Dialogue on Food
Up, up, bubbles roll under and over mirepoix and potatoes, caramelized apple and yam, an avalanche in reverse. They come from an impermeable solid, no pores to pour out from; unbelievable, but fire’s transformative, and it would appear something can come out where there is, apparently, nothing for them to come out from.
Subsistence and Self-Esteem
We’ve all been there, male or woman. The age old situation when a young woman pauses, on the verge of accepting some desert or otherwise ‘unhealthy’ food, then goes “No, I really shouldn’t” and refrains from accepting it. Regardless of prompting that no, she really looks fine, and she doesn’t have to worry about it, and it’s just one, once that initial threshold of decision has been crossed, it seems there is no going back.
To Your Tummy: From Earth With Love
Food is personal. It is communal and intimate—it comforts us, it connects us, it sustains us. Food is also loaded with political connotations: everything we eat has roots, a chain of production. If we’re talking plant-based food, this starts off with seeds and soil. The seeds grow into plants, which can be in a huge industrial field, a mid-sized family farm, or in your own backyard or community garden.
Save the Kale
Our generation exists in the midst of vast cultural and political change, both locally and globally. Our lives can often seem seized by capital interest and our society’s constant tendency to outsource, expand and globalize. The idea of a global neighborhood can be exciting and charged with change, but on the other hand, can simultaneously be quite terrifying and only established at a great cost: the sacrifice of culture, tradition and resource.
Tillage in the Tundra
The Inuvik Community Greenhouse is the most northerly greenhouse in North America, and it’s certainly unique. It was formerly an arena, but thanks to the Community Garden Society of Inuvik in 1998, it was converted into a greenhouse.
Fruit for Thought
I’m called upon and asked to continue slicing up a pineapple. In the dimly lit classroom I stand up and approach the task at hand, feeling the piercing glare from the rest of my peers. I take a squirt from the hand sanitizer that accompanies my spread out newspaper, a plastic cutting board, an array of sharp knives and of course, the focal point of the project: a pineapple. It’s time to slice and dice.
FOOD for the improvement of
They had small talk for appetizers. Napkins all around because conversation is a messy process. Indeed, the words spoken or heard can cause a person the same indigestion as a spoiled ham. But, the same words read or written in the right context and for the right purpose can bring a willing subject the same nourishment as a turkey dinner. Thanksgiving anyone?
Which Way to the Buffet?
Let me begin by assuring my readers I am fully aware that gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. Yes, I know—enjoyment of good food is a worldly pleasure and overeating is an evil for which those who indulge in the act should hang their heads in shame. But I can’t help it. I love to eat.
Beholder III
Tavern tales speak of a legendary tree. Some claim it is but a husk of its once-living majestic form.
Eye of Your Apple
A lot of people come here. They have to. If they didn’t, they might shrivel up like a raisin and decompose into fertilizer. The human kind. Then they could truly aid in the growth of their own fruits and vegetables. But how useful would that be to a pile of dirt? Not very.
Eating the Environment
Today, the world of food is inextricably tied up in the global environmental crisis. What we eat, the way we eat, and how we produce food are a few of the most important, contentious, and controversial issues that our world faces today. Demand for meat and fish is rising around the world, food prices are rising, the population is growing, energy demand is rising, oil is being depleted, ecosystems are being destroyed, monocultures threaten the health of the plants and the soils, pollution is mounting, the oceans are being overfished, and companies can now control the genes of the food that they are producing.
Ode to a Culinary Delight
Food this delicious I have yet to taste,
The texture of each bite cannot be matched.
A dish so good cannot be ate in haste,
And be warned, because it may be snatched.
Wwoofing
Every part of my being was telling me not to go. I was broke and feeling uninspired and the last thing I wanted was to spend my vacation organic farming on some stranger’s farm. However, in wintery months I told my sister that sounded like a fantastic idea, and I would love to go with her and that I would. Even though my mother didn’t raise me a Catholic, I think guilt must run in the bloodline, and we went.
Food Allergies on Campus
Last week, I had a ravenous craving for a brownie. You know the feeling: the willingness to kill for something with chocolate in it. It hit me in the middle of the Concourse. I was with a friend at the time, who passionately decided to join my quest (chocolate cravings can be contagious, you see). He said “Excellent! The Second Cup is still open!” But I had to stop his mad-dash and explain that this was a mission that was not for the easily-swayed. It would be long and tedious, and probably wouldn’t end with any brownies at all. You see, I’m allergic to peanuts.
Potatoes and Broken Hearts
Breakups and food: the two seem to be made for each other. Some of us reach for the sweet with the ice cream and the cake, while others gravitate towards the salty; a nice combination of plain potato chips dipped in a bunch of Hellava’ Good. Trust me: if it weren’t so great, they wouldn’t call it Hellava’.
Bereft
A dinner tray is set before me.
Wow…this is it, is it?
Propped up in a hospital bed, against a mound of pillows, life gradually bleeding away from me, and this is what I receive for supper? I am an old woman, to be sure, who smoked incessantly, and quite stubbornly, for years…
Savouring the Sight
The lush texture of pleasure,
A divine, overwhelming sensation.
As your tempted lips smile
Your taste buds prepare you.
The taste could be sweet,
The taste could be bitter,
But what your eyes want
Is the image in front of you.
Foodie Over Easy
I’ve been called a foodie many times, which at times makes me concerned. Yes, I love to cook. I love to share recipes. I head the Culinary Arts Club on campus. I indulge more then a skinny little Asian girl should. Nonetheless, the amateur foodie is a misunderstood title. The usual suspect is someone who loves food, but everyone loves food! It takes more than just a love for food to be a foodie: it takes a relentless passion.
Ode to My Favourite Food
First – the green tape
Sealing the deal of my favourite meal, it is usually found other places
Namely, drifting side to side under the sea
This is the glue that holds it all together
Here it plays a necessary role
Here it is the foundation
Next – the white
Like a mattress atop a bed frame, it is the support
Navigating Food Marketing in the CSR Generation
Organic, sustainable, natural, green eco-friendly, locavore, omnivore, vegetarian, pescetarian, vegan, freegans (eww!) and raw foodists. These are just some of the many terms that are bandied around when we are talking about food in the post-Inconvenient Truth era. I use Al Gore’s documentary as the benchmark for this discussion not because this is when these terms were first used, nor even when many of them became popular, but you certainly would not have seen them used in the cereal aisle pre-2006. This is the point at which many of these terms first arose, and also the point at which others overnight made the switch from mere descriptive terms to what they are today: marketing tools.
Don’t-Cha Put It In Your Mouth
Food is such a basic thing, but it comes with a lot of baggage. The very simple habit of eating three meals a day is loaded with significance if we just stop our munching and think about it. When you consider what you actually know about your food, it’s not a lot at all. If you’re eating a pre-packaged meal, you have to wonder what exactly is in it, if those things that look like meatballs but taste like shit actually have any naturally occurring substances in them. The closest most processed food gets to real fruit, vegetables, or animals is through the picture on its box.
Food for What? Commit To Knowledge
As I sit here typing, I muse about our sleeping patterns. Harnessing fire, electricity and even the elements; we sure are an assertive bunch. The entire body of impositions and assertions produced by the collective process of human brain development has the bonus and handicap of being good for the species. Agriculture is one of those developments. Agriculture is our white elephant in the room.
Seven Months and Counting
Marilla: “You’re not eating anything?”
Anne: “I can’t. I’m in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?”
