Year Two: Reflection, and Looking Forward

Happy belated birthday, my dearest blog. Looking back 2 years ago, when you were first born, it seems so long ago when I first started posting in my tiny west-end apartment. Back then, local food was on the come-up. The book, "The 100-Mile Diet", had been released for a year, and only a handful of the city folk I talked to understood the desire to know where their food comes from. I was already well into the ideologies of localism, but the thought of authoring a blog abhorred me for several reasons. 2008 was the year I broke down.

Fast forward to 2010. Locallyproducedfood is a household string of words, already adopted by the mainstream as a corporate social responsibility halo (see marketing campaigns for Hellman's mayonnaise, Lay's potato chips and Loblaws supermarkets). Nearly every neighborhood in downtown Toronto has a weekly farmer's market. I think it's a step in the right direction, though I warn that Motive is as important as Action.

But just when I thought I was the coolest local food kid on the block, I quickly discovered I still had a long way to go. So this year, I attended workshops on How To Start a Community Garden, and Mushroom Cultivation. My partner and I organized a CSA delivery group, tried to convince our community to set-up a garden at Joel Weeks park, flirted with guerrilla gardening and wild foraging, made and served veggie chili to hundreds of G20 protesters, and delved deeper into DIY craft through crochet, soaps and salves. We met dozens of people through Everdale, the G20 weekend, Plan B, Foodshare, Not Far From The Tree, and our daily travels, all of whom live and breathe activism, and continue to inspire and motivate my own life. And still, I feel this is only the beginning.

This year also brought about great strides in my balcony garden experiment, demonstrated by the appearance of fully grown, happy plants. I could not have done it without learning from Year One, proving that there is truth to those annoying "try, try again" quotes. The best advice I have coming out of Year Two is take care of your soil.

2011 will bring even more change. Starting in March, I'll be taking a year off to travel through Europe, Asia and Australia. It is with sadness that I announce that this blog will be on hold during that time. Though I'll no doubt be dying to share travel stories with you all, I can assure you it won't be through a travel blog or Facebook account. We'll figure something out.

Wishing you all a year of courage, change and action.

In solidarity,
Minda

How To Petrify an Egg

When the weather turns wintery, chickens naturally stop laying eggs. To combat this, many egg producers will mimick warm weather conditions by using artificial lighting, which keeps the hens popping out eggs even when it's cold out.

Even so, I believe that we should still consider eggiwegs to be a seasonal commodity. I loaded up on eggs at the market in September, with the intent on some hard-core pickling. I tried spiced pickled eggs, and spicy ginger pickled eggs, but the best of the lot was good ol' garlic dill pickled eggs.

But there's only so much pickled eggs that one can eat... not to mention the foul smelling gas that one produces after eating all those pickled eggs. So I also made a few tea eggs for fun.

Tea eggs are serious yummers. Dark caramel brown in colour, with a smokey, complex flavour. And so easy to make... just boil some eggs in tea and soy sauce, and enjoy! Or is it? Hm...

I sooo wanted to have my eggs turn out gorgeous like the ones in the above recipe. I followed the instructions exactly, or so I thought. When I took the eggs out after 3 hours of boiling, I realized something was horribly wrong.

Reading the recipe the second time and applying some logic, the problem because so obvious. I was supposed to KEEP the egg-boiling water, and add the ingredients to it. Instead, I had basically boiled eggs in a solution of soy sauce PLUS salt and NO WATER for 3 hours. But I just can't bear food being wasted. So I ate those rubbery, shriveled and incredibly salty eggs over the course of a week. Shiver.

One more quick note before I sign-off. Peeling the shell from an ultra-fresh chicken egg can be a maddening experience. My good friend shared a tip with me on how to keep your blood pressure low in this stressful situation: make a slight crack on the bottom (large) end of the egg before boiling. Something about the pressure inside the egg equalizing with the outside, she says. Ta-da! One sexy looking egg.