I met a photographer selling calendars in the Yaletown Choices yesterday, and we had a great chat. I am now the proud owner of one of his calendars promoting Farm Folk/City Folk, with beautiful lush shots of local produce, and [the best part for a glutton like myself] recipes for local, seasonal items for each month. That’s RAD.
Eat to live, live to eat.
I’m so pleased, for primarily selfish reasons, that there are so many local and organic food producers out there raising awareness of these magnificent foodstuffs. Selfish because I like to eat them; selfish because they are beautiful. I know there have been [what were intended to be] scathing indictments of the whole organic food trend but I don’t see how you can get down on local organic food; it’s like every radish and white cucumber is a little prayer of thanks. “Wow, we really ARE meant to live as humans and enjoy ourselves and drum our fingers on our swollen arugula-pesto filled tummies! Thanks Comox Valley! Thanks Okanagan! Thanks Fraser Valley and UBC Endowment Gardens!”
One Wednesday this summer Christine and I had an excellent brunch at Seb’s and then ended up wandering around East Van [do NOT try this at home, unless, uh, you live in East Van in which case this is home]. We dawdled through the Broadway/Fraser region until we were inexorably drawn to the community garden there [since when you're dawdling you tend to go downhill]. We were so clearly enamoured with the place that a plot-owner had mercy on us and saddled us with some infant-sized zucchini, some kale [my favourite!], and various herbs. I used my bounty to make a simple summer linguine that night by wilting the kale and tossing it with garlic and some heirloom yellow cherry tomatoes that we grow on our deck. The romance of eating foods grown so close to our own door was indescribable, and massive amounts were consumed by both M and I, who were stoked [albeit sluggish] thereafter.
C went home to drop off her ginormous zucchini on her counter, and I took her class that afternoon; later I found out her husband had sent her the following text message:
do we have any zucchini?
I was prepared to believe in the synchronicity of the universe, that he had wanted zucchini and was therefore given it, but he was just being funny due to the MASSIVE vegetable he’d found on his counter. It’s hard not to laugh about giant zucchini. They’re just absurd and great.
Brian, the photographer, spoke of Tibet and India as being his “soul home” which I thought was very beautiful and also made me kind of sad. It’s hard to not live in your soul home although I know it happens all the time. His vision of his soul home and of these gorgeous gardens are his offering, and they are as abundant as the kale and the fennel pictured in the calendar. I can almost taste the many great dinners that will come from this…hm, I’m kind of hungry all of a sudden…