Deconstructing Dinner

Across the US and Canada, there is an exciting emergence of a unique type of food festival – a festival for garlic! When looking at a map of where garlic festivals are emerging, it’s clear that garlic knows no geographic boundaries – it’s a food that grows well in most climates across the continent. This popularity of garlic festivals appears to be communicating an important story – a story of our longing to connect and celebrate with one another around food, a story of people wanting to make more flavorful dinners, and a story of a food that has become an incredibly important crop for small-scale farmers.

Features:

Ken Meter,Professor,Crossroads Resource Center(Minneapolis, MN)

Liz Primeau, Author,In Pursuit of Garlic(Mississauga, ON)

Bill Christopher, President,Christopher Ranch(Gilroy, CA)

Bob Baloch, Farmer,The Fresh Veggies(Brampton, ON)

Peter McClusky, Founder,Toronto Garlic Festival(Toronto, ON)

JP Gural, Farmer,Samsara Fields(Waterford, ON)

Ross Breen, Farmer,Stone Soup Farm(Harlowe, ON)

Paul Hoepfner-Homme, Farmer,Victory Garden Vegetables(Cobourg, ON)

Honey – one of the most natural foods. In the supermarket, honey is found labelled as coming from clover, buckwheat, alfalfa or maybe orange blossom. The label might just read ‘honey’ without any indication of its source of nectar. But is the nectar source even important to those of us wishing to become more conscientious eaters? As Deconstructing Dinner has discovered, there is a curiosity surrounding honey – a curiosity, which has rarely, if ever, been spoken…. until now!

It turns out, in Canada, 80% of all the honey produced in the country is from the nectar of canola – yet, nowhere on the grocery store shelves do we ever see honey labelled as “canola honey”. And so the question becomes – just where is all that canola honey ending up?

Features

Vaughn Bryant, Professor, Texas A&M University (College Station, TX)

Brian Campbell, Certified Master Beekeeper, Blessed Bee Farm(Richmond, BC)

Jill Clark, Spokesperson, True Source Honey (Lancaster, PA)

Deconstructing Dinner's Jon Steinmansits down with Mark Kastel - the co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute - a populist farm policy research group based in Wisconsin.

Mark and Jon discuss the changing face of organic food. Using eggs as an example - Mark explains howeaters can exercise a more discriminating awareness when purchasing 'organic' eggs.

Features:

Mark Kastel, Co-Founder, Cornucopia Institute(La Farge, WI)

It's not uncommon for most of us eaters to view the system supplying us with food as being separate from us, but on this podcast, one of Canada's most recognized food policy analysts offers his perspectives which suggest otherwise. Instead, the food system has in many waysbeen designed to satisfy the demands that we make every day to eat the same food, year-round, regardless of season, geography or climate.

It seems that we eaters, have become so accustomed to that fresh tomato slice on our sandwich, that glass of orange juice in the morning, or that salad of fresh greens, that these very demands have shaped the food system, and, subsequently, shaped the world we live in. But are these demands for a perpetual harvest necessary? Could we do just fine or even better by choosing a more seasonal approach to eating?...., and, if so, could this way of eating reconstruct the food system for the better?

Features:

Rod MacRae, Associate Professor, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University (Toronto, ON)

It's not uncommon for most of us eaters to view the system supplying us with food as being separate from us, but on this podcast, one of Canada's most recognized food policy analysts offers his perspectives which suggest otherwise. Instead, the food system has in many waysbeen designed to satisfy the demands that we make every day to eat the same food, year-round, regardless of season, geography or climate.

It seems that we eaters, have become so accustomed to that fresh tomato slice on our sandwich, that glass of orange juice in the morning, or that salad of fresh greens, that these very demands have shaped the food system, and, subsequently, shaped the world we live in. But are these demands for a perpetual harvest necessary? Could we do just fine or even better by choosing a more seasonal approach to eating?...., and, if so, could this way of eating reconstruct the food system for the better?

Features:

Rod MacRae, Associate Professor, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University (Toronto, ON)

On this all-new podcast, Deconstructing Dinner's Jon Steinman examines some of the key differences between conventional and organically produced wheat.

Features:

Stephen Jones, Director, Washington State University Research Station (Mount Vernon, WA)

Kevin Christenson, Owner, Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill (Burlington, WA)

Sam Lucy, Farmer, Bluebird Grain Farms (Winthrop, WA)

Roy Lawrence, Farmer, Kootenay Grain CSA (Creston, BC)

Scott Mangold, Baker, Breadfarm (Edison, WA)

On this all-new podcast, Deconstructing Dinner's Jon Steinman examines some of the key differences between conventional and organically produced wheat.

Features:

Stephen Jones, Director, Washington State University Research Station (Mount Vernon, WA)

Kevin Christenson, Owner, Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill (Burlington, WA)

Sam Lucy, Farmer, Bluebird Grain Farms (Winthrop, WA)

Roy Lawrence, Farmer, Kootenay Grain CSA (Creston, BC)

Scott Mangold, Baker, Breadfarm (Edison, WA)

This episode #193 marks the final broadcast of Deconstructing Dinner before we embark on a much-needed break.

Producer & Host Jon Steinman speaks about the need to step away from producing new shows and what future might lie ahead. Jon also shares some reflections on the past 5 years of producing this weekly one-hour radio show and podcast, and offers suggestions to those involved in the responsible food movement - a movement which this show has helped track its evolution and certainly one that this show has in many ways been a part of.

Also on the show - a brief update (regrettably brief!) on our September undercover investigation on a B.C. egg business who had been fraudulently marketing their product as being from their own farm when in fact the property on which the business operated was not a farm at all! It appears the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has vowed silence instead of transparency.

Since March 2008, Deconstructing Dinner has been tracking the evolution of the Kootenay Grain CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in the interior of British Columbia. The project is Canada's first community supported agriculture project for grain and it's been quite a while since we've checked in with how it's evolved throughout it's third year.

Also on this part 12 of the series, we learn about the many grain projects underway elsewhere in Canada and the United States, all of which have been inspired by this very Local Grain Revolution series! Specifically, we travel to Lopez Island, Washington, where one of those projects has completed its first successful year. In October 2010, Jon Steinman visited the Island to share the story of the Kootenay Grain CSA and learn about the Island's very own.

Guests

Roy Lawrence, farmer, R&S Lawrence Farm (Creston, BC) - Roy is a third-generation farmer. Prior to the CSA, Roy had farmed using conventional methods but the CSA became an opportunity for him to transition to growing naturally.

Joanne Gailius, farmer, Full Circle Farm (Canyon, BC) - Full Circle Farm began in Black Creek, a Mennonite community on Vancouver Island. The Gailius family gardens and raises chickens, turkeys, cows, fruit trees and Norwegian Fjord horses (which are used as labour on the farm). In 1999, the family moved to the Creston Valley where they now farm on 40 acres.

Nancy Crowell, volunteer, KLOI 102.9FM (Lopez Island, WA)

Rhea Miller, assistant director, Lopez Community Land Trust (Lopez Island, WA)

O.J. Lougheed, seed saver, Lopez Community Land Trust's Grain Project(Lopez Island, WA)

Kathryn Thomas, farmer, Horse Drawn Farm(Lopez Island, WA)

Exploring Ethnobiology is a new series Deconstructing Dinner has been airing since June. Through a scientific lens, ethnobiology examines the relationships between humans and their surrounding plants, animals and ecosystems. With seemingly more and more people becoming interested in developing closer relationships with our surroundings (our food, the earth), there's much we can all learn from ethnobiologists, and in particular, from the symbiotic human-earth relationships that so many peoples around the world have long maintained.

Food sovereignty is also a subject that permeates much of what airs on Deconstructing Dinner, and similarly permeates much of the dialogue among ethnobiologists. At the 2010 International Congress of Ethnobiology held in Tofino, B.C., a group of ethnobiologists gathered to discuss food sovereignty with a focus on the immaterial or intangible components of food sovereignty. In the first half of the episode, we listen in on some of that discussion and in the second half, we listen to Associate Professor at Cornell University's Department of Horticulture, Jane Mt. Pleasant, whose research has involved a fascinating comparative look into 17^th/18^th century cereal grain farming between the Iroquois people of what is now upstate New York and early European colonizers. Her research paints a telling picture of just how much our western food system is built upon a propensity to maintain the status quo instead of adapting to our surroundings and working in closer relationship with the land on which we grow our food.

Voices

Justin Nolan, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology, J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR) - Justin's research interests are in Ethnobotany, Cherokee and Ozark foodways and medicine, ethnopharmacology, traditional health beliefs, biodiversity mapping, Native American culture, Native American language, cultural preservation

Lewis Williams, Feasting for Change (Tsawout First Nation near Saanichton, B.C.) - The Tsawout First Nation is one of five bands that make up the Saanich Nation and is located north of Victoria, B.C. near the community of Saanichton. Lewis is involved in Feasting for Change - a project that looks to preserve traditional indigenous foodways on Vancouver Island.

Nancy Turner, distinguished professor, School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria (Victoria, BC) - Born in Berkeley, California, Nancy moved to Victoria at the age of 5 and she lives there today as a Distinguished Professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. She earned a PhD in Ethnobotany in 1974 from the University of British Columbia when she studied three contemporary indigenous groups of the Pacific Northwest (the Haida, Bella Coola and Lillooet). Nancy's major research has demonstrated the role of plant resources in past and present aboriginal cultures and languages as being an integral component of traditional knowledge systems. Nancy has also played an important role in helping demonstrate how traditional management of plant resources has shaped the landscapes and habitats of western Canada. In 1999 Nancy received the Order of British Columbia and in 2009 received the Order of Canada. She's authored numerous books including, among others, Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples, Food Plants of Interior First Peoples, Plants of Haida Gwaii and The Earth's Blanket - Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living.

Linda Different Cloud, ethnobotanist / restoration ecologist, Sitting Bull College (Standing Rock Lakota Nation, ND/SD) - Linda is an ethnobotanist and restoration ecologist of the Standing Rock Lakota Nation in what is now North and South Dakota.

Jane Mt. Pleasant, associate professor, Department of Horticulture, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) - In addition to serving as an associate professor in the Department of Horticulture, Jane is also director of the American Indian Program at Cornell University, with research and teaching responsibilities in both units. Her research focuses on indigenous cropping systems and plants and human well being. She lectures frequently on indigenous agriculture and its links to contemporary agricultural sustainability, and am considered a national expert in Iroquois agriculture.