Cooking with Julia

Tonight I went to see the film Julie and Julia and my head hasn't stopping spinning since. I laughed, a lot. I cried a lot too. I relived the past 6 years of my PhD in 123 short minutes. And I thought I was just going out for a nice light evening at the movies.

Where to start? I had of course been planning to see the film: Julia Child, writing, and food all in one place! Yesterday I was having lunch with a very insightful friend who recommended – no, insisted – that I see it, so I thought I better get right on that and made plans to go with another friend who has witnessed most of my major thesis-related events over the past few years. I was thoroughly enjoying the first hour and half of the movie, all the time wondering why my friend so insisted that I see it. I don't want to give anything away for those of you who may yet see the film, so I'll just say there is a point near the end of the movie when Julie (the intrepid blogger working her way through all the recipes in Julia Child's book in 365 days) has to face the fact that Julia may not like her, and more importantly, that she may not like Julia, the woman to whom she has devoted a year of her life, who she considers her saviour, who she obsesses over to the point of nearly destroying her marriage. The light bulb went on in my head. Suddenly the thoughts came flooding in, and everything in this film seemed a metaphor of my recent past. Everything down to the fact that I am sitting at my computer, late at night, drink in hand, blogging the inner workings of my mind to an unknown audience.

A lot of things have happened to me during this existential journey sometimes referred to as a thesis. One of the big ones is the loss of a certain amount of idealism and complete disillusionment with many of the food heroes I once idealized. That disillusionment almost caused me to drop the whole thing on more than one occasion. It created a strange tension, because my ideological nature is what led me to what I am doing now, and it was a meeting with someone who I once idolized that created the space for me to do the project I'm now trying to complete. Realizing that this person is not perfect and does not represent all my values really made me question what I was doing and why. I began to question the validity of my research and almost decided not to continue. In time, I've realized that the fact that although this person may not live out certain values in the way I would like to see done, she has done an immense amount of work in a very difficult context. It's not perfect, but it is important. I've also realized that no matter what I learn about someone else, it doesn't change what I've done or what I've learned about myself. Which, incidentally, is a lot. I may be disillusioned, but I'm all the better for it. My insightful friend asked me yesterday why I used to be so blindly idealistic and regimented. I couldn't come up with an answer at the time but it came to me later: I used to live and work in a world where my ideas and values were really quite radical. I didn't have the confidence to back them up, so I clung to them and the people who publicly expressed them so that my ideas – and I – wouldn't get lost. As I created a world around me that is more supportive I no longer feel the need to cling so fervently to these ideals. I won't say I've become cynical, just that I'm comfortable questioning my own opinions. In some ways, my "idols" probably did more for me by "letting me down" than they could have done by meeting every one of my unrealistic expectations. I've become more principled than idealistic, and as a result far more relaxed, happy, and comfortable in my own skin. I also have way more fun eating, not only turning into a raging omnivore, but not worrying if something is full of cream, fat, or – god forbid – a non-organic, non-local ingredient that may not have been created exactly the way I would do it. So many great meals I missed! (There's a scene at the beginning of the movie in which Julia Child gets quite veclemt over a grilled fish. I completely understand, and was reminded of a time when I felt ready to die after eating what is quite probably the best panna cotta in all of the world at Osteria del Boccondivino in Bra, Italy.)

Once I started down this line of thinking, the parallels and metaphors just kept coming. Julia Child wrote Mastering the Art of French Cooking as way to teach American women how to cook real food in an age when mixes and cans were being pushed as the way to women's liberation. This isn't far off from the original thinking that led to my current dissertation. I was horribly distressed by the fact that cookbooks for people who know how to cook were disappearing and being replaced by instruction books telling people how to combine various packaged products and calling it cooking. I saw a great loss of knowledge and skill and it frightened me, so off I went on a study of deskilling which ultimately led to my thesis on distancing. And I don't even own a copy of Julia's book. Yet.

The two stories in this film deal with so many other themes that are all too real for me. Diving headlong into something as way out of something else (as opposed to a way into where you want to be) or simply as something to do can lead to amazing new joys and insights. It can also lead to obsession and dashed hopes. Or to unexpected success. It can both strengthen and strain relationships. It can lead you into things that are easy to start but hard to finish. It can result in many, many meltdowns. My dissertation process has been all of these.

Julie, Julia, and I have all used food and cooking as a celebration of love, an escape from reality, and as a source of great joy.

And maybe most importantly, to rediscover The Joy of Butter.

Back [to] Bacon

Much of the summer, I've either been escaping the city for beautiful places or hiding out trying to make a visible dent in my long dissertation "to do" list, and I haven't been paying a lot of attention to the things that normally inspire posts. In lieu of that, I think it's time I tell The Bacon Story.

I've been thinking a lot about the progression of my dissertation over the past few years.... I started out thinking about models for assessing food security and sustainability on an international scale (clearly a ridiculous venture for a mere 6-year doctoral project). Then I streamlined my thinking and moved on to what may be my best idea EVER: a fascinating and dramatic tale, and one that I still hope to investigate in the future. When that fell through for practical reasons, thoughts about cooking skills and globalization eventually led me to what I am doing now: an inquiry into what motivates people to engage in food system change in two very different but strangely similar places, India and Canada.

How I got here is one story. Thinking about how "here" has affected me has taken me on a journey of self-reflection about the interplay between my dissertation and my life and value systems. Each has had a huge effect on the other in many ways, but the thread that weaves it all together is made of connection, community, and spirit. One of the most visible effects this has had on me is my recent disregard of a lifetime of avid vegetarianism. Since deciding around age 3 that I didn't think it was a good idea to eat animals, I consumed absolutely no meat or poultry (with the exception of an unfortunate phase of processed and deli meats, which one can't really call "meat", during my youth) for another 32 years. I had experiments with seafood throughout my 20s and 30s, but that's as close as I came. I was deep into my field work in the summer of 2007 when I suddenly realized I was an omnivore. My lifetime sense of identity as a vegetarian was out the window and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it all.

At the risk of inspiring hatred, or at least extreme jealously, I have to say that my field work consisted largely of traveling to farms in southern BC and visiting people in all sorts of exotic places to look at, talk about, pick, shop for, cook, and eat a lot of really, really good food with all sorts of interesting people like Bollywood stars, elderly seed savers, university professors, and young activists. I also had meetings with bureaucrats and days of combing through policy documents, but that part wasn't nearly as much fun.

So back to the summer of '07 and my Conversion. I was spending the day in the Fraser Valley visiting farms with a bunch of city folk who had signed up for a tour to go and learn where their food comes from. We had arranged to have lunch at the home of an apple orchardist who also raised chickens, a few animals, and vegetables for a kitchen garden. He had asked in advance about dietary restrictions and I, along with about half the group, said that I was vegetarian. We had just finished touring the farm when we sat down for a fabulous outdoor lunch of fresh salad, homemade apple cider, and - for the vegetarians - egg salad sandwiches. The happy looking chickens (yes, I do think chickens can look happy) who kindly produced our eggs were running around in the field right next to our table. The sandwich was garnished with a few slices of very fragrant crispy bacon. Without even thinking, I reached out set the bacon quietly aside and enjoy my sandwich. I had the bacon in my hand when our farmer host started to tell its story. He and a neighbour had raised a pig from birth. Their kids had played with the young piglet. He spoke very fondly of that pig. And when the time came, he and the neighbour respectfully slaughtered and cleaned the animal right there on the farm (I'll spare you the details here). They cut and cured all manner of pork parts for their freezers, and they chose a choice piece from the back to make into bacon. For what seemed like 20 minutes, he described in great detail how they cured and brined and salted this bacon, how they aged it for months in the cool cellar below his house. This was the introduction to our lunch, and I still had that bacon between my fingers when he finished the story. He told it with such passion and respect and love that it would have felt fundamentally wrong to let any piece of that pig go to waste. My sense of responsibility toward the pig's life seemed so much more important than my own ideas of what was right or wrong to eat. That seemed self-centred and insular and no longer relevant to my own reality. Instead of putting it to the side of my plate, I silently thanked the pig and that piece of back bacon went straight into my mouth. It was heavenly.

For days after, I found myself telling my friends: "I ate bacon!", excited and giddy as if I had just won the lottery. I wasn't sure I could do it again, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time. In the following weeks and months, my field work took me to more farms and more meals at which I was offered more meat from animals that had been raised, and prepared with the utmost of respect for the animals, for nature, and for the people who would share the food.

Now that my field work is complete, I miss sharing those meals with people who were living out their passion for food in every aspect of their lives, but the effect of those meals has stayed with me. I'm hardly a raging carnivore, but I continue to eat meat from time to time when I know the animals were treated with respect or when it is offered as a gift from someone I care about.

Bring on the bacon.
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The dump, and other culinary delights

I'm recently back from a 10-day trip to Yellowknife, NWT. I was happily sent there by work to attend the International Congress of Circumpolar Health, and stayed on an extra few days to see the sights and visit with my friend Shannon. If you haven't been to Yellowknife, I highly recommend it. It's a kooky little place with about 18,000 people who are tough enough to brave the cold winters and summer mosquitoes. Me being me, I was excited to check out the food situation there and try some of the wild northern delicacies. I'm happy to report that I managed to eat Arctic char every single day.

There are 3 major grocery stores in Yellowknife, the smallest being right downtown. On first glance, I was struck to see some empty space on the shelves, but noticed that the produce coolers were well stocked, and the quality and price of the fresh produce was far superior to what I saw in St. John's in March. The two larger shops, and particularly the Coop, were full of fresh food and lots of variety, all at prices only slightly higher than I would pay here in Vancouver. Restaurant food, on the other hand, was another story. Good, yes, but cheap it was not. I had a fantastic meal at the famous Wildcat Cafe, dinner in a northern French bistro bar, mooseburgers and pike tacos at the Folk on the Rocks fest, fine scotch at the local pub, and a fantastic meal of fried Arctic char and chips at Bullock's Bistro, where there's no menu – you just choose which fish you like (so good that it felt like a bargain at $50 for fish and chips and a bottle of beer).

This was all well and good, but left me ill prepared for my visit to the city dump. Now, anyone who knows Yellowknife will know that the local dump is THE place to go to find treasures and salvage the perfectly good things people throw away (they even have a blog!). So, we cycled a short distance out the highway en route to the folk festival to see what we could find. I was actually looking for a birthday gift for my dad (sorry Dad – almost had you a nice set of "learn to speak French" CDs, but the box was missing the beginner levels so I thought better of it). We were just about to leave with a prize stash of glitter glue and perfectly good mason jars when we saw a woman pull up in a truck and start heaving bags of fresh produce onto the garbage heap. I couldn't hide my shock and dismay so we pulled up on our bikes to see what was happening.

She looked at us a little dumbfounded at being caught wasting food. She explained that the vegetables were left over from a summer camp, and must not be good anymore since they had been in a cooler for a week. She had huge bags of organic carrots and sweet peppers in perfect condition, whole melons, loaves of bread, and who knows what else. Since there wasn't another camp for a few weeks, she decided to throw it all away. We suggested she donate the food to a shelter or pantry, but she apparently didn't know of any. Shannon explained that the Salvation Army was just down the road, but she wasn't going that way. So, examined the unopened bags still in her cooler, found them to be perfect, and strapped about 20lbs of carrots and a couple dozen peppers onto our bikes and backpacks and rode back into town to store them in the fridge before heading back out to the folk festival.

What was most disturbing about this whole situation certainly wasn't that we picked up vegetables at the dump (we took them straight from the cooler in the truck). Partly we were stunned that someone from a summer camp for kids didn't have a good enough sense of her community to know about (or have interest in) the social services available. Mostly though, it was the complete lack of knowledge about the food itself. Being fresh produce, this stuff didn't have expiry dates on it. You just have to look, touch, and smell to figure out if it's good. They had assumed that simply because it was in a cooler (not out in the open — in a cooler!) it MUST have gone off. The fact that the skins were shiny and taught, with no signs of blemishes and no softness or shriveling or mould, was no indication that this food was perfectly good to eat. It was in better shape than a lot of what I've seen in grocery stores! We were all quite stunned, and saddened, to realize once again that this kind of basic food knowledge is just not commonly shared by a lot of people. And really, if people aren't cooking with basic ingredients on a regular basis, they can't be blamed for not knowing anything about them!

(More pictures of Yellownife glory here.)

Real food is...dangerous??

My mother recently sent me one of those little tidbits of email wisdom that plague the internet from time to time, confusing people. I emailed her my thoughts, but thought I might just as well expose the rest of you my little rant. First, here's the gist of the email:

Written by Zola Gorgon - author of several cookbooks..
Watch out for those spoiled onions. I had the wonderful privilege of touring Mullins Food Products, makers of mayonnaise. Mullins is huge, and is owned by 11 brothers and sisters in the Mullins family....
The guy who gave us our tour is named Ed. He's one of the brothers. Ed is a chemistry expert and is involved in developing most of the sauce formula. He's even developed sauce formula for McDonald's. Keep in mind that Ed is a food chemistry whiz. During the tour, someone asked if we really needed to worry about mayonnaise. People are always worried that mayonnaise will spoil. Ed's answer will surprise you..
Ed said that all commercially-made Mayo is completely safe. "It doesn't even have to be refrigerated. No harm in refrigerating it, but it's not really necessary." He explained that the pH in mayonnaise is set at a point that bacteria could not survive in that environment. He then talked about the quint-essential picnic, with the bowl of potato salad sitting on the table and how everyone blames the mayonnaise when someone gets sick.
Ed says that when food poisoning is reported, the first thing the officials look for is when the 'victim' last ate ONIONS and where those onions came from (in the potato salad). Ed says it's not the mayonnaise (as long as it's not homemade Mayo) that spoils in the outdoors. It's probably the onions, and if not the onions, it's the POTATOES. He explained, onions are a huge magnet for bacteria, especially uncooked onions. You should never plan to keep a portion of a sliced onion. He says it's not even safe if you put it in a zip-lock bag and put it in your refrigerator. It's already contaminated enough just by being cut open and out for a bit, that it can be a danger to you (and doubly watch out for those onions you put in your hotdogs at the baseball park!).....
For some reason, I see a lot of credibility coming from a chemist and a company, that produces millions of pounds of mayonnaise every year.'

First of all, do you really want to take advice about what to eat from the man who invented McDonald's special sauce? Seriously, what's in that stuff? I'll tell ya:

Big Mac® Sauce:
Soybean oil, pickle relish [diced pickles, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, vinegar, corn syrup, salt, calcium chloride, xanthan gum, potassium sorbate (preservative), spice extractives, polysorbate 80], distilled vinegar, water, egg yolks, high fructose corn syrup, onion powder, mustard seed, salt, spices, propylene glycol alginate, sodium benzoate (preservative), mustard bran, sugar, garlic powder, vegetable protein (hydrolyzed corn, soy and wheat), caramel color, extractives of paprika, soy lecithin, turmeric (color), calcium disodium EDTA (protect flavor).

I've bolded the parts that aren't actually food, or that are likely to be genetically modified. Now I'll ask again, are you going eat what this guy tells you to eat?

Chemists know about chemistry. They know how to make something smooth, last for all of eternity, keep it moist, add fake taste, add colour, change the texture. Incidentally, all of these things are already there if you just eat actual food. The fact that a company produces millions of pounds of something every year is not an indication that it's good. It's an indication that they have good marketing. (The sauce above is a great example.) It's also not an indication that it's safe. Think about how much deli meat Maple Leaf produced last year, or how many jars of peanut butter came out of the Peanut Corporation plant in Georgia.

Which brings me to my second point. Are you really going to take advice about what to eat from a man who considers the fact that commercial mayonnaise will never spoil, even if unrefrigerated, a good thing? What does it take to make it last indefinitely, given that mayonnaise is supposed to be made by whipping raw egg yolk, vinegar, and oil (I know, I've made it from scratch). Although the acid in mayonnaise will slow down bacterial growth, its ingredients can spoil, and so they should. I'll take homemade any time, because if something won't spoil, I worry. It's a good general rule to never eat anything that won't spoil, because that's a pretty reliable sign that it's not really food but something a chemist concocted in a lab.

Another good rule for eating (and life for that matter) is to never put anything in your body if you don't know what it is or where it's come from.

To address the safety issue, I suspect what this guy is talking about is the fact that onions grow in the ground and thus get dirt on them. Depending on how you're farming, there could be all sorts of things in that dirt (another good reason to know where your food comes from). Even if the onions are washed off, something could remain on the skin, which will then get into the onion once your slice it from the outside in. Because onions are very moist, they are a great bacteria growing medium. This, however, is not unique to onions. This is why there have been problems in the past with contaminated melons. Slicing moves whatever is on the skin to the inside edible part. I guess we're just more likely to leave a cut onion in the fridge.

Breaking down the silos

A couple of weeks ago, I had the great opportunity to be part of a panel discussion following the screening of a new documentary call FRESH here in Vancouver. I encourage everyone to see this film if you get the chance. There are no more screenings scheduled for Canada, but you can arrange to host one, or order a copy of the DVD for yourself. Here's what it's about:

FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.

Among several main characters, FRESH features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur’s 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy.

It's a fantastic film, and presents a really positive view of what is hopeful in the food system. Ana the director gets her point across while leaving the viewers with a sense that the food industrial complex is not the only way forward.

Not surprisingly, a lot of what came up in the film reminded me of the issues I'm trying to address in my thesis, and the quintessential farm imagery of the silo really triggered some thoughts. In the film, Iowa farmer George Naylor (of Omnivore's Dilemma fame) talks about how the natural cycles that sustained the farm for generations were broken when the silos were put up on his farm. In academia, this metaphor of silos is used to describe how we operate in disciplines that lose connection with reality by not communicating with one another. Scientists and academics love to pull out one little piece of a puzzle and study it in isolation, and then attempt to relate the findings back to the real world. Efforts for transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and crossdisciplinary research try to reconnect research to reality. In reality, this tends to be a lot of rhetoric because the Academy and all its associated institutions are set up to operate within disciplines, or silos if you will.

To bring this back to the food issue, the silos on farms across North America are a fantastic representation of the way we have distanced ourselves from our food. This separation - of food from nature, of people from food, of farming from community - is my hypothesis of what is wrong in food around the world. It can be connected to issues of hunger, nutrition, obesity, social structures, and the list could go on. By putting grain into silos, we lose sight of it. When we lose sight of something, we lose control over it. When we lose control, we lose knowledge of what is really happening. When we lose knowledge, we lose any sense of real choice. The silos represent the start of wide scale industrialization, standardization, commodization, professionalization*, .....ization, ....., that contribute to a loss of food culture and the sense that our environment is something 'other' than ourselves.

We put food into silos and forgot where it came from. Everything changed in the way we eat once those silos went up, and as a society we didn't notice. The power over what's to eat shifted away from the farmers who grow the food to the corporations who sell it. They try to control nature by industrial agriculture and our diet by mass processing and marketing. When we put up silos, whether literally or figuratively, we distance ourselves from the natural world, and we aren't going to figure things out until we break them down. That's why we need the heroes, visionaries, and activists - those people in FRESH, and the ones I've been working with for my thesis - to drive this movement to help us reconnect, remember, and rebuild our cultural, ecological, and social connection to food.
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*By professionalization, I'm referring to the way we have passed authority over knowing what to eat to medical professionals who offer dietary guidelines that are so complex that nobody knows what to eat any more without professional advice. These guidelines are a victim of scientific reductionism and are based on nutrients and not foods, and arguably, further separate us from what we eat.
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Look what I made!

In all my talk about the importance of connecting to our food, I try to do what I can to reconnect with mine. Usually this comes though in the way I acquire (i.e., buy) food, but I'm trying my best to step outside the usual retail system whenever I can. Food to me should be elevated beyond something as base as unconscious financial exchange. I think we can become far more nourished by our food if it comes with some measure of effort, a little bit of thought, and through some kind of human connection. I'm not about to ditch my city digs for a farm (for many reasons, one of which being I would likely starve to death), so here's what I've been doing in lieu.

• I go to the fabulous Vancouver farmers markets when they're in season.
• For the second year in a row, I've joined a CSA with a cooperative farm for produce during the summer and early fall. (CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Basically, you buy a share in a farm in the spring and in return get a share of what is produced. We are shareholders in the true sense: we put up some of money to help the farm get going during planting time, and we share in both the risk and produce of the season. If it's a terrible growing year, we don't get a lot of edibles for our money, but we do get to know that we've taken a tiny bit of the burden off a group of farmers who are struggling even in good times. If it's a great year, we get the bounty of that in exchange for taking that risk and paying up front. My share is with a cooperative farm Fraser Common Farm in Abbotsford, which also happens to be the home of one of my research partners for my thesis project.)
• This year, I am proud to say that I am one of the founding shareholders in the Urban Grains CSA. This is a CSA that produces local grain...a rare find in these parts. Apparently the early settlers of the Lower Mainland of BC grew a lot of wheat and other hardy grains. This is no prairie, but if the settlers didn't grow their own, they would have starved. (It's good to remind ourselves from time to time that there are a number of conditions beyond our control - natural disaster or trade disruption being the most likely - that could bring us back to a similar state. And it's even more important to remind ourselves how absolutely unprepared we are for that kind of occurrence.) So, Urban Grains is trying once again to grow grain for human consumption around Vancouver. A local couple got the idea, found some heritage seed grains, and found a farmer willing to plant them. We members have put up some cash to get things going, and with a little luck and a hopefully dry summer, we'll each have 20 kilograms of freshly milled hard and soft wheat flour in the fall. Cool!
• One of my favourite new places to get food is a little shop down the street called Home Grow-In. A farmer from the Okanagan Valley opened this little place in my neighbourhood on a residential streetcorner. She sells only locally produced plants and food products. They don't take debit or credit, only cash or cheque. I was buying some strawberries and bread there yesterday and realized I was short on cash. It was no problem...I just took my stuff home and dropped off the rest of the money the next time I biked by. I bet they wouldn't let me do that at Whole Foods.
• And last but not least, I'm putting a twist on a popular Vancouver pasttime and "growing my own". My little city balcony is just about filled with pots of edibles at various stages of growth. I'm already on my second seeding of mesclun greens. There's a lovely zephyr squash just about ready to be picked, lots of herbs, kale and chard, some edible flowers (marigolds and nasturtiums), and tomatoes and onions on the way. I'd love to add a chicken and a goat, but I'm worried that my landlord downstairs might frown on that.... I am, however, putting my underground parking space to good use and raising worms. (Not for eating....my newfound omnivorousness hasn't quite gone that far yet!) They are eating my food waste and I am putting their waste back onto my plants as yummy compost and compost tea.

One of the things that been a great motivator - as if I needed any motivation to increase my personal food supply - is a group called VanGrow. We like to think of ourselves as something between a peasant movement and a gardening support group. It all started after a neighbour and local restauranteur, and owner of my favourite Indian restaurants Vij's and Rangoli, decided it was time to get more connected to both food and community and put an open invitation in the Vancouver Sun for people interested in joining her. We still haven't figured out what we are, but so far it's a loose collective of people interested in food and growing food, and interesting in sharing the experience with others. We share stories, ideas, skills, and seeds. Some of us got together to inoculate some logs with shitake spores and should have a nice crop of fresh mushrooms in the spring. It's pretty amazing to see how a group of complete strangers can come together over cups of tea and, in a few short months, create a movement of almost 200 people interested in doing more about their own personal food supply.

Respecting the flesh

Anyone who follows the news in Canada will no doubt have heard the recent flurry of news/uproar/vilification/praise over Governor General Michaëlle Jean's recent consumption of seal at an Inuit ceremony in Rankin Inlet. For those of you who have had your fingers in your ears and your eyes closed while yelling "lalalalalalalalalala" for the past week: our über-cool and highly respectable Queen's representative was visiting Inuit communities in the north and, as GGs are wont to do, attended a cultural ceremony. So what, you say? This one happened to be the celebration of a seal harvest during which the freshly caught seals are skinned and partially eaten, raw. The most important parts of the seal and eaten right away: elders first, dignitaries second, etc. So, when the elders had been served and Michaëlle (if I may use her first name) was offered a piece of the heart from the seal she was learning how to skin and gut, she did what any woman of respect and manners would do in such a situation and accepted the kind and generous offer. And she said she enjoyed it.

Well. As one could imagine, that's when all hell broke loose. Somehow, this act of participating in a ceremony that shows great respect for the animals who are sacrificed to keep a people alive, and that shows equally great respect for the history and culture and collective wisdom of that people, has been interpreted by Europeans and animal rights activists as barbaric and cruel. Now, anyone who knows me will know that (1) I am a huge defender of the sanctity of all sentient beings (i.e. I recently hand-picked several hundred red wiggler worms out of a defunct vermicompost pile to avoid throwing them out with the ill-fated semi-composted waste material), and (2) I don't think having respect for life demands the vilification of the seal hunt, sealers, and those who depend on them for culture, livelihood, or food.

I'll try to contain my ranting on the matter and leave you to follow the Globe and Mail reports. But I must pass comment. Michaëlle was well aware that her actions would be interpreted as a support of both the Inuit and the Newfoundland seal hunt. She was also aware that the seal hunt is an essential part of both cultures, and that if done in a respectful manner it is no worse than any other form of hunt. By fully participating in the post-hunt ceremony, she was making a very clear statement to the Inuit (remember them? the people who really matter in all these shenanigans) that their way of life, their culture, and their way of eating is okay. It's good. It's right. Imagine the importance of this message to a people whose culture and way of life was nearly destroyed by the Canadian settlers, a people whose food supply has been contaminated with methylmercury and persistent organic pollutants by the actions of more southern cultures, a people who are trying to preserve what they can of their traditions in the face of western culture and its social fallout, a people who survive on what is available in their very harsh environment. Imagine then, the message that she would have sent had she refused the seal heart. In the simple phrase "no, thank you" she would have been telling the Inuit people that their way is not good, that their food is not good enough, and they should change to be more like the people who created so many of their current challenges. She would have been offensive and rude to her hosts. That is not the role our Governor General.

I have one final question for those who would have the GG's head, or heart:
Would her participation in the ceremony be interpreted as such an act of evil if it were a deer, or if chickens or cows were a common ceremonial beast of the Inuit? I think not.

The Great Unlearning

It seems that life of late, and really since I started my PhD, has been about undoing. At the risk of embarking on a rant of academic drivel, the existential journey I call a dissertation has become about deconstructing my entire education. This all came about because of my efforts to do a dissertation based in the social sciences after years of training and work in the health sciences. Suddenly I found myself dealing purely with thoughts and ideas, with maybe a little qualitative data thrown in to back them them up — quite a shift from that other world where numbers reign supreme and you throw in a few token ideas at the end in the "interpretation and application" section of a research report, taking care of course not to say something that couldn't be referenced back to some form of data elsewhere.

It was a very conscious choice to stick to the thoughts and ideas brand of research for my PhD. The more I learned about epidemiology and data, the more I understood how easily numbers can be manipulated — not falsified, just purposefully interpreted — to give the answer that best fits with one's worldview. It seemed to me that it made more sense to be up front about these biases and openly acknowledge the fact that ideas and opinions are very influential in the creation of research, so I set off on my search for understanding about the relationships between food, society, and culture in the facing of changing political and economic worlds. Still, even though the rationale for qualitative work resonates more closely with my heart, I have struggled and felt pulled in two different directions. I had been thinking this was simply the result of doing something for which I lack in training and experience, having to learn a new way of doing as I went along. It quickly became clear that I was not only learning how to do things in a new way, but I really had to unlearn everything I'd been taught.

A scientist walks into a coffee shop and sits down with three anthropologists.....

Something happened last week that made me realize this is something more. I joined a small thesis writing group in an effort to break down the mental walls that were preventing me from moving forward. I was sitting in a cafe sharing writing troubles with three anthropologists. I described all my difficulties in applying social theory to my work and how it was keeping me from beginning analysis of all my interview data (something I've been ranting about for 3 years now). They asked where the initial idea for my research came from, and I started in about The Decline of the Modern Cookbook* and the social determinants of health. They looked at me slack-jawed and told me I already had a theoretical perspective and I should just get on with it and ignore Foucault, Bourdieu, Levi-Strauss, critical theory, post-structuralist constructivism, and all that.

Theoretical problems solved, we moved on to analysis. My science brain figured I needed a detailed paper trail of 'proof' for everything I claim to have found through my research. (I should note here that this is not because I think that's necessary, but because I thought nobody would consider it legitimate research otherwise). Anyway, I learned that anthropologists consider spending months in a place, interacting with people, interviewing them, observing what happens, and then clarifying what you learned from that to be entirely legitimate. No need for complicated software and pages on end of code (which of course, would be constructed in my mind, but somehow the codification process lends legitimacy to those folks who think social research is 'unscientific'). So, I told them the main things I learned and why, and suddenly I'm halfway to an outline for my thesis and a plan for how to write it up.

Unscientific Un-learning

All this got me thinking. A lot. And I think I've learned a few things about myself and the academic process in general.
1. Most mainstream education has the effect of slowly killing our creativity. I thought this happened in university, but I think it began much sooner. In high school I used to skip my science classes to attend music rehearsals. Back in grade one, there was some concern about my progress on account of shoe tying issues. To the educational system, I wasn't good at tying shoes. To me, they just didn't appreciate my creative methods. I mean, my shoes never fell off....

2. The loss of food culture and cooking skills and knowledge — all the things that led to my thesis research — are related to a loss of culinary creativity and the homogenization of diet. Interestingly, around the time I was being criticized for creative shoe tying, I was given the Beatrice Potter Natural Foods Cookbook to which I attribute the origins of my intense attraction to good food.

3. There's something going here between my own creative processes, my dissertation, and food. Somehow it's all going to connect. Oddly enough, it was the sense that my education was killing my creativity that led to my dropping out of music school way back when, and ultimately to my scientific education. I've decided to reclaim it by learning to play the tabla. This has the nice side benefit of having a connection to Indian culture and spiritual traditions, which conveniently will be a major theme in my thesis.

I of course have no hard data to prove any of this.

*Some fodder for a future post, where I show how cookbooks in the 1980s began to look more like IKEA furniture assembly instructions than guides for preparing food.

India calling

It seems that my scholarship from Shastri was just the start of a series of serendipitous events that are, I hope, the beginning of a year that will see me back to India. It seems that old and new connections are making sure I don't stop thinking about India.



In the first week of 2009:
- I received a scholarship from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute.
- I saw a fabulous movie set in Mumbai called Slum Dog Millionaire.
- My friend Dana took me to my very first Canadian kirtan.
- I read a book by Anita Desai called In Custody, set in old Delhi.
- My dear friend Ramesh emailed to say he is coming to the west coast of North America, from Dharamsala, and hoped we could visit.
- Dr. Giri, head of the Schumacher Centre for Development in Delhi and one of the many amazing people I met at random there, reignited our email correspondence and began a discussion of potential co-authoring. He may even make it to Vancouver this year.
- Another research contact from the GREEN Foundation who I've only spoken with on the phone found an old text message from May, found my email address, and got back in touch. He's now with the AME Foundation and we will try to connect next time I'm there.

I'm choosing to take all this as a sign that (1) I need to go back (no surprise there), and (2) it is finally time to finish that pesky thesis so I can go back with a light heart and feeling that I have contributed something to this place that seems to have become such an important part of my life.

Beginning anew

Well, it's another new year (and no need to count how many there have been since I started this PhD thing) and time to start fresh. My dissertation has been on extended hiatus since I came back from India in June - it lost out in favour of things like teaching, finding a place to live (twice!), and earning a living. I think I've found some degree of balance in that, and am looking forward to having only one job (at the NCCEH) and maybe the occasional contract. This of course means there should be room to work on my thesis.

Yes folks, I will resume work on my thesis starting this week. There. I said it. Publicly. Yikes, now I have to do it!

I got a friendly kick in the pants in the form of a $2000 scholarship from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute - just enough for a flight to India to reconnect with people and give back some results to my research contacts. Naturally, I can't do that until I have some results to give, but knowing that I can pay for the flight is a nice prize to work toward.