Welcome to our column on sustainable eating! We (Erin and Nikko) are two Regina-based friends and neighbours who work and play hard to incorporate sustainable food practices into our everyday lives. The point of this column is to share with you the food adventures, resources and challenges of trying to eat sustainably in a part of the world that’s frozen solid for at least half the year.
But first things are first: so what, hungry reader, do we mean by sustainable eating?
Eating sustainably is more than buying organic from a large grocery chain or even sourcing a free-range chicken from the local farmer’s market. It’s about developing an understanding of, and appreciation for, the people who grow our food, how it’s grown, and its journey from field to table. It’s about understanding which foods actually grow in the part of the world we live in, the processes that are involved with growing food here, the times of the year when it is reasonable to expect to eat certain things, and the real costs (whether human, financial or environmental) of bringing food to our families. It’s also about reclaiming the joy of community that’s made possible when food is consciously grown, cooked and eaten together.
Case in point: Thanksgiving 2008. A group of friends gathered around Erin’s dining room table to enjoy a feast of roasted chicken from Hudson Bay, SK farmer Keith Neu, Erin-grown ketchup and oven fries, beets dug from the soil of Nikko’s half-frozen garden down the block, Watson-grown whole oat stuffing with Erin-grown kale and carrots, organic Alberta wine and wild handpicked Qu’Appelle Valley Saskatoon crisp with Yorkton honey. Oh, and a resultant healthy dollop of deep gratitude for the food and people at the table, extra specially intensified by understanding the extent to which so many individuals and families (whether we knew them personally or not) toiled to make our meal possible. This direct connection to the food we were eating made it a truly thankful Thanksgiving.
In addition to having reaped the benefits of a warm, wet summer in our own backyard gardens and in the community garden across the road, part of what made this most abundant of harvests possible was our membership in Saskatchewan’s first (and to date only) certified organic Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project. In the spring of 2008, both our households invested in the production of Etomami Community Organic Farm (ECOFarm), run by farmer Keith Neu and family. In the CSA model, members invest in a share of the farm’s total production for the year. In a good year, you get lots of food delivered to your city (in this case Regina or Saskatoon) by the farmer himself. If it’s a bad year, you get what does grow, grumble about what doesn’t, lose money alongside your farmer, and actually understand (almost as though you grew the food yourself) why we can’t take our food supply for granted.
In our case, Farmer Keith supplements his personal appearances with regular e-mail updates between delivery days. From the mundane to the dramatic, he keeps us abreast of all the latest farm events, from a calf that died of dehydration, to the amounts of rain, to the price adjustments necessary for him to break even. Even though we’re still hundreds of kilometers away in our urban microclimate, we become increasingly aware that it’s in our best interest to be concerned, alongside Keith, about whether or not our investment will result in enough food to eat.
If this seems more complicated than expecting your grocer to produce perky tomatoes in the middle of February, it is – and there’s no getting around that! It involves paying what the food actually costs to grow, which is sometimes more than the subsidized prices of the industrial food system. It involves limiting consumption of certain foods at certain times of year when they’re out of season, or giving them up altogether. And it involves taking the time to strategically manage the abundance of the harvest season by preserving foods for use in the cold months.
What it amounts to, simply, is more involvement in the food we put in our bodies. As you become more directly connected to your food’s production, we’re willing to bet that you’ll also begin to experience a greater feeling of connectedness to your community and the planet. No, really.
Not only that, but with a bit of planning and creativity you too can eat like a queen (or king, or some non-hierarchical gender-neutral non-colonizing version of royalty), even in the dead of winter. We promise! For every time we grumble about having to arrange a Saturday afternoon around Farmer Keith’s food-delivery schedule, we celebrate two times that we can avoid the grocery chain altogether because there’s enough organic food in the fridge or freezer already. For every time a news story breaks about the latest listeria outbreak, we get to relax tenfold in knowing our meat producer is only a phone call away, and that every detail of how our meat is grown can be explained or even demonstrated to us firsthand. For every time we covet flawless fresh tomatoes in the middle of winter, we revel in the canned ones that were lovingly grown for us in the summer. And for every time we miss a fresh salad in March, we create a wonderful seasonal recipe in its stead and look forward to how incredible the lettuce will taste in June.
If we haven’t won you over to the cause/cult of sustainable food yet, that’s OK. We’ll be here every six weeks with delicious locally sourced recipes, nutritional information, gardening tips, profiles of Saskatchewan producers, and demystifications of food issues in an effort to preach the Good Food Box word from atop our friendly neighbourhood organically pastured high horse! ‘Til then, don’t forget that potatoes are a Saskatchewanian’s friend.
With love, SweetCore Urban Farmers Erin & Nikko
Vegetable Pancakes (Serves 2)
4 eggs
about 3 cups grated raw vegetables (e.g., potato, carrot, beet, frozen greens (e.g., chard, spinach, peas, etc.))
1 medium onion (chopped fine)
crushed garlic (to taste)
dill (to taste)
butter
salt (to taste)
Sauté onions and garlic in butter until the kitchen smells divine. Add the dill if you like dill. Add slower cooking veg (like potatoes and carrots), followed by the remaining veg. Cook veg on medium heat until half-cooked. Combine eggs and salt in a mixing bowl. Add half-cooked vegetables to egg mixture and gaily slosh about until well mixed. Re-butter the pan and scoop medium-sized pancakes into pan, patting them down to 3/4”-1” thick. Fry on medium until brown on bottom and holding together. Flip, cover and cook until done.
Ketchup (Serves 2-3)
About 2 cups canned tomatoes (winter) or fresh tomatoes (summer)
1 small onion, grated
3-5 tbsp vinegar
about 2 tbsp honey (add gradually at end to taste)
salt (to taste)
Cook tomatoes and vinegar in a saucepan at low heat. Reduce the mixture until desired ketchup consistency is achieved (i.e. cook it ‘til it looks like ketchup – if you’re trying to trick your kids, put it in a blender). Remove from heat. Add first tablespoon of honey, stir and taste. Add additional honey until perfectly sweet. Add salt to taste. Serve with pancakes or other delights. Carnivores, omnivores and flexitarians may opt to serve with Saskatchewan bacon (source with your local butcher).
Where to find locally produced ingredients
Keith Neu’s ECOFarm
ECOFarm is located along the beautiful Etomami River in Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan. Keith Neu’s family farm produces certified organic garden produce (fresh, frozen and canned), herbs, beef, chickens, eggs, flour, flax and pickles throughout the year. In 2009-2010, Keith hopes to feed 100 families in Regina and Saskatoon through his Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project. CSA members invest in the farm total annual production, and receive food deliveries twice per month during the growing season and once per month for the rest of the year. 2009/2010 prices: $60/month (for 12 months) for 1/2 box (feeds 1-3 people, depending on your lifestyle) or $120/month (for 12 months) for a full box (good for families or groups that want to share). For more information, contact Keith Neu at (306) 865-2103 or km.neu@sasktel.net.