This blog has moved

I’ve finally done it! I got myself a new domain and moved the blog to a new server. From now on, please follow this blog at http://www.peregrinatrix.com . I’m still tweaking the layout, all the youtube videos need to be fixed since they can now be embedded directly. If you subscribe to this blog, please point your RSS readers to this link. Too bad I can’t transfer the number of views this blog got over the past four years…

Update

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been more than a month since I last posted anything on this blog. It’s been insanely busy at Casa Nostra, which is what it should be in the last few months before finishing a dissertation. I finished the last of my marking at the end of April, beginning of May. Since then I have applied for a post-doc, have got back to working on my dissertation, and have been finishing a paper for the CHA conference in Montreal at the end of the month. I’m also really excited about participating of THATCamp Toronto in a few weeks. The little time I have on weekends, I spend with Alan cycling, walking, enjoying the sunshine and cooking. I’m also planning to move this site to my own host and organizing the space a bit better. Categories and Tags are a total mess so once I move the site, I’ll need to tackle those. This might become a post-dissertation project though. Meanwhile, I’m trying to balance not letting the dissertation take over completely with actually getting it done. And it’s spring in Toronto, temperatures are up, I’m back on my bike, and the farmers’ markets are back in full swing. Life is good. I leave you with this very cool idea:

Slow life for slow food?

I apologize in advance. This post will probably come out a bit on the rambling side. I’m currently reading Slow Food Nation by Carlo Petrini. I was reading the book when I was at Camros last Friday and the cover caught the eye of another customer, a woman who turned to me as I was leaving and half jokingly said “you need a slow life to be able to eat slow food.” All I was able to say then was “not really.” I could also have said, “but you are having slow food right now”. I could have tried to define it better. I could have blurted out what Petrini means by slow food – food that is good (healthful and delicious), clean (produced in sustainable ways), and fair (for both consumers and producers). In other words, rediscovering real food. But the comment got me thinking of a common misconception about food. That cooking and eating better food is somehow restricted to those who have time and money. Depending of the context, this assessment is not completely off the mark. In Food Inc, Robert Kenner follows a working class latino family in the US that has to rely on fast food of the worst quality to be able to make do with the little they have. We follow them into a grocery store where one of the children is denied a request for fruits because they cost too much. They buy soft drinks instead. None of it is done out of ignorance. The father is ill with diabetes, the mother knows that their diet might have been the cause but she feels powerless to change. They feel that fresh fruits and home cooked meals are out of their reach. Sensitive to the plight of families like that, victims of the large subsidies that benefit the fast food industry, some organizations began to call for the creation of urban vegetable gardens in particularly vulnerable neighbourhoods. I’ve recently heard of one such group in California that will plant a vegetable garden in someone’s backyard, providing all the tools and training in the first year for a family to grow their own vegetables. They start out with vegetables that are easy to grow and need little care and eventually the family becomes responsible for the garden.

But although there are many issues regarding access of real food in North America and increasingly in other parts of the industrialized world, most of the people I hear making the argument that they have neither time nor money to be able to eat better are middle class, often young professionals. People like the woman at Camros. And before I go on a rant on how it isn’t true, that I can do it on my student income, and that I have no time either, and that most of the meals I make are made from scratch in less the half an hour, I just wanted to reflect on what statements such as “you need a slow life to eat slow food” can tell us about how far we have come from our roots.

One of the saddest effects of the popularization of fast food and the aggressive marketing of industrialized food as more convenient is how quickly the average person has lost touch with real food – i.e. the whole ingredients that make any food culture – but also the basic skills to transform those whole ingredients into a meal. Despite the recent success of cooking shows, making a meal from scratch is now considered a feat reserved to particularly talented individuals. That’s sad. Particularly when cooking simple meals can be a lifesaver, particularly among those who have to eat on a budget. Yes, because bulk food such as rice, beans, cornmeal, seasonal fruits and vegetables as well as other grains and legumes, are not the staples around the world for no reason – no only are they healthful but also cheap. Processed food is “value-added food”, i.e. not as cheap as it may seem. For the price of a McDonald’s meal – and also the time that it would take us to walk out, order, sit, and eat the meal – I can make enough rice with lentils to feed Alan and I for at least 2 meals, possibly more. That’s why I find programs like The Edible Schoolyard so important. It teaches kids life-saving skills. Being able to not only grow your own food if need be but also how to use simple ingredients to feed yourself is a crucial skill. It will mean that they won’t have to choose food that they know is making their families sick just because they can’t see another option.

On the relationship between hunger & obesity, see this article from the NYT from today, March 15th.

Discovering new cafes

I love spending time in cafes. There’s something about the smell of roasted beans and the hustle and bustle of a good cafe that makes me feel at home. Every saturday Alan and I go to either Louie’s at Kensington Market or Manic Coffee. We never fail to meet interesting people in both places and love it they although we only go there once a week, the staff knows what we like and we know them by name. Although I enjoy going back to my favourite places, I also particularly enjoy discovering new places so every once in a while we’ll check out a new cafe. Yesterday we ended up at Te Aro, a new place in Leslieville, at the recommendation of Thiago, the Brazilian barista that used to work at La Merceria (Sam James, one of the most famous baristas in Toronto told us to go check out Thiago’s work at La Merceria) and who now is learning roasting at Te Aro. If you are around Leslieville, you should definitely check it out! Click on the picture below to see a slideshow. And in addition to the official site linked above, check out Te Aro’s own blog.

Te Aro (5)

New toy

For some reason, I’ve wanted to have a Hasselblad for quite some time. Made by Victor Hasselblad in Sweden, the 500C was introduced in 1957 and redesigned in 1970 as the 500C/M. It’s a medium format SLR and the camera of choice for many professional studio photographers. It is also a modular camera – not only you can remove the lens but also the back, where the film goes as well as a few other parts. It’s a beautiful machine, know for its quality and reliability and I’m today the proud owner of my own Hasselblad 500C/M with an 80mm f2.8 Planar lens. Alan went out to buy some film and came home with this nice surprise.

New Toy