Hemp Seed Butter, Green Onion, and Garlic Dip: It IS easy being green ;)

April is always a busy time for me. I have projects to mark. Exams to concoct. Panicky statistics students to soothe. Exams to mark.

And this year there's the garden :)

The weather earlier this week was up to 15 degrees celsius. So out came the shovel. After about 1/2 an hour I waffled. This was challenging me physically and I feared slinking back into overwhelming helplessness. I went back to the safety of my kitchen and took a long drink of water. I contemplated the realism of what I was undertaking. Between the last slurp of my water and my short walk back to my abandoned shovel something else was planted....my own inner resolve to just try my best. I parcelled out my garden in my head and asked myself if I could just dig a small enough patch for the onion and garlic bulbs. Some of the bulbs were from the remnants of my garden of 2 years ago and some from my fridge - purchased last year but never planted -they will keep for two years I was told when I purchased them.

In about 4 hours work (2 hours each day it was warm) I managed to turn over and weed about 1/5 of my small 'farm' in my backyard. The yard was completely neglected last year so there is a lot of clearing out of old weeds and roots.

And here are a few of my babies in their freshly turned earth :)

All of this planting of onions had me hankering for a taste of 'fresh' spring onions. So I headed out to the local grocery store and got me some. This dip is very simple and absolutely delicious with the cucumbers, organic baby spinach and organic blue corn chips I had with it.

I can't wait to make it with REALLY fresh and completely local spring onions ;) Perhaps those cucumbers and spinach seeds will make it out there too. The perfect locavore-ish lunch!

Hemp Seed Butter, Green Onion, and Garlic Dip
The ingredients are given per serving. Adjust accordingly - you can make extra and keep it in the fridge.
2 - 3 Tbsp hemp nut butter $22.00/kg MB ManitobaHarvest
1 minced clove organic garlic $11.15/kg ON Karma
1 finely chopped spring onion, green part only $0.59/bunch USA local grocery store
Hot chili pepper/cayenne to taste
Sea salt to taste $1.06/kg ? Karma
splash of organic cider vinegar (Filsinger's ) $2.90/L ON Karma

Frankenfood: Organic spray pancake batter

In the last week I've discovered twitter.

Actually, truth be told, in the last week I made a point to learn a bit about twitter....micro-blogging being the new wave and all.

One of the really neat things about twitter....one that makes facebook like, uh, so yesterday....is the ability to receive live feeds about any topic you choose.

So yesterday I plugged in 'track organic' into my gtalk twitter feed and sat in amazement as the live tweets rolled in (and still are....organic is a hot topic on twitter...and elsewhere).

This was a twitter I received on the organic track tonight:

The world has officially ended. You can get spray organic pancake batter. Like spray cheese. Except it's pancakes. And organic. wtf?via this twitter user who is someone I do not know or follow on Twitter

Curious comment isn't it? Don't you want to know more?

Well I did, so I highlighted 'spray organic pancake batter', right-clicked, and searched.

Here was the first hit (just hover your mouse to see their oh-so-catchy name....or click through to see their 'splashy' page.....omfg).

Hey it must be good for you if it's organic right? The name alone should send you running and screaming. Or blasting out some real food from your kitchen :)

Has the world officially ended?

The word organic is a bit of a joke if it can be plopped into a spray can(!) that has been inserted with 'food'. Organic food no less. I wonder what kind of inert gases blast this stuff out. Oops. I should say organic inert gases.

And please remember that pancake mix is something that could be made with just a few raw ingredients and a hand mixer in about 10 minutes.

As my friend Doug used to say...in the 1990s...."You know, you just wait and see, just one of these days they just might get a man on the moon."

And for those that are not aware of this 'line'.....it is a spoof from the conspiracy theory that claims that man landing on the moon was in fact orchestrated by the new medium of television in the 1960s....that the whole moon landing occurred in a TV studio rather than on the moon (wiki has a fascinating entry on this).

Indeed Doug, indeed.

Maybe they'll take some of the organic pancake spray up there with em too eh?

I don't know about you but I think that this link has made my twitter explorations worthy for sure.

To find out that another [random] human being on this planet regards organic spray pancake batter as much of a perversion as I do is somewhat comforting.

The natural laws of food have been disregarded for near a century now - or more?

Perhaps this is what happened to the people of Teotihuacán. We're more certain about the people on Easter Island.

The politics of food and 2006 Stats Canada Census data for Toronto

The Employment Equity Act defines visible minorities as 'persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.' data source

Toronto has reached a new era of multi-culturalism.

Us Torontonians are living in a city with no clear majority of race, colour, or creed.

This is a unique time and place to live on this globe.

Why post this on a food blog?

As it turns out, the politics of food in the city has become a hot topic. I attended a forum on this exact topic in the fall (audio download available here).

An eloquent farmer (wearing a bright "Farmers Feed Cities" button) got up during the question and answer period and asked us all to consider why G8 countries obey very strict laws regarding importing cheaper goods into developing countries that can't grow or produce the same goods as cheaply as wealthy developed nations YET our very own country allows cheap imported food to undercut locally grown food at alarming and growing levels (most of Toronto's food is imported from outside of province and outside of the country - this has changed drastically in the last 20 years). He mentioned strawberries from California as the perfect example.

Part of the wide scale change in Toronto's food markets has come about because of what I have displayed above using today's freshly released 2006 census data and google's funky new chart creator.

A city of immigrants wants a taste of their homeland and they have every right to demand it from the market. But what we don't have at the moment is the ability for Ontario to provide the raw food for the myriad of diets that the city of Toronto currently has. Rice is just one small example of a food that is in huge demand in our city yet Ontario is not able to grow this staple.

There are foods that Ontario could grow but Canada does not provide immigrants with support to choose farming in their new land. Our immigrant approval process actively discourages applications from foreign farmers.

So we have white Caucasians choosing what to grow in what little farmland is to be had around Toronto (and Ontario) so the dietary needs of most new immigrants can not be supplied with locally grown food.

This imbalance has resulted in a form of food terrorism. Immigrants are forced to buy imported goods in various markets booming around the city. Any change or threat to this food supply will lead to a large scale disaster of a gastric nature.

And considering that most of us Torontonians (visible minority or not) consume foreign grown food daily...this food terrorism situation applies to us all.

That is why I belong to a food co-op. Increasing and maintaining active alliances with local farmers is something I hope to formalize at the co-op during my term on our board of directors. Food security is a real issue. For all of us. Everywhere.