WHAT CAN YOU LIVE WITH.../ WITHOUT?

This week, I was processing some of the pumpkin beginning to look a little tired in the upstairs closet into curried apple pumpkin soup, staring down nearly the last of my sweet potatoes, grown in this chilly summer, and figuring how to honour the last of the last head of my purple cabbage. For the latter, I made a salad of (peeled, sliced) Cortland apples, and thinly sliced purple cabbage, and then a last blaze of colour to accent the purple and white: a mandarin orange sesame dressing (this not homemade). A quarter head remains, after a stir-fry and szechuan peanut sauce rescued some leftover spaghetti from oblivion.

I’ve cut down considerably on my consumption of out-of-region foods, but it was interesting when I stopped completely last winter, and discovered where we as a region were hurting: the fat. Now, fat has gotten such a beating in some quarters. Or, it’s been held up, along with protein, in some of the weirdest (in my view) rationales for dieting. But now, happily, most people are taking a more balanced approach to fat. We need some of this stuff. We don't need ultra-processed industrial forms of this stuff.

The kicker was, in this region, as far as I knew, there was very little going on in the way of processing of the type of oils that most of us take for granted as we salad-prepare, bake, fry etc. [There is a bit more going on, as far as efforts to get oil processing happening: check out Speerville Mill website at http://www.speervilleflourmill.ca/, and also
http://www.organicagcentre.ca/Docs/Foxmill_Seed_Oils_cbc.pdf. ]


So, when I ran out of sunflower oil and olive oil, and couldn’t source anything locally, I did what my ancestors did: rendered lard, on the woodstove, obtained from hogs raised locally.

Now, funnily enough, I didn’t gain any weight, I lost weight during this period. But I wouldn’t recommend that everyone start rendering lard because I think that unless one is working very hard physically, every day, these saturated fats are clearly not the best of news for a body. Still, they appeared to be better for me than the transfats I had previously been thoughtlessly consuming in all the processed foods....processed foods that went the way of olive oil and orange juice and all else, when I began to eat locally. So while the first thing to go from the pantry shelves, so to speak, was the fat—to be replaced for several months by a diet of butter and/or lard—the funny thing was, at the same time what also went was most of the extra fat on my body.

What can we live without?

What can we not live without?

As I began to crave and do without bananas, olive oil, and the like, I began to compile for myself an “Exclusions” list. Of course, this would be different depending on where one was on the planet...but somehow, I don’t imagine folks in the Caribbean pining over blueberries the way we do over the wonderful tropical fruits that they have, and that we love to see in the winter...

WHAT I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT (Exclusions list of my local diet)
Fair Trade and organic if at all possible (and so far it’s possible)

tahini, or sesame seeds
olive oil
bananas
almonds and other nuts & seeds (some are sourced within Canada, but not regionally)
a bottle of lime juice
a bottle of lemon juice
peanut and almond or other nut butters
coffee and cocoa; chocolate
tea (I grow some herbal types, but there is a local fair trade co-op for these; yay!)
my local co-op’s brand pastas


Thus far, this winter, I’ve bought few of the above items, and not purchased an avocado or mango. But I broke down and bought organic coconut, and I’m close to the breaking point for avocado, as I ponder using up locally produced salsa and the peppers I and others grew here, which would be lovely in nachos....so these things fall into the category of what I do not wish to do without.