose Garden Is It? - Mary Ann Hoberman
• Mrs. Moskowitz and the Sabbath Candlesticks - Amy Schwartz
• Goops and How to Be Them - Gelett Burgess
• Mice Squeak, We Speak - Arnold Shapiro
• Stone Soup - various versions of this traditional tale
• An Angel For Solomon Singer - Cynthia Rylant and Peter Catalanotto
• A Bad Case of Stripes - David Shannon
• Blueberries For Sal - Robert McCloskey
• Little House in the Big Woods - Laura Ingalls Wilder (and other books in the series, especially Farmer Boy)
• Green Eggs and Ham - Dr. Seuss
• The High Rise Glorious Skittle Skat Roarious Sky Pie Angel Food Cake - Nancy Willard
• The Pipi Swing - Sarona Aiono-Iosefa
• Bread and Jam for Frances - Russell Hoban

Websites

• Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer
• Love Food Hate Waste
• Eat the Seasons
• Koanga Institute
• Salt Spring Seeds
• BC Farm Fresh
• Local Food BC
• River Cottage
• Jamie Oliver
• Simply Good Food (NZ CSA)
• City Farm Boy (Vancouver)
• Kitsilano Farmers' Market

P.S. Food Course: Reading List

Here are some of the most interesting and helpful books that were in our reading list.


Reading List

• Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver
• Food and Faith: Justice, Joy, and Daily Bread - ed. by Michael Schut
• For the Life of the World - Alexander Schmemann
• Hungry Planet: What the World Eats - Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio
• In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan
• Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos, of an Ordinary Meal - Margaret Visser
• Mudhouse Sabbath - Lauren F. Winner
• The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating (also published as Plenty) - Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon
• The Botany of Desire - Michael Pollan
• The Hungry Soul - Leon Kass
• The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael PollanThe Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America - Harvey Levenstein
• The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners - Margaret Visser
• The Supper of the Lamb - Robert Farrar Capon
• The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (3rd ed.) - Wendell Berry

Food Course: Final Day

Our final day on the food course was a flurry of activity as we prepared to leave, packing and cleaning and scurrying to take final notes from books we wouldn't be able to access easily as we went our separate ways. We had a brief class time where Emily had an opportunity to share about her choice to be a vegetarian, and Loren shared some thoughts and quotes about the communion meal.

The highlight of the day was the outdoor banquet of left-overs from the week, which we began with a simple and informal communion meal. It was a joyful revisit of our previous meals and an opportunity to thank Loren and Mary Ruth with some gifts (a cut-paper picture with an uncanny familial resemblance, and a wood-turned arbutus bowl), and Sarah for her TA work (chocolates). We were all blessed to receive a copy of our very own 'Galiano Cookbook', a collection of recipes used on the course. Then, with tummies full of pie and plenty for our minds to mull over, we packed ourselves off to the ferry and our various homes.

Loren and Mary Ruth celebrated their hard work (and our departure) with a meal at their local French restaurant, and were pleasantly surprised to discover we had all chipped in to pay for their meal!

Pictures from the Talent Sharing

Food Course: Taste and See

Our class was really a book discussion on May 15. Our reading assignment was "the WHOLE book if possible"... that is, "The Supper of the Lamb" by Robert Farrar Capon. I had read this book for the Christian Thought & Culture class last year, so this was a pleasant refresher for me.

Capon focusses on the need to be mindful of the world we live in, in order to appreciate God's goodness more fully. He sees our role in the world as priests; making meaning in our actions, living in a posture of thanksgiving to God, paying attention to things for their own sake and appreciating and using them at their best. Our discussion ranged far and wide, bringing together many strands of our previous classes.

The whole book is quotable, so here are some of my favourites that the class picked:
“… let us eat. Festally, first of all, for life without occasions is not worth living. But ferially, too, for life is so much more than occasions, and its grand ordinariness must never go unsavored” (p.18).
“Against all that propaganda for fancy eating and plain cooking, I hope to persuade you to cook fancy and just plain eat" (p.144).
"Man's real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God's image for nothing" (p.18).

In the afternoon, we had a visit from a friend and farm meighbour of the Wilkinsons, Sherri Koster. Sherri is a clinical counsellor, and we had a helpful Q&A time with her about food disorders from a medical (and Christian) point of view.

Our final mindful meal was centred on a Turkish theme:

We ate appetizers with headscarves on, before Debbie read a New Testament passage about our freedom in Christ. We were then invited to either remove our headscarves, or to eat with them on, in solidarity with persecuted Christians around the world.
Olives, Hummus, and Pita Bread

Roast Lamb, Kabouli Palau, Eggplant Bake, Greek Salad (accompanied by raki/ouzo... much better with water!)

Halva, and Turkish Apricots Afterwards, Ben set up a houka for some to smoke...

and some of us just enjoyed the turkish coffee...or giggled our way through some belly dancing!

The night ended with a little talent sharing... poetry, banjo, piano, story reading... and an impromptu campfire on the beach.

Food Course: The Hungry Soul

The discussion this day focussed on food disorders: obesity, anorexia, bulimia, and the greatest food disorder, hunger. Mary Ruth explored three basic roots of all these disorders - geographic change, cultural change, and familial change.

The conversation about geographic change focussed on the effects of urbanisation, changes in the size and nature of farms, and the change in how we use our homes (especially how zoning and consumerism 'feed' our lifestyles in the latter). We talked about how cultural changes are shown in the denial of real stages of life (e.g. in fashion, aging or anti-aging, tween culture), conformity to a prescribed beauty, and denial of classic sources of wisdom (family, place, and self are replaced with media influences). Familial change reflected the impact of households where both parents work, changes in food preparation and preservation, and children's schedules that rival their parents.


Some possible small steps we discussed were:

• refusing to buy into fads - thinking carefully before we buy/do things
• choosing to walk - a way of promoting community, exercise, safety, slowing down...
• reducing meat consumption - awareness of animal care issues, sourcing food resulting in intentionality, seasonal eating, meat flavour trumping size
• modelling healthy attitudes to food and our bodies - acknowledging that most people hunger for love, joy, acceptance and approval... and that churches ought to be places of healing in these areas too

Our reading was from two books: Harvey Levenstein's "The Paradox of Plenty" and "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. The quote I chose comes from the latter, page 81: “But the industry’s influence would not be nearly so great had the ideology of nutritionism not already undermined the influence of tradition and habit and common sense – and the transmitter of all those values, mom – on our eating.”


Our mindful meal this evening was an Indian meal with a focus on our senses. We started by washing our hands. The meal looked beautiful, as did the spice illustrations. We ate with our hands (even though we tried to use only one - as is traditional). We smelt all the beautiful spices as the group cooked and tried to identify them at the table. We tasted a wide variety of flavours: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, hot... And we heard the crack of poppadums, the crunch of radishes, the gentle whisper of naan scooping up dhal, and the satisfied sounds of diners as they tasted the chai tea icecream!
The menu was:
Appetizer - Poppadums serverd with Mango-Apple Chutney, Lime Pickle, Cucumber Raita, Cilantro (Coriander leaf)-Onion Relish Salad - White and Red Radish Salad Entrees (Mains) - Basmati Rice and Naan Bread with Baji Dhal (East Indian Spinach and Lentils) and Roasted Vegetables Dessert - Chocolate Cake with Chai Tea Ice Cream

This day also happened to be Mel's birthday, so the chocolate cake became a birthday cake...

complete with a hidden thimble - a la Nancy Willard's book, "The High Rise Glorious Skittle Skat Roarious Sky Pie Angel Food Cake" (illustrated by Richard Jesse Watson).

"Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see -- how good God is." Psalm 34:8

Food Course: Food for the World

On May 13th we started our class by watching some excerpts of the film The Future of Food. It looked at the issues surrounding GE seed modification and patenting (from a negative stance). We discussed "mono-cropping" (only growing limited varieties of limited foods) and how political agendas can affect food supplies around the world.

Soohwan has worked for Food for the Hungry in south-east Asia, so she was an invaluable contributor to our discussion. While she acknowledged the relief that food aid brings to hungry communities, she identified some downsides of foreign (usually western) aid: that the seed supplied was often patented (so local farmers were not allowed to save seed but had to buy it for subsequent crops); the seed provided through aid programs often wasn't appropriate for the local growing conditions; food aid often altered the local diet (sometimes to the detriment of general health and well-being); and that political arrangements sometimes meant foreign food was sold below cost, so local farmers found it difficult to sell what they were able to grow.

I must admit that this discussion got us all a bit glum about world food supplies and how our governments sometimes contribute troubles to those already suffering from hunger. Although I can't vouch for its practices, if you want a free opportunity to contribute rice to an aid programme, click the "free rice" link on the right-hand side of this blog. It takes you to a little game where you can 'earn' rice by correctly identifying word meanings. The rice is paid for by the sponsorship banners at the bottom of the game, and the words are interesting too. My highest vocab level was 46.

Our reading for this class was to browse the coffee-table-book Hungry Planet, by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio. Each photograph showed a family's food for a typical week, and was accompanied by an essay describing the family, their occupations, eating habits and culture. My quote comes from the interview with an Equadorean family from a village in the Andean mountains.

“Has anyone in the family ever eaten fast food?”
“One time, when I was at a course of study in Ambato,” says Orlando. “It was meat on bread [a hamburger]. It was okay, but a bit strange. And I wasn’t able to see how it was made” (p. 116, my italics).

Is being able to see how our food is made an important part of our food culture?

After the heavy discussion, the day ended with a celebration of American culture as another group (all American) presented their mindful meal: Food From the New World. Each dish was accompanied with a reading (myths and legends, information about its source or original development, poems, etc.).

Their menu consisted of:

• New England Clam Chowder in a Sourdough Bread Bowl
• Mixed Greens (some wild) with Apple Cider Vinaigrette
• Haida Sugar Salmon (Wild Pacific Sockeye)
• Black Krim Heritage Tomatoes with Herbed Polenta and Goat Cheese Ricotta
• Rosemary Roasted Red Potatoes
• Steamed Asparagus with Butter, Cracked Pepper and Salt
• Apple Pie and Hand-cranked Vanilla Ice Cream
• Cafe au Lait with Roasted Dandelion Root

The clams were local and the salmon had come from Siberia. Loren took note of Robert's hand-carved spatula, too. The tomatoes were beautiful and delicious. We were all blessed by this group, who saved the tomato seeds, dried them, and gave us each some. (After a bit of research, I was able to take them (legally) through NZ Customs and give them to my grandad. Hopefully he'll get them to grow this summer!) The asparagus was divine (as it always is)! The "pie a la mode" was great, too, with that beautiful creamy icecream. The dandelion coffee would take a bit of getting used to, if I was to drink it all the time, but the story behind the similar use of chicory root during the Civil War was fascinating.