It’s a motivating and invigorating process to envision what the future of food would like in our city. We’re nearing the end of 2011, and with the closing of this year comes the natural tendency for reflection, visioning, and intention-setting. This past week, The Food Constellation (a group of food activists) at The Centre for Social Innovation held a meeting about Toronto’s future of food. Twenty or so people sat around a big table discussing, imagining, critiquing and encouraging each other’s visions of a thriving local food system.
What does the future of food look like in our city? Here’s what was shared around the table:
Toronto would have many large kitchen incubators for small food businesses. This is a different way of imagining typical kitchen spaces we see. Kitchen incubators are a warehouse-type infrastructure with a number of certified and industrial kitchens set up in one large space. This allows greater accessibility and opportunity for small-scale food production. There are so few kitchens available to rent in Toronto, and the spaces that are available are expensive and unaffordable for start-up small food businesses. The Food Chain is a community of food activists who are starting to address this issue. Together, they are building a 4000 square foot production space with many kitchens, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Attached to this large incubator is a cafe where food producers can showcase and sell their product. This helps build and support the middle part of the food processing system, and small food producers are able to contribute in a real and meaningful way. Earth & City is a small food producer, so we understand fully the need for more affordable and accessible kitchen spaces in the city.
We would change the restaurant landscape of the city, reforming and revolutionizing everything from sourcing to waste-elimination. Instead of restaurants ordering all of their food from a Sysco catalogue, they would have the resources and tools in place to order and source food from local and sustainable local growers and suppliers. Menu consistency is an important value of restaurant establishments, ensuring customers can rely, predict and expect what will be served everytime they order. This approach relies heavily on industrial and heavily-imported sourcing practices. Instead, we need to deeply transform the way we expect food to always be consistent, reliable, and available. Pineapples would rarely be available, and if so, are fairly and horizontally-traded. Strawberries would only be available in June and July, and would be savoured as a luxury during those few summer months. Restaurant menus would adapt accordingly to the growing season, and customers would learn to expect less choice, and be content with what is regionally available. Less green in the winter, more berries in the summer. What is being cooked and offered at our city’s restaurants must reflect our Ontario growing season.
We already eat the world in this city, so how about incorporating more culturally-appropriate food into our local food and agriculture system. What about making kimchi, a traditional Korean condiment, with locally grown cabbage from Sosnicki Farms, instead of imported cabbage from Asia? Or what about cooking with daikon, a white Japanese radish that is grown in Ontario during the harvest months? There is an incredible amount of food knowledge and expertise from newcomers and immigrants to this city. We need to collect and share this knowledge, and find sustainable ways to integrate ethnic cuisine into our city’s food equation. How about building a cultural and ethnic recipe archive? Or a sourcing guide for newcomers to buy culturally-distinct foods from local growers instead of high-eco footprint importers? How about education, awareness and incentive for farmers to learn how to grow more ethno-cultural crops?
Toronto would have a legislative context that is more supportive of food and agricultural practices. Unnecessary regulatory burdens would be omitted out of the equation. We would see an increase of good food champions at city hall, and policy-makers more connected to the grassroots and community-level issues that affect small food producers and growers. What about a cottage food clause? It’s an amended certification for home kitchen production. Or what about a local food procurement policy? It’s a preferential policy for businesses or perhaps individuals to buy local and sustainable food. Or how about a policy that supports micro-economics and micro-farming? It’s a smaller-scale infrastructure that allows backyard urban growers to participate in the local food economy by selling their produce to local shops and restaurants.
The future of food in Toronto would integrate a socio-economic perspective into all decisions based on food. We want to see a city where people don’t live in food deserts, where a 7-Eleven is the only local source for food. And believe it, food deserts do exist in our city. With an increase in transit fare, and cuts to TTC routes, low income people living in isolated areas don’t have the luxury to travel to buy good food on a regular basis. Also, Christmas Food Drives wouldn’t consist of donations of old canned goods with low nutritional value that have oftentimes expired in our own cupboards. This food is being given to the most vulnerable and nutritionally-deprived populations! Good, healthy, and nutritious food would be more affordable, more accessible. The city needs to take a holistic and highly critical perspective on food systems, incorporating a framework which acknowledges power, status, privilege, race, income level, ethnicity, religious and faith practice, sexual orientation, gender identity, political ideology, age and disability.
We see beautiful fresh food popping everywhere in this city, and every person having the opportunity to have some sort of tactile experience of food, on a daily basis. We see food hubs sprouting all over Toronto, places where seeds are stored, people are canning and preserving, workshops are being held, libraries of books and resources are available, meals are shared, food is being grown. Food hubs by their very nature embody a multidisciplinary approach. They allow farmers, producers, distributors and consumers to connect over a shared interest: food! We see seeders, feeders and eaters all around the dinner table together, in conversation, in community.
Toronto’s future of food has potential to grow into the most thriving, inclusive, holistic and critical local food economy. We are ever-inspired to contribute in our own little way. So on we go and into the new year, doing good work, and staying focused, motivated, connected and inspired to keep the vision of our city’s food system alive and well.
November is here and I can’t really believe it. Time is such a funny thing, it feels like summer was just yesterday, while at the same time feels like it was months ago. Which it was! Now, it’s dark when we drive to the kitchen early in the morning, and the sun sets moments after we get home. The season is cool, brisk, and hovering around the 0 degree mark. In honesty, I’m loving the darkness, the invitation for rest and solitude. I like the cold breeze, the layers of sweaters, the low sunlight, the long nights.
I promised a List of Demands from last post, inspired by my critique and challenge of the Occupy Toronto Movement. But first, a few things to share about the business, food events in the city, and our busy city lives…
Centre for Social Innovation
The Food Innovation Consellation of CSI, along with Maplekeys Office Markets, have established weekly Farmers’ Markets at both CSI locations. These markets are open during lunchtime, 11:30am-1:30pm, on Tuesday at the Annex, and Wednesdays at Spadina and Queen. We’ve had the opportunity to be a part of this venture early on, and are thrilled to see it grow and evolve.
The mission of these markets is to bring fresh, local, sustainably-produced, and scrumptious food to office members, in hopes of creating greater accessibility to this type of food. Kate brings her produce from Maplekey Farms, Constance sells cheese from Monforte Dairy, Sara from Nice Buns offers fresh melt-in-your-mouth breads, Gabriella from Chocosol shows up with her chocolate and Mexican tortillas, Jesse from the Cutting Veg sells her incredible and beautifully-coloured beet, garamasala and leek hummus (see pic below), and we at E & C have a spread of our regualar seasonal raw-vegan goodies, and every now-and-then we offer hot vegan soup made with seasonal root veggies and grains.
It’s a spectacular spread: convenient, healthy, affordible, accessible, local and seasonal. The food comes straight from the grower and producer to the consumer: less travel time for food, more time for office members to have conversations with a farmer and people like us who prepare their lunch.
Toronto Food Policy Council
TFPC 20th year anniversary conference was held at St. Lawrence hall on October 20th. It was a celebration of food policy, innovation, and 20 years of connecting the importance of food to our city’s social, economic, and physical landscape. I was surrounded by what I termed as ‘foodie celebrities’ (hello Wayne Roberts!), and other powerhouse people like him who have been at the forefront of food policy, education and transformation in this city, and beyond. As part of the younger generation of food activists and entrepreneurs, I found a lot of inspiration, and garnered a big source of motivation, from this event. Some of the learning highlights at the conference:
- Toronto Food Policy Council is made up of staff and volunteers, and part of its mandate is inspired by Dan Leckie, who worked towards promoting propositional food politics, rather than oppositional.
- Toronto Food Strategy is a collaboration of TFPC and Toronto Public Health, thus creating an alliance between people both inside and outside the government.
- Food systems are largely governed by provinical and federal government, so how does a small municipal unit have an impact?
- How can we design strategies that can affect municipal policy change?
- Creating good fair food policy means asking who eats what, when, and how.
- Policy needs to incorporate the entire food spectrum: from the agricultural process to consumer and elimination process.
- Social policy is a public health policy!
- The most effective mode of participation is community engagement. Communities should demand accessible, honest and transparent information from policy makers.
- And it goes both ways: the government’s responsibility is to translate policy is a clear and communicative way so citizens are enabled and empowered to participate.
- How does local knowledge and expertise make its way into policy?
- The Food Charter, passed in 2001, exists to advance food security issues for Toronto. It is a tool for institution building, a tool of reference to hold government accountable, and gives a broad mission of what kind of city we would like to see.
- Food is the city’s business, not just public health! All departments within the city need to consider food as a part of their mandate and practice.
- Farmstart supports a new generation of farmers.
- Trends in Canadian agriculture: 1.farmers are aging, 2. food comes from further away, 3. good farmland is disappearing.
- Nick Saul, executive director of The Stop Community Food Centre, stated powerfully: the rich get local and organic, the poor get diabetes.
- Food banks are a dead institution: it does not serve nutritious food, it divides citizens and encourages a 2-tiered system, and promotes psychological complacency. We need a different kind of response in low income communities! Low income people need to be part of the greater conversation.
- Food is a public good, and we as a society need to establish empathetic principles to food rights: the right to good healthy food for all, the right to ethical standards and treatment for farmers, and the right for our environment to be treated in sound and sustainable ways.
- Everdale is a teaching farm; it exists to support the education of new farmers. Farmer training needs to embody business skills, food growing skills, social and ecological engagement that can be transfered to an urban setting.
- We have constructed this fantasy of cheap food. If I don’t pay, who does?
- Carolyn Steele defined the word Sitopia: Food Place. We live in a world shaped by food.
Winter Months and Farmers’ Markets
Many Farmers’ Markets have officially moved inside for the season; some have stopped for the winter and will pick up again next spring. We’ll be inside at Wychwood Barns every Saturday morning 8am-12:30pm throughout the winter months. Sorauren Market moves inside to the fieldhouse, we’ve confirmed until Christmas time the very least, Mondays 3pm-7pm. Centre for Social Innovation Markets are inside at both locations, and we’ll be there alternating Tuesdays (Annex) and Wednesdays (Spadina) every week from 11:30am-1:30pm. Pedestrian Sundays in Kensington will start up again next year, end of May 2012.
Whats in Season: Our November and December Menu
There is still plenty of fresh Ontario-grown food available in November and December. It’s been a mild and desirable fall season, and so the harvest continues to be incredible and full. Come to a market and see for yourself! Tables are brimming with leeks, spinach, peppers, potatoes, garlic, herbs, squash, red and golden beets, red and green cabbage, carrots, rutabaga, apples, pears, pumpkin, parsnip, salad greens, sprouts… We’ve got lots of fresh produce to work with. Here are some of our new offerings:
Savoury
Nori Rolls: We’ve been using parsnip and cabbage to fill these rolls, and along with an apricot-sundried tomato spread, these items are a mix of sweet and savoury. $2 for one or $6 for four rolls.
Flatbreads: Our flatbread recipe has changed, and it’s here to stay for the winter months. Carrot, garlic, rosemary and onion, is paired with flax seed, sunflower seed, wheat-free tamari and olive oil. It’s dehydrated for 48 hours, and comes out so savoury and delicious. Served with a rosemary red pepper sauce and sprouts, this yum sandwich is $6. We also sell in bundles of 5 for $10.
Spinach-Shallot-Walnut Pesto: Our take on the traditional basil pesto for the late fall season. Thank you to Sosnicki Farm for the greens and shallots! The spinach is hearty, the shallots mild but spicy, and the walnuts add a truly nutty flavour. We mix with garlic, olive oil, sea salt and lemon juice. Buy the spread 250ml for $4.
Sweets
Apple-Gingersnap Squares: Made with organic oats, organic spanish almonds, honey dates, blackstrap molasses, cinnamon, fresh ginger and local golden delicious apples, these really taste like a gingersnap cookied cross apple crumble. We’re obsessed with these little guys right now, so flavourful. $3 for a square.
Pumpkin-Date-Cashew Tarts: Thank you to Greenfields for the organic pie pumpkins! The pumpkin is so creamy, flavoured with a mix of warming spices: cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, ginger. The crust is made of organic rolled oats, honey dates and a dash of sea salt for a hint of salty goodness. $3.50 a tart.
Pear-Ginger Cashew Squares: We blend ripe Ontario pears from Bizjak Farms with raw cashews, honey dates and cinnamon for the filling. Dehydrated pears with a sprinkle of cinnamon for the topping, walnuts and honey dates for the crust. $3 for a square.
Peanut-Butter Blackstrap Molasses Macaroons: The peanut butter we source from Culinarium, grown and harvested in Prince Edward County. All natural red-skinned peanuts. Pair it with yummy blackstrap molasses, coconut and a dash of cinnamon, these macs are pretty much out of this world. $2 a mac.
Canning and Preserving
Starting mid-summer, we’ve been canning, freezing and drying seasonal fruits and veggies. Our list of preserves is modest, but we still feel well-stocked for the cold months. Throughout the winter, we’ll feature some of our preserves in our prepared food, spreads, fillings, sauces and sweets. Here’s what we accomplished:
June/July: We froze containers of sour and sweet cherries from Bizjak Farms, as well as fresh local raspberries. In the winter, we’ll feature these berries in tart fillings, fruit squares, and dried fruit leathers.
August: We bought a bushel, and did up 27 500ml cans of peaches from Bizjak Farms. The peaches are preserved in honey from Bees Universe. Honey is a widely vegan-debated food; it’s not accepted as vegan by some, and by others it’s considered a great part of a vegan diet. We don’t use honey in our market menu, but we do see so many nutritional and sustainable qualities of honey as a healthy alternative to agave, dates, or maple syrup. Here’s a source to start you with if you’re interested in researching more about honey: Marni Wasserman’s blog. We also made huge batches of basil pesto! With basil from Highmark Farms, sunflower seeds and hemp seed from Peterbourogh, we froze containers full for flatbread spreads in the winter months.
September: 18 1L jars of roma tomatoes from Highmark Farms, canned and preserved! The tomatoes will be used for pizza sauce, sundried tomato sauce and salsa in the winter.
October/November: We’re in the process of drying bunches of kale for seasoned kale chips. Sliced pears and apples are in the dehydrator for fruit chips, and we’ve also pureed the fruit to dry as fruit leather. Root veggie chips made up of parsnip, beet, carrot and sweet potato are seasoned and dried for selling at the markets.
Eagle Lake Retreat
During the beginning of October, Lisa and I went on our first annual Earth & City retreat. We stayed at a cottage up north past Muskoka on Eagle Lake, owned by Lisa’s family. Thank you Sweetman family for inviting us in for the weekend. It was beautiful, cozy, and warm (with the wood burning stove blazing most of the time!). Our time away was spent resting, reading, walking, cooking, eating, sleeping. It’s quite an extraordinary privilege to get away, to retreat, to step back from our busy urban lives and land in a quiet and perfect sanctuary. We see such value in taking time to step away from the business every so often. What seems like a loss in productivity and effectiveness is actually a gain in achieving greater productivity, presence, availability and energy when it comes time to step back into the business. The more we take of ourselves, the better we take care of the business, our customers, our colleagues, our planet.
List of Demands: Food, Policy, and a System of Change
The following thoughts are inspired by the accumulation of all of the above, plus the ongoing Occupy Movement happening here in the city.
Community and individual health, sound economics, environmental stewardship, social justice and equity. Food systems and food policy infiltrate and deeply effect the well-being and success of all of the above. I am a citizen on the ground-floor and grassroots level of change, and the way I express my vision of change is through Earth & City. In order to continue effecting change, as well as grow the business, I need to also continue to be clear, concise, direct and articulate with the kind of change I want to see.
The big picture: we need to transform our big centralized and federally-owned food and agriculture infrastructre. We need devote our money, our energy, and our commitment to rebuilding local food infrastructure and supporting medium to small food producers and growers.
This vision doesn’t come without challenges and critiques. How do we feed a city? A massive province? A country? The world? For Toronto, our rural agricultural landscape can be undervalued as a meaningful source for feeding our city. With the aging population of farmers, and our educational system not placing greater value, meaning, and success on farming as a career, the possibility of creating local and viable food economies seems like a massive undertaking. And yet, there are already plenty of incredible organizations that are working so hard to create a better food reality.
We found three organizations that have put forth clear and inspiring food policy and programs. These organizations continue to teach and inspire us about how to be the most effective agents of change in this messy and complex food system we have. Most importantly, I am learning how to translate my big-picture vision to a more detailed and specific step-by-step guide. Check out these three different policy recommendations:
We are doing our own small part in advocating, educating and inspiring the health, happiness and wellness of a local food system. And we can only go forward with the willingness to remain open, curious, compassionate and understanding to the ever-evolving issues of our city’s food matrix.
It is also important to locate ourselves in places we live, and be knowledgable about who and what party is governing our own neighbourhood.
My riding is Trinity-Spadina, Ward 19. MP is Olivia Chow (NDP), MPP is Rosario Marchese (NDP), City Councillor is Mike Layton. My neighbourhood is on the west outskirts of Chinatown, and travel a bit further west is Little Portugal.
Lisa’s riding is Davenport, Ward 17. MP is Andrew Cash (NDP), MPP is Jonah Schein (MPP), City Councillor is Cesar Palacio. Lisa lives in the heart of Corso Italia, one of two major Italian neighbourhoods.
Locate yourself and get to know the civic bodies that govern your neighbourhoods.
Going Forward
6 more weeks until the holidays, and we’re now offering creative and yummy gift ideas and take-home options at our markets starting next Saturday. Check facebook or twitter for more current updates about the specifics. We also have some exciting projects lined up for the new year. We know the new year is still a long time to come, but we just can’t help but get excited about where this is all going…
For now, we’ll savour the last bit of warmish weather, the beautiful colours, and the fall flavous of butternut squash, peppers, leeks, spinach and apples in our bellies.
Happy fall everyone!
To Occupy, by definition, means to absorb, live in, inhabit, fill.
To occupy is to step into something and inhabit space, whether it be physical space, mental space, or emotional space. When we occupy something, we are present and concentrated. Our perspective is usually formed by a process, by living and breathing and doing and being and relating within an occupied space.
The Occupy Movement is happening here in Toronto, and in many cities all over the world. The Occupy Toronto Movement has inspired community gathering, media attention, praise and criticism. What the movement hasn’t accomplished yet are specific demands. Rather, it’s a wide range forum for all different kinds of issues: economic and corporate reform/revolution, an increase in community health, public service reform, a restructuring of our political system, to name a few. In truth, I feel lost in this movement. Lost in this occupation. I know this movement is not just a protest, it’s a process, it’s a forum of civic engagement. And to occupy something means to be immersed and concentrated and fully present to the process. But I can’t just show up at St. James park and immerse myself into the movement/process and expect to feel found. I can’t just occupy that park and expect to inspire deep change. In fact, occupying the park, the physcial space, may just be a distraction from occupying another, more important, physcial space: our entire city, and the neighbourhoods and communities that make up our city. Take the movement out of St. James park and into city life. Starting now.
We need to occupy in a more succinct and focused way. Within the movement and then out into our day to day ordinary lives. We need to take our idiosyncratic needs and create a list of common goals and concrete steps of how to achieve them. I believe for a movement to be effective, it needs to be a process with clear, direct and focused objectives. It can only remain unfocused and unclear for so long before the movement loses its clout, its power to effect real, deep-rooted change.
It’s important to be open to an unfolding process, this is true. It’s also important to plan thoroughly, have a goal, have a point of focus.
Some words that come to mind: clarity, determination, collective agreement, conviction, articulation, communication, steadiness, commonality.
The Occupy Movement in Toronto needs more rigor, more action, more thoughtfulness, more application to our city life .
To stand in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street is one thing. And it’s a good thing. We also need to be clearly and distinguishably Canadian, distinguishably Torontonian. As I write this, The Occupy Movement has announced a first national convention to be held on July 4th 2012 in the US, at which time the current list of proposed demands for Occupy Wall Street will be ratified as the platform of the movement. Lets get inspired by this and come up with our own list of proposed demands for Toronto, and lets do this soon.
What seems obvious for Occupy Toronto is our common and shared value: transformation. Transformation of corporation, of capitalism, of our economics, our politics, our social welfare, and on and on. The only way I can see transformation occur, is if we, as individuals, and as a collective, know and feel clearly what kind of transformation we want to see, and the actual steps of how to get there.
What I’ve come to know through my experience, both academic and professional, is the most effective way to create deep change and transformation is through praxis. The balance of theory and practice.
To explain, as a movement, lets take the time to step back, reflect, integrate, and come up with a list of demands. Specific demands. And then, it will be time to take action, step up, and put the list of demands into practice.
I challenge myself, and all those involved in the Occupy Movement, to come up with a list of demands and steps forward. This list might consist of only one point, and only one way to achieve that point. Some personal questions that come to mind: What is the most pressing and meaningful issue for you? How is your issue communicated through a sentence or two? What is your proposed intiative towards achieving transformation or reform with this issue? Who is involved in creating change?
We’ll be posting a List of our own Demands and Steps Forward next week on the blog.
For now, here are some more guiding questions, hopefully they can be of use to us to move forward in a more specific, city-wide, critical, and action-oriented way:
1. What needs to be changed in our market system (regulations, etc)?
2. How should banks behave?
3. How should our tax system be restructured?
4. How should corporations be taxed?
5. What does community health look like to you?
6. What is the major ethnicity and demographic that occupy your own neighbourhood? The minority?
7. Who is your MP?
8. Your MPP?
9. Your city counsellor?
Keep on participating in all the ways you have already. Formulate your platform. Inspire others to join in. Build a critical mass.
Step back and step up.
Food is political.
Always.
The growing, distributing, producing, consuming and eliminating processes of food can never be isolated from policy and the political agenda. Be it implicit or explicit, direct or indirect, government policy, procedures and implementation affect all sorts of food issues. Issues such as funding for food projects and intiatives, support of public food services, food literacy and education, farming and agriculture, preservation of ecosystems and good farmland, health care, jobs, city planning and property owning, food security and food sovereignty. Every single public sector can be linked and related to the health of our food and agricultural system, and in turn affect the entire health and livelihood of our entire country.
There is so much going on. So many groups and organizations are advocating for food policies, demonstrating true democratic values, and fighting for a fair, just, healthy and viable food systems. And on all levels. Here’s a bit about whats going on at the municipal level in Toronto, the provincial level in Ontario, and the federal level throughout all of Canada.
Municipal
In Toronto, here are countless grassroots organizations that are involved in advocating municipal policy change, educating food issues, and connecting people, projects and food initiatives together within our city.
Food Forward is at the forefront of social and political change:
Food Forward is a Toronto-based community organization that provides a people’s voice for a better food system. We are made up of members, and dozens of organizational and business partners throughout the City who believe that a healthy, local food system supports economic vitality and diversity in Toronto. (Darcy Higgins Executive Director)
Also, Food Share is a is a non-profit community organization whose vision is Good Healthy Food for All. Check out Debbie Field’s deputation at the City of Toronto Executive Committee September 19, 2011.
Toronto City Council is our official municipal governing body. Stay informed about the future of food within our city! Budget cuts, service reviews, community development and funding are present and pressing city issues that all affect our municipal food system.
Provincial
In Ontario, our provincial election is coming up on October 6th. The presence (or absence!) of food and farming within the provincial agenda is paramount to how our food system continues to be shaped in Ontario.
Sustain Ontario is a province-wide, cross-sectoral alliance that promotes healthy food and farming. Sustain Ontario takes a collaborative approach to research, policy development and action by addressing the intersecting issues related to healthy food and local sustainable agriculture. Sustain Ontario is working towards a food system that is healthy, ecological, equitable and financially viable.
This organization has created an in depth and highly informative website dedicated to food and this provincial election. Check out Vote On Food for tons of information about these issues.
Federal
Across Canada, grassroots and non-governmental organizations are active and vocal on pushing food issues forward at the federal and international level.
Food Secure Canada is a Canada-wide alliance of civil society organizations and individuals collaborating to advance dialogue and cooperation for policies and programs that improve food security in Canada and globally.
People’s Food Policy Project is a pan-Canadian network of citizens and organizations that is creating Canada’s first food sovereignty policy.
CBC Radio is Canada’s Public Broadcasting Channel and one of our country’s largest cultural institutions. CBC brings diverse regional and cultural perspectives into the daily lives of Canadians in English, French and eight aboriginal languages.
Listen to the CBC.
Have a conversation about food issues.
Listen to Provincial Party Platforms.
Buy local.
Get involved in some food project in your neighbourhood.
Preserve some tomatoes.
And eat lots of apple and pumpkin pie this season.
Maybe it’s because I lent the camera to my dad for the month.
Or maybe it’s because I went away for a few days up north.
Or maybe it’s because it’s summer and I’d rather be canning peaches than sitting down to write.
Maybe it’s just a case of writers block, or I just don’t know how to articulate the intense, hot, eventful and emotion-filled month we’ve been having.
It’s a jam-packed life and urban living in the summer is relentless. Ever-present is the heat, concrete, music, dancing, eating, drinking, working, biking, traffic, more traffic, construction, late nights, early mornings… The inspiration to write ebbed in the heat and fullness of August, and now it’s September 1st and I feel a renewed inspiration to write more frequently again.
Here’s a bit about what’s been going on…
For us personally, August was a month of loss and remembrance, vacation and family, canning and preserving, and preparing for the transitions that September will bring. We’ve been going through the month graceful at times, strong
at times, broken at others, honest and true always.
For the business, our COO (Chief Operations Officer, aka Lisa), kicked it into high gear and cleaned up the organizational and operational aspects of the business. We still have moments of forgetting napkins when we need them, but all in all, the ship just got a whole lot tighter and we’re grateful for that. Our CCO (Chief Creative Officer, aka me), has been rockin the recipes with peach-berry tarts, tortilla with corn salsa, and over-the-moon flatbreads. Honorary shout back to Lisa, beacause she’s a creative whiz who hasn’t yet owned her culinary smarts. She’s been making the most delicious creamy almond milk, oatmeal cookies that taste baked but they’re not, nut burgers with sundried tomato spread (that she made up on the fly one prep morning). We’ve sourced so much our produce from various Ontario Farms. Peaches, apricots, cherries, and blackberries from Bizjak Farms and Wiecha Farms, both located in the Niagara region. Beets, herbs, kale and tomatoes from Underground Organics, Thorpe Produce and Sosniki Farms. What we can’t find at the markets, we buy from an independent produce vendor, Kensington Fruit Market at the corner of St. Andrew and Kensington in the market.
For Toronto and for our entire country, we lost Jack Layton. His death sparked such a remarkable and completely breathtaking response from so many people who believe in his politics, and also from those who didn’t. I believe Mr. Layton had such a positive and emotional affect on people because he was honest, transparent and whole-hearted about both his politics and public life, as well as his interpersonal relationships and private life. It’s fascinating to reflect on his accomplishments, and more specifically his support of bringing food to the political agenda. Wayne Roberts highlights in Now Magazine:
As chair of the Toronto Board of Health, Layton pushed food to the fore in 1990 when he and close friend and colleague Dan Leckie orchestrated the founding of Toronto’s Food Policy Council. This was a “uniquely Laytonian-Leckian-Torontonian innovation” partnering expert and experimental citizen engagement with municipal resources, recalls Debbie Fields, longtime leader of FoodShare, another mainstay of the new transformative government-community collaboration underway during the 1980s. Both Layton and FoodShare identified school meals in low income areas as a major intervention to prevent hunger, one that the City government should support financially.
This just makes me want to get things done, and done good. Make things happen, and do right. Be active and engaged and vocal. Be committed and focused and rooted in what we love to do. So often it’s a death, a loss, a letting go, that evokes community, sharing, inspiration to do good…
So farewell August, we’ll miss you and the whole mix of experiences and events you brought. Most of all , we’ll miss your end-of-summer sweetness and Ontario ripe peaches.
Hello September, may you bring balance, equanimity, prosperity, lovely harvest, sweet apples, beautiful colours, shared dinners, long walks in High Park, a focused mind and challenging work.
These summer days are long, and full, and seem to go on forever. Our sense of time gets muddled into an endless, hot, sunny experience of days and days on end. We work and play and work and rest and work and repeat, until the number of the day doesn’t matter anymore and suddenly it’s August 4th.
We’re in the heat of summer and each day we cherish a little bit more than the last one, because we feel like August is the month to savour. Savour the crazy abundant mid-summer harvest, savour the warm nights and hot hot days, savour our freedom of time together with the business. To savour means to slow down and reflect on where we were, where we are, and where we’re going.
In this spirit, here’s an update of what E&C has been up to lately.
Oh boy. The roof-top-turned-front-deck garden has become quite a sight. First, the neighbourhood squirrels and racoons decided to munch on our baby kale and collards to the point of extinction. We tryed cayenne pepper spray but should have opted to a wire of some sort. The zucchini seems to be bearing no fruit, only flowers, and the basil only yielded enough to make one batch of pesto (yum). On the plus side, the tomatoes, although smallish, are turning red in colour and bearing some good-looking fruit. The peppers are taking their time growing, but we can see them slowly take on good form.
Our St. Clair garden is another funny sight. Our tomatoes are **spectacular** (wish we had a picture!) They’re still green, but big and full and healthy. The chives, basil, mint, cilantro and sage are growing nicely, and make for delicious additions to our flatbreads, pizzas, pestos and tarts. The zucchini plant is huge, but the actual zucchini hasn’t made an appearance yet. Hmmmmm. Tiny kale are making headway, but in all honesty, we are a bit puzzled at the nonexistent greens we planted a few months ago. Perhaps we planted too close? The seeds weren’t good? The soil not mineralized properly? It’s all a learning process. We’ve come to learn that gardening is a trial and error process, a mysterious, magical thing that has a true life of it’s own.
I’ve recently joined another community garden near Trinity Bellwoods park. This garden looks like a little professional farm compared to the other two! I share it with a community of young awesome women, who already taught me some essential dos and don’ts of urban gardening. Who knew we could transplant a whole mature chard plant to a more breathable destination? And green beans planted throughout the garden could hydrate the soil with much-appreciated nitrogen? And we can still plant seeds that will bear fall crops, at the beginning of August? Things I didn’t know and now I do. Being in the garden with these ladies is like taking a crash course in gardening 101. It’s community and relationship-building, education and learning, connection to each other and the land, and pure pleasure, all at once.
The Food
Oh the peaches and cherries and apricots and plums and raspberries! We’ve been making stellar fruit tarts to sell at the markets. Our latest is a peach-raspberry combo, with almond and vanilla extract, lemon juice and agave. The crust is simple: almonds, oats and dates. The outcome is incredibly delicious and satisfying.
The vegetables in season are inspiring an array of new treats for the markets. We’ve been making falafals (dehydrated), with fresh local parsley, cucumbers and hemp seeds from Peterborough. Our nut burgers have a vine-ripe tomato spread and Ontario lettuce leaf as the base. The sprouted buckwheat pizzas have in-season toppings like zucchini and basil and tomatoes.
Right now, we’re freezing local peaches, sweet and sour cherries for off-season food preparation. Next week we’ll be canning some peaches, and hopefully soon preserving salsa and tomato sauce, and dehydrating kale and collard chips. It’s so important to savour the local produce, while also preserve for the off-season months when the abundance of fruit and vegetables is few.
We’re selling our dehydrated flatbreads in bundles of 5 for $10. Made with onion, herbs, flaxseed and wheat-free tamari, the flatbreads are gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, and totally delicious on their own, as a sandwich, as crackers, or paired with beer (yes with beer we’re told!). Our macaroons are 3 for $5 in mini recyclable containers. We still encourge our customers to bring their own packaging, but also have our own to supply if not the case.
Our Work
Last weekend was Pedestrian Sunday in Kensington Market, and we had a blast. We love the festive, lively, colourful and eclectic vibe going on, our food fits in quite nicely! We’re at Wychwood every Saturday mornings from 8-12:30, and Sorauren every Monday afternoons from 3-7pm. We’ll be vending strong into the fall and early winter season. We’ll keep posting our where-a-bouts, with new venues popping up for the rest of the summer and into the fall.
Our Reads
We’ve been reading some great books this summer. Some of my favourites include Trauma Farm by Brian Brett, Deep Economy by Bill McKibben, and Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram. The first is a beautifully written memoir of the life of a rural small scale farmer. He talks about everything from the landscape, to breakfasts, to animals, to the history of farming, his political and financial struggles, the weather, the chickens, the soil, and his relationship to his wife and children. The second book is an advocacy for community-building and local economies. One of the chapters is about the author’s year long journey of eating entirely local foods, and living in northeast New England, we can only imagine the sparse days in March when there is only storage crops and pickled beans to eat for dinner. The third is a gorgeous story of how humans connect, and disconnect, with the animate world and earth we inhabit. It’s poetic, descriptive, and imaginative. All three books embody themes of food, argiculture, earth and community.
The Season
For us, mid-summer is like the centre point. The centre of the growing season. We’ve come to savour this time, soak up the incredible early August sunshine, and make sure we go through this month with as much wakefulness and appreciation and determination and playfulness as we can.
A group has a larger wisdom than the people in it. The exchange of ideas and dialogues between people have a greater wisdom and understanding than the individuals involved.
Lisa and I have professional and academic backgrounds in education and teaching. For us, working in and on Earth & City continues to expand our understanding of how food is organized, processed and consumed, especially here in Toronto. We are always learning something new about how our food system works, the ins and outs of farmers’ markets, sustainable agriculture, seasonal recipes, and the politics of food in Toronto. Sharing what we learn with others only increases our own understanding and knowledge of what we already know. It excites us when we find a learning moment in something so mundane or ordinary. We love when we are challenged in our beliefs and we love challenging people to think a bit differently.
Learning moments pop up everywhere. And usually, these moments occur when we least expect it. Learning moments happen when we’re sitting beside a stranger on a park bench, when we’re buying ingredients in Kensington Market, when we’re cheering on from the sidelines at Toronto Pride, when we’re in a business meeting with people we’ve met for the first time, when we’re sitting around the dinner table for a shared meal, when we’re preparing food with friends for a Saturday night feast.
Outside of the formal classroom, education about our food system is happening all the time, and all over the city.
Some of the lessons we’ve learned:
Food scarcity is not about not being able to grow enough food. It’s about inequitable food distribution and unequal accessibility to food. Food equity is a policy and distribution issue.
Food is our most intimate commodity because we internalize it. It literally becomes a part of us. It exposes all relationships across the board.
Community engagement moves people from passive consumers to active citizens. Engagement in food initiatives is a powerful catalyst for democratic learning.
Purple sidewalks in late June and July means look up! A mulberry tree is probably overhead.
City squirrels love munching on baby kale and collard greens grown in pots and containers. Errrrr
Transformative Food Politics is about addressing root causes. We need to take a whole systems approach. That means, coming up with viable localized alternatives to sourcing, preparing and consuming our food. Think: paradigm shift.
The reality of cheap food is the biggest problem in our food system.
There is always a story behind a person, a process, a business, a community, a system. Be curious, be critical, ask questions. Look beyond face value because there are worlds of various perspectives, opinions, and lived experiences that can teach us something. These are where the learning moments occur.
Summertime is a busy time.
The city is bustling with so many events, concerts, festivals, parades, protests, you name it. The parks are full and lively. The streets are swarmed with bikers, and walkers, and drivers, and TTC users. It is the people and neighbourhoods of Toronto that makes this city come alive in the summer.
The earth is bustling in its own way, full and rich and bouyant. The air is hot and thick, the sunshine is bright, the rainpour is heavy.
Summertime in Ontario means so much food from our own soil! The early summer harvest yields beautiful food. We’ve been enjoying collard greens, kale, beets, mixed lettuces, cabbage, turnips, herbs, asparagus, zucchini, strawberries and cherries.
In this hot busy season, Lisa and I find ourselves right in the middle of it all, working within our business, Earth & City.
Our work demands us all over the city, and we try to balance the use of our car with biking, walking and transit. Our work requires us to be critical, efficient, thorough, honest, and innovative.
It also seems to fill all aspects of our lives.
We are so passionate about what we do that the fullness is invigorating and energizing in many ways. From sourcing ingredients, to creating recipes, to responding to emails, to interacting with our customers, everything from 4am wake-up calls to 10pm collard prepping, we love the fullness of it all. But the fullness at times consumes us, and everything becomes the business. We know from talking to other start-up entrepreneurs, that the beginning of a business is like having a baby; it’s all-consuming and needs full attention. During the start of the market season, our lives seemed to be quite imbalanced in a way. All work and little play.
And then I was reminded of a saying by an exquisite woman in my life, who I call mom:
To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.
We love our work so dearly, but sometimes it is a challenge to stay balanced when work is so full and demanding. We are quickly learning how to take care of ourselves, our bodies, our hearts, our state of mind, amidst the fast-paced and ever-engaging work we have during the late spring, summer, and harvest months. And more importantly, we’re learning that it’s ok to be totally immersed in the business, and that losing balance for the love of our work is part of living an over-all balanced life.
We’ve also learned that sometimes we need to step away from the business. That may mean a short bike ride in High Park, or watching a movie (a movie that has nothing to do with food, politics, or the environment!), or a getaway from the concrete and noise of the city to stillness and solitude of the earth landscape. We have taken some time away from work and it restores us, rejuvenates us and renews us.
We know Earth & City will evolve in amazing and unpredictable ways over the summer months, and into the harvest and then the winter. For now, we’re thrilled to be in the heat of market season.
We love the summertime.
In all of its demand of work and freedom of playtime, the summertime offers us the opportunity to do what we love to do.
And we are so grateful.
The West End Food Co-op put on a fundraising party for their soon-to-be store, opening in Parkdale late 2011. The event was held @ The Gladstone last Thursday evening.
A Food Co-operative is a grocery store run as a co-operative. A co-operative is a type of business that is owned and operated equally by a group of individuals who use its services, and/or work there.
Jointly owned and democratically controlled.
There are a number of food co-op stores in the city:
Karma Co-op, The Big Carrot, Ontario Natural Food Co-op, and soon-to-be West-End Food Co-op.
WEFC vision for the food co-op store:
1. Healthy food for people of all income levels and economic means
2. Community kitchen for workshops
3. Café area with stage
4. Educational information; Permaculture/ urban agriculture education; Wheelchair access; Children’s education area; Sprouting centre; Staff training on health and nutrition
5. Close to transit and reasonable prices
6. Local and organic fruits and vegetables
7. Classes in raw food preparation; juice bar; evening cooking/ education classes; unpackaged bulk foods; juice bare
8. Outdoor space and herb garden
9. No plastic – period; buying bulk, reusable containers
10. Access to all: affordability; child friendly; local/ seasonal; visible; fair trade; sustainable; friendly; expandable; bike parking
We are members of The West End Food Co-op, and also vendors at WEFC’s Sorauren Market on Mondays. We are part of this blooming community; excited and thrilled to see it grow and evolve in grand ways. We are confident the soon-to-be store will be a community food hub; a space for gathering, learning, sharing and connecting. Food is at the core of a neighbourhood, and can be used as a beautiful means to build relationships with one another and the food we eat.
Speaking of food we eat, Lisa and I have been belly-full of ripe and juicy Ontario strawberries the last few weeks. And as it shoud be! Strawberries are only out in season for a short time during the last few weeks of June, so we’ve been eating strawberries for breakie, lunch and dinner.
Last week was the cresendo of the strawberry season. This is why:
12 flats supplied to us from FoodShare
288 cups of fresh strawberries from Bizjak Farm
11 women, 1 man
1 big bright community home kitchen
7pm start time
1 beautiful and bustling night of preserving and canning strawberries.
On the Menu:
Honey Lavender Strawberry Jam
Strawberry Rhubarb Jam
Peppercorn and Mint Strawberry Jam
What a gathering! It was a beautiful night, sharing the strawberry season in community with our new and old friends and neighbours. It was also an educational experience, learning the traditional art of canning and preserving. Living in Ontario, it seems like such a treat to celebrate our short growing season with such intentionality and commitment to the food practices that allow us to eat sustainably in the winter months. Opening a jar of Ontario Strawberry Jam in January (a jar we laboured love and hard-work over), will be such a delicious way to eat locally in the off-season. That is, if the jam even makes it to January 
We’re excited to preserve all summer and into the early harvest!
Apricots and cherries
Cucumbers and beans
Tomato sauce and salsa
Yum!
