grocery store heart health meltdowns

I just finished a boat load of school research and now I am treating myself to talking about my food adventures..ooh self-indulgence! with a little bit of seriousness too.

..this might be long.

so it is indeed a reality that heart disease and heart attacks plague my mom's side of the family.
my nan is the latest victim. thankfully and luckily she will be okay, and in the end, it was minor business compared to the last heart-related incident in the family.

my friend and resident palm reader rachelle, tells me I have an abnormally long life line. but I can't help question it coming from a family with such health history.


(meet rachelle, palm reader extrodinaire to the top left. also meet carmen, art student spectacular in the top middle, faith the rad biologist, and chanel, the super-sculptor-photographer)

anywho, the documentary "food as medicine" (how jerry brunettie cured himself of terminal cancer) tells me that a diet full of fruits, veggies, certain grains, and yes-even animal fats protects us from/aids in getting rid of cancer-the other brutal disease to plague BOTH sides of my family.

this book http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php tells me to eat food, mostly plants, not too much. which I already do and have been for some 9 years now. but it also tells me that whole foods like fish are heart healthy. more specifically the omega 3's. and it also tells me the importance of whole foods that are in tact- the way nature intended them to be.


this concept http://100milediet.org tells me to eat locally (by the way I fully support and believe in this idea/movement)

this market http://www.halifaxfarmersmarket.com is part of my life routine (faithfully, I wake up early every saturday morning to get my groceries from local farmers)

so here I am, considering all of these things.
more specifically, in the last couple of days, I've been thinking about my nan and the rest of the family, and how I am probably not getting enough essential fatty acids. how even though I eat healthy and eat local and organic as much as I can, there is more I can do.

a huge change happened yesterday. I opened that book and the first thing I read (after just getting off the phone with mom, about nan's heart) was about omega 3's and the heart.

so I went to the grocery store to pick up some fruits and veggies and maybe see about finding food rich in omega 3, because my omega 6 intake, like the rest of us westerners, is probably too high.

I was presented with very few options.

-astronomically priced algae oil supplement (a source for vegans) from somewhere in the united states.

-a "local" omega 3 product in capsule form (but with some quick research I found that though it's packaged and processed here, the seeds it comes from is sourced out of the country)

-fish oil of unknown sources marketed by umbrella companies of multi-nationals

those last two contained various other ingredients that I was not sure of.

and then I passed by the fish department where I overheard the fish fella talking about how the it was fresh and local.

I know fish is a whole food containing long chain omega 3 (if it's not long chain our bodies have to do this whole "hey I'm gonna convert you to long chain" process that can sometimes be inefficient) but never considered consuming it because hey-I'm a vegetarian veteran.

so I circled 'round the store weighing all of my options. I went back to the fish man with a pile of questions. number one on the list, how safe is fish? can I get mercury poisoning?

and then I questioned myself. how safe is nutritionally condensing a whole food into another form and condensing it again into a capsul? and if I could afford this algae stuff.. it also comes from the sea. wouldn't there be mercury in that too?

he answered with a demonstration.

little fish eat the algae and absorb the mercury - medium fish eat a small amount of little fish and or algae - the big fish eat large large large amounts of little fish and sometimes medium fish.

and then he mentioned that you'd have to eat fish every day for just about a decade before you had mercury poisoning. he assured me that eating fish a 1-2 times a week would do no harm.

I don't know if there's any truth to his words but I'm going to try my best fo find out!

by this point my brain was swirling with whole food-local food-vegetarian-heart-family-oh frig my nan-whole-local-veg..david suzuki-environment WHAT?

and after some pacing I told myself that I should try it.

so for $1.80 I bought a serving of whole-local-possibly organic fish (I say possible because who really knows about mercury levels etc)

and it was actually the most stressful thing I decided to do in the last little while.

I walked out of the store and thought about not eating it and maybe giving it away. I thought about how I had NO idea how to prepare fish and how I forgot to buy gloves because sweet jesus. knows I might barf at the sight and touch of this gooey fleshy thing! I thought about how david suzuki urges us all to eat at least one vegetarian meal a week and the ridiculous amount of farmland wasted on growing crops to feed the meat that get's cooked up every day, and how that farm land could be used to grow enough produce to feed the world.

but then I thought about the food miles that these questionable but veg friendly sources of omega 3's accumulate to get to the store and into my body.

and then I thought about the dangers of extracting important nutrients out of a whole food and changing the form and loosing whatever companion nutrients exist to make the omega 3's work in our bodies.

so I settled with the idea that if it's a horrible experience I could go back to being vegetarian and hauled out my room mate's moosewood recipe book.

it was like starting all over in the kitchen again. hesitant and uncertain. I had no gloves and I sure as hell wasn't touching the thing bare hands so I used a grocery bag as a glove to rinse it.

I paused to re-think my decision I don't know how many times. I mean, here I was, about to do something I hadn't done in almost a decade but I continued anyhow.

30 minutes later I had fresh fish with mushroom, onion, thyme, basil, and garlic
a salad of mixed greens topped with sage tossed roasted potatoes, topped with home made ketchup.



and it was friggin' tasty.

I'm still not fully convinced and I feel like I have a fair bit of research ahead of me before I commit to becoming a seafood eater. but I like the idea of being able to eat something that someone I know, or someone in the small business sector of the place where I reside, has safely collected. and I'm sure as hell not about to go consume grain fed cattle, hormone treated chickens and pork.

I've managed to do a little bit of research so far, and through the local source market facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19586861115) found out about Indian Point marine farm (http://www.indianpointmussels.ca/site/home/), a small business taking strides to minimize marine environment impact.

I'm going to have to look into wild crafters that deal with seafood.
(here is a wiki entry on wild crafting - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcrafting)
I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS!

but I think my main concern about seafood is the ecological footprint/impact.

for the sake of labels, I just might be on the path to becoming a locavore..hahaha.

carbon foot prints, ecological impact, health implications, safe soil, food security, poverty..the list goes on.

sweet lord food ethics is a GIGANTOR topic to tackle and my interest in it is growing faster than the sprouts I'm sproutin'.

but today for supper I went back to my roots (hehe god I'm lame) and made myself a super quick tasty meal. fast food doesn't have to be bad food. seriously, this meal took me all of 10 minutes.

steamed asparagus and butternut squash in a bed of spinach, mushrooms, onions and beets tossed in garlic, thyme, butter, and hemp seeds.


all you have to do is:

1. steam the asparagus and squash
2.lightly fry out the onions and mushrooms in garlic

3. combine in bowl and mix in spinach

4. toss in some butter, thyme, and hemp seeds (but I bet it'd be great with pumpkin seeds if you don't have hemp seeds)

also, I strongly recommend using real butter instead of margarine since that's not exactly a food.


oh! and on a super duper cheesy note, a little while ago some friends (chanel and faith in the top photo) hosted a HERITAGE MOMENTS (remember..those hilariously awesome canadian commercials?) theme party.

they went fullll out.

the viking ship



the inukshuk



the saguenay fire



they blew my mind!!!

alright.
time to get in my warm bed with some books!

sleep well loves!

all things february

oh hi!
this has been a long time coming.
partridgeberry: comes from my love for that stinky feet smellin' berry. it ooooozes love. and smoothies. and muffins. and loafs. and jams. and juice.

luckily my wonderful momma (shirley as some of you know her) brought me up two huge bags and about a half dozen bottles of home made jam in November. My house has been smelling like stinky feet ever since. but that's fine by me!

I have a sneaky suspicion this little blog o' mine will end up being all about cooking, food and my foodie farm aspirations (okay, and maybe the art practice of my peers and I)

and to start, oh sweet frig what a Sunday! I did absolutely nothing. and it felt so so good. I had a breakfast worthy of sharing with jill - and that's saying something. we're breakfast queens, partners in crime. it was almost wrong to have such a beautiful feast without her. brie, veggies, fresh greens, scrambly eggs, home made jam and fresh fruit. oh man. for a minute it didn't feel like February. The reason for the feast didn't feel right without her either! A prior evening of drinkin' beer, stomping feet, twirling skirts, and hollering to the grass mountain hobo's certainly made room for a lazy day.

rest of my lazy lazy sunday was spent watching 'the union'..putting me into a spiral of resarch on the uses of hemp and eventually (as all things agriculture related end up in my brain), devising a plan of how to grow it and what I could do with it. so I spent over half the day researching how to grow it and hoping to find info about DIY versions of making hemp fiber and dreaming about being able to produce my own hemp seeds (mmm good eatin') and bringing the business to newfoundland.

right now, if I were to tell you my ideal farm set up it would go a little like this:

-greens (bok choy, kale, lettuce, spinach, arugula)
-nightshades (tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers)
-root veggies (BEETS! carrot, squash, turnip and pumpkin)
-herbs (BASIL,parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, cilantro)
-a few chickens freely roamin'
-seeds (just sunflower would be fine..how are these even cultivated? oh god, more research)
-legumes!
-goats..and OATS!!
-sheep for their wonderfull fleece (and then I'd be spinnin' and weavin' on my loom)
-a cinnamon tree
-I'd make my own yogurt and cheese
-I'd have a home brew operation (better watch out.. might make us go blind)
-I'd do the bee thing for honey
-I'd have a medicinal herb and dye garden
-hemp hemp hemp

and then I'd cook from all those fresh things to feed YOU!
and I'd also have an outdoor foundry on the property. sweet lord.

ohhh plans a rumblin' in my brain! there are so many organizations back home that I want to get to talking to for my growing list of questions. you should check them out and maybe get involved.

st. john's safer soil
http://safersoil.ning.com/

food education action st. john's
http://www.feastnl.ca/

food security network of newfoundland and labrador
http://www.foodsecuritynews.com

NL federation of agriculture
http://www.nlfa.ca/

and now I'm thinking about where the hell does all of my food come from? geographically it's easy enough to track, but HOW each and every lovely thing that goes into our bodies is produced is boggling my mind.

and on the topic of food..some cooking!
I tried out a recipe for butternut apple soup. with a bit of tinkering and love it's going to be a staple in my diet for the rest of the root veggie season.

so in the midst of chopping up some squash for the sunshiney soup I found this:
























I think it made me squeal and giggle a little too much.

if you want to try out the soup it's incredibly simple. I found it in a cookzine (the name is escaping me..but it was really wonderful) at the anchor archive zine library.
I altered it with a few more ingredients to give it a little more zip! I didn't want the squash seeds to go to waste so I roasted them in paprika and added them, but you could enjoy them as a snack if you'd prefer.

you will need:
blender, food processor or if you don't own either of those, a veggie masher and some arm action!
1 medium or large butternut squash chopped
2 green apples peeled and chopped (or regular apples that look more green-yellow than red!)
4-6 cups of veggie stock or water (shoot me a message for tips on the home made stock..please save your already pickled insides and don't buy the store bought versions)
4 cloves garlic
black pepper
salt
oilve or sunflower oil
fresh basil (this is the ingredient I added but thyme might be a nice addition since basil isn't always readily available this time of year)

for the roasted seeds:
a cookie sheet or some sort of pan suitable for the oven
oil
paprika (or you can use your favorite spice)

SEED DIRECTIONS:

I don't have exact measurements because you'd have to gauge it on how many seeds your squash yeilds but! here it goes

preheat oven to 350
rinse and drain seeds in whatever draining device you have (I use my veggie steamer basket)
set aside and let dry for a couple of minutes

in a bowl mix enough oil and a roughly a 1/4 teaspoon of paprkia (could be more or less if you are using a different herb or spice..use your tastebuds!) to coat seeds

toss seeds in oil + spice mixture and spread on pan, drizzling any extra liquid over the seeds

bake until golden and crispy but not chared.

note: you may want to try covering your dish with tinfoil as a couple of the seeds acted like pop-corn and popped all around my oven! I haven't tried it yet but it sounds like a reasonable solution.

if you want to save these for a snack, let cool and then store in air tight container in room temperature.

SOUP DIRECTIONS:

over medium heat simmer the garlic in oil till light golden brown
add the apples and cook for about 3-5 minutes
add the squash
add the stock or water and simmer until squash is tender
add the salt and pepper
simmer for another couple of minutes

turn heat to low and then transfer to blender or whatever blender-like gadget you have. blend till creamy and smooth
transfer back to pot and add the basil and the roasted seeds
mix it up and tada!

a yummy warming soup the color of gorgeous SUNSHINE!

DISCLAIMER: if those instructions are confusing I promise to re-write 'em. it's late and I'm getting the case of dizzy-eyes!

and now! one last thing before I crawl in bed. This past week I took part in a group sculpture exhibition at the anna leonowens. here are some photo's of the action.

the name of the show is all too suiting
























setting up the show (featuring the work of jessie walker)























lustration
crocheted fishing line














































































right on. time for bed!
happy living!