2010: Trending to Simple and Sustainable?

The most recent issue of Marketing magazine forecast the top five trends in food for 2010. I think the list is really interesting because it shows a shift in mainstream culture in relationship with food. Here's a summary:

1) Butcher rules: Expect a renewed interest in local meat and local butchers and people increasingly want to know where their food is coming from.

2) Fair Trade: Interest in fair trade food continues to rise despite a downward trend in organic foods.

3) Relaxation foods: Calming after-dinner digestifs and products to help people unwind will start replacing energy drinks.

4) Sense of simplicity: The economic downtown is creating nostalgia for simpler times and food, which is driving an interest in natural foods.

5) Serving nostalgia: Chefs and restaurants are returning to simpler, pure ingredients.

So what do you think: Are these trends that we'll see in the coming year?

Source: Rebecca Harris. Pass the Locally Sourced Bacon. Marketing Magazine (Rogers Media). January 18, 2010.

Top Five in Five #1: Recipe Books

With only five weeks left until Christmas and other holiday gift giving days, I thought it was time to offer up some gift suggestions for the amateurs chefs, entertainers and foodies on our lists.

Over the next five weeks, I plan to offer a weekly post with five ideas along a specific theme. To kick-off my new series, here are my top five recipe book gift ideas. In the spirit of buying local, if one of these books looks interesting, please consider buying it from an independent book-seller (like Appetite for Books in Montreal) close to home before ordering it on-line.

1. Farmers in Chef Hats by Linda Arsenault is a bilingual book featuring recipes and products from Île d’Orléans near Quebec City, where most of the farms are still family run. This book won the Gourmand World Cookbook for best local cookery book in 2007, and is a wonderful showcase for Quebec local foods.
   
2. Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm by slow-food pioneer Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann is a stunning collection of recipes and articles organized by season. Many of the recipes come from the Ancaster Old Mill restaurant near Toronto, where Crump is executive chef and Schormann is the pastry chef. This book is equally at home on the cofee table as it is on the cookbook shelf.
   
3. Along a similar vein, Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables by Farmer John Peterson and Angelic Organics, is also divided by season, but then it is also divided by vegetable. The goal here is to help folks cook with the produce from their CSA (or farm-share) baskets. Although Angelic Organics is near Chicago, almost all of the veggies have appeared in my local CSA basket. The book is also peppered with anecdotes and offers insight into biodynamic farming.
   
4. In Fish, UK's Michelin-starred restauranteur and 'green chippie' pioneer Tom Aikens teaches us how to cook-up great seafood while keeping our impact on the oceans to a minimum. It contains over 200 recipes, as well as cooking and buying tips. Since this is a British book, a drawback for cooks on this side of the pond is that some species common to and sustainable in the U.K., may not be over here. It's nothing that a local seafood guide can't overcome though.
   
5. Finally, for the baker or health-conscious foodie on your list, consider the Whole Grain Baking book by the folk at the King Arthur Flour company. Based in Vermont, King Arthur Flour is 'America's oldest flour company." It is also an employee-owned company that eschews GMO wheat and advocates sustainability.

Do you have a gift suggestion or did I miss one of your favourite books? Drop me a comment or a tweet and let me know!

Asking the Uncomfortable Questions

I had to chuckle when I read the following from a recent article in the Denver Post:

After spending time on Arapaho Ranch, I believe I can reconcile my carnivorous ways with that which comes before I take my first bite: the animal's slaughter.

What meat do I eat now? Meat from animals that were raised humanely. I guess that makes me a "humane-itarian."

This demands research on my part. It asks more of my wallet, which means I'll eat less meat. It turns restaurant-dining, for the most part, into an adventure in vegetarianism. It could make for uncomfortable dinner parties ("Was this chicken raised humanely? You don't know? Oh, OK. I'll just have the carrots.").

You see, substitute 'humanely' for 'ethically' and that's me. And I do ask the uncomfortable questions at dinner parties and restaurants. (I'm very grateful that I have friends who are thick-skinned.) And I will eat the carrot sticks if the meat isn't reasonably local and raised naturally. That's how I do my activism. I won't make a big deal out if it, and I try to be reasonably discrete, but I will ask the questions. By doing this, I both stick to my principles and raise awareness among the people I'm in contact with. Sure, asking the question may feel uncomfortable, but the rewards are great. Afterwards, almost always someone at the table or party will ask me questions. Then a whole discussion gets going. What an opportunity!

I call this ripple activism. Like that old 1970s hair advert: if I tell two friends and they tell two friends and so on and so on and so on... It ripples out. Someone else recently suggested I call it trust activism or relationship activism. People are more inclined to believe in a cause or take action in it when they hear about it from someone they know.

So go on. I challenge you: Ask the uncomfortable questions.

A Frugal Kitchen

A recent post on the travel blog Almost Fearless got me thinking again about frugality in the kitchen and the importance of a well-stocked pantry. These days many people rely on frozen family meals or packaged prepared ingredients. Yet with a few key ingredients always on hand in the pantry or freezer, I find I can create tasty, nutritious meals from scratch in about the same length of time that it would take to get a frozen pizza or lasagna to the table.

So what are my staples? Beyond fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables, my pantry relies heavily on dried beans and lentils, frozen soups and vegetables, canned/jarred sauces, rice, couscous, bulgar, pasta and potatoes. I always have eggs, cheese and yogurt in the fridge, as well as quickly-defrostable sustainable fish (usually salmon, tuna, mackerel, black cod, or scallops ) in the freezer. Baking supplies, like flour, are also always on hand.

Now, I must confess that I do have a couple of commercially-prepared food addictions. Perhaps it's the Brit in me, but I am totally addicted to Patak's curry pastes. They're easy to use, good quality, and spice up any meal in a matter of minutes. I also have a couple of canned curries that I regularly keep in my pantry. Canned beans and chickpeas are also present as practical back-ups to the dried variety, although I usually have soaked beans in the freezer.

So using these ingredients, what can I whip up in under 20 minutes? Here are a few suggestions for quick hot meals:

• Hearty vegetable and cheese fritatta
• Pasta and sauce
• Soup and scones
• Blackened salmon, rice and steamed veggies
• Stir-fry with farmed scallops
• Moroccan chick-pea soup
• Curried red lentil soup served with yogurt
• Quinoa chili

With a little bit of planning, like soaking beans or lentils, or leaving dough to rise:

• Chickpea curry and Naan-style bread
• Lentils and rice
• Cuban black beans
• Homemade pizza

Most of these things are quick and affordable to make, even with organic ingredients. If you're making and freezing (or canning) your own soups and sauces using local vegetable when in season, then a good portion of the meals can be local too.

Certification for Local Products?

Wow. Ottawa, you inspire me. Not only do you have fabulous, reasonably-priced, local-food restaurants, but I just found out about your 'certified local' program. This is how the Ottawa-based food blog, FoodiePrints, describes it:

In Ottawa, we have several farmer's markets whose vendors proudly sport Savour Ottawa posters (http://www.savourottawa.ca/). These posters denote that the producer or retailer has been certified via an audit by a third-party organization to produce local products or sell goods that are made from local products. Further, many of the locally-owned restaurants have already diversified their supply chains, pairing themselves with local farms. Some have even taken to growing their on produce in personal gardens. Many have even partnered with our local sustainable fin-fish and shell-fish supply.

What a fabulous idea! Wouldn't it be great if Montreal had something similar? The closest we get is the "Aliments de Quebec" logo that I'm noticing in supermarkets these days. While it is a valuable initiative, Quebec is a pretty big place. The label also isn't applicable to restaurants, which doesn't help me to choose establishments that are promoting local products and economies. I'd love to see the label expanded to include the tourism region of the producer (i.e., Aliments de Quebec - Montéregie) and a poster program for our local restaurants.

Local Food in the News

Here is a quick round-up of some news items about local or seasonal foods that I came across this week in blogs and mainstream media. Not all of the articles are new, but they did catch my attention.

The Conference Regionale des Elus de Montreal recently announced an initiative to bring more organic food into Montreal. Over $390,000 will be invested in the program over the next three years, whose main objective is to encourage the creation of new businesses in the organic food sector. The provincial government is also a partner in the project. Read the press release (in french) here.

Earlier this month, five southwestern Ontario grocery stores went independent, ending their franchise relationship with Sobeys. In an interview with CBC, the owner of one the stores said that his customers were asking for locally-produced food but Sobeys' corporate policies prevented him from buying local products. Read the full story here.

An article in the Montreal Gazette a couple of months ago talks about the artificial economy created by Quebec's Farm Income Stabilization Insurance program, including the frustration of local farmers who want to buy farmland to supply the increasing demand for local vegetable crops but can not because banks prefer to lend money to larger, more financially stable companies who use the land to supply feed for livestock. It's an interesting read. You can find it here.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to The Mindful Table.

This blog was born out of my own desire to feed my passion for food sustainably, and my frustration at not easily being able to find shops and resources to support my choices. This, despite living in the Montreal-area since I was a child, and being active in vegetarian and food activism since the 1990s.

These days, I no longer consider myself a vegetarian. A couple of years ago I started eating sustainably-raised meat supplied by local farms, as well as fish and seafood from sustainable fisheries. However finding these food choices in Montreal takes a bit of detective work. This surprised me immensely given the size of this city and our collective passion for food (not to mention our city's reputation for activism!). This blog is to help me record my sustainable discoveries, and for me to share them with you.

A few notes: For me, sustainable food isn't restricted to organic and local. Although these are practices I strongly support, I believe the labels themselves are only one part of a greater equation. For example, should I buy organic apples from BC or conventionally farmed apples from a local, family-run farm? Similarly, while I'm thrilled by the recent surge in popularity and availability of fair trade products, fair trade is also only a label. At some point, I'm sure I'll write more about my thoughts on these and similar topics.

Finally, sustainable dining goes beyond the food on my plate. It includes the plate and all that goes into getting the food onto that plate. Cookware, tableware, entertaining, backyard gardening, dining in, dining out, and even recipes, all of these will have a place on this blog.