{"id":175,"date":"2011-10-25T16:25:45","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T23:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sdc-sage-editing.com\/sdc-sagewit\/?p=175"},"modified":"2011-10-25T16:25:45","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T23:25:45","slug":"deconstructing-dinner-world-food-day-dinner-challenge-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sdc-sage-editing.com\/sdc-sagewit\/?p=175","title":{"rendered":"Deconstructing Dinner: World Food Day Dinner Challenge, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"World<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week when I wrote about Oxfam\u2019s GROW week and the World Food Day Challenge I signed up for, I promised I would write about the event. Here\u2019s the somewhat belated post-dinner analysis.\u00a0 I had decided to take the challenge while I was visiting friends in northern California. I confess that with the abundance of produce that is grown locally (well, within 100 miles or just over 160 kilometres), I thought the biggest challenge was going to be making a decision about what to buy in the face of such local abundance.\u00a0 I was soon freed of such illusory thinking when my friend asked how we should define \u201clocal\u201d.\u00a0 After some discussion, we decided on a radius of about 100 miles.<\/p>\n

Grain Restrictions<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Setting the limit at about 100 miles meant that, very strictly speaking, not only was wheat outside the limit, rice\u2014even California grown rice\u2014was also just outside the limit.\u00a0 Oops! As it happened, my friend did have some California brown rice on hand; however<\/em>, neither of us are huge fans of brown rice. I didn\u2019t want to risk having food go to waste since neither of us was likely to finish the rice before I returned to Vancouver, and I wasn\u2019t sure whether our two dinner guests were big fans of brown rice. So, with a sigh, I relented and we opted for some locally made onion kulchas (onion stuffed naan bread) in which the only non-local ingredient was likely to be the wheat.\u00a0 Well, at least I had much better luck with my ingredients for a starter salad and a fruit salad.<\/p>\n

You Can\u2019t \u201cBeet\u201d a Great Salad<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m happy to report that I did succeed in creating a beautiful salad (if I do say so myself) entirely from local ingredients\u2014and featured in the photo for this blog post. The \u201cChallenge Salad\u201d consisted of roasted golden beets, beet greens, lightly steamed kohlrabi, one yellow and one deep red heirloom tomato, a green apple, and some lemon juice.\u00a0 I also made a simple fruit salad with apple, strawberry, and melon pieces, and served the fruit salad with plain yoghurt from a local dairy.<\/p>\n

Our vegetarian entree was made primarily from local ingredients. My friend roasted a yam, a sweet potato, and some cauliflower (sans oil as we hadn\u2019t thought to get any locally produced olive oil), and from there transformed the veggies into a variation of aloo gobi (usually made with white potatoes and cauliflower). \u00a0He saut\u00e9ed some locally grown onions and tomatoes, added the spices (cumin, coriander, turmeric, salt, and a pinch of garam masala) and then added in the roasted veggies. All of the veggies were locally grown, but we hit that 100 mile challenge again when it came to the seasonings for the aloo gobi. Why? Because…<\/p>\n

…Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice Don\u2019t Grow in California<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Much as I might wish otherwise, turmeric, coriander and cumin don\u2019t grow in California\u2014neither, unfortunately, do sugar beets (or sugar cane) or cardamom. Consequently, the spices in the aloo gobi weren\u2019t local and neither were two of the ingredients in our other dessert on offer (carrot halwa). In case you\u2019re not familiar with it, carrot halwa is a very thick carrot \u201cpudding\u201d made from carrots, melted butter, whole milk, sugar, cardamom and nuts. It\u2019s a very time consuming dessert to make at home, so we splurged on this item as a special treat. (A couple of the ingredients were not local, but at least we supported the local economy!)<\/p>\n

In the Final Analysis<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I had hoped to make all of the meal entirely from local ingredients, but it didn\u2019t quite unfold that way for one reason or another.\u00a0 After calculating the percent of local ingredients in each dish and averaging them out over the entire meal, my friend and I succeeded in creating a meal that was comprised of roughly 83% local ingredients. Because I still want to see if I can succeed in creating a meal entirely<\/em><\/strong> from local food, I\u2019m going to challenge myself again, here in Vancouver. I\u2019m guessing that root vegetables and tubers might feature prominently in my next food challenge dinner.<\/p>\n

If the challenge was intended to get people thinking about the proportion of our food that is locally produced or grown, and how much we take for granted in terms of our ready access to non-local food, the challenge succeeded as far as I\u2019m concerned. I\u2019m betting that most of our eating habits would change quite drastically if, for some reason, we only had access to food that was grown within 100 miles or 160 kilometres of where we live.<\/p>\n

In a Radio Ecoshock talk with the authors of The 100-Mile Diet<\/em><\/a>, taped November 2010 (You can find the transcript here<\/a>), the point was raised that most cities would go into starvation mode within a week if the food system\u2019s infrastructure\u2014reliant as it is on oil, long distance transport, and roads\u2014broke down or collapsed.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t say much about the resilience and sustainability of our global food system if all it takes is the collapse of one two dominoes in the infrastructure to trigger massive food insecurity in cities in developed nations.<\/p>\n

It says even less about our food system that in 2005, 50% of the hungry people in the world were families who live on small scale farms<\/em><\/strong>. There is really something wrong with our food system when people who live on farms and are surrounded by food are going hungry! (See the Oxfam infographics here<\/a>, for more information about the food system.) The numbers are telling: Even more telling are the first person narratives of individuals coping with hunger and rising food prices. Click here<\/a> if you want to put a human face and voice to the numbers.<\/p>\n

Talking about Food<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Too often, the injustices in our food system\u2014including many of the reasons why we are seeing such volatile food prices and why nearly a billion people are going hungry even though there is in fact enough food to feed everyone on the planet\u2014have been left unspoken or were shrugged off. It looks as though there is a positive shift, though, and more people are beginning to speak out against the unfair and unsustainable practices that seem to drive the system. David Suzuki<\/a>, a well known Canadian environmentalist, touched on the food system when he spoke at Occupy Vancouver last weekend. A recent article in the online version of Mother Jones<\/a> also urged foodies to talk about food policies at the Occupy movements around the world.<\/p>\n

We all need to keep talking about the food system and the human factors that contribute to injustices and hunger\u2014and speak out against them. We need to ensure that cities and nations alike are food secure and individuals are not pushed into poverty through astronomical food prices.\u00a0 World Food Day may only be one day per year, but the compelling need to grow a new food system that works for everyone, not just the large agribusiness firms, is ongoing.\u00a0 So, what can you do to make a difference?<\/p>\n