Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: "wild crafting", bullhead, catfish, cooking, crawfish, crayfish, fish, fishing, hunting, subsistence
I haven’t been writing much recently because I just finished my exams. I had taken three writing intensive courses, so I’m giving my hand a break from the scribing and typing. There’s nothing like a little break in the routine, so today I’m going try catching crayfish for the second time (the first was unsuccessful, the water was to cold), and my first time fishing for bullhead (catfish). That right, we be havin catfish po-boys and crayfish jambalaya tonight! Bullheads have been stocked in many lakes all around the Lower Mainland, and are obscenely easy to catch. Catching bullheads probably requires less energy than pushing a shopping cart through a crowded mega-super-supersized grocery store, dodging old ladies and pimple faced teenagers on roller skates.
Now, I’m not saying I have anything against people who shop at the Super Store and eat frozen fish sticks. I just don’t understand them, and their frozen food ways. I have had run ins with such people at SFU, funny enough, in my biology lab. I told the people at my lab bench that I killed and ate my own chicken while living in Indonesia. They all gasped, and just about dropped the various bird and horse skulls they were studying. One girl told me that killing animals was bad. I asked her why. Her answer: “Because…um…it just is…” I often get into much more ideologically stimulating debates with vegans at the Work Less Party office. At least vegans and vegetarians have a basis for arguing against meat consumption.
I would never attempt to argue for meat consumption. Although I can and will argue against the mass industrial production of animals for their meat. That being said, I am in full support of occasional subsistence hunting, especially for small game, using ethical hunting methods.
Anyhow, off to mountains I go, wish me luck!
Filed under: Uncategorized
This is just a quick note, I’m tired and ready to pass out. Today I made a chicken stock, which I then used to make butterbur soup. I collected the butterbur flowers out in Port Moody. As well, I made sausages for the first time today, it was easy. All I did was grind the pork up, added fresh chervil and winter chives from the garden, garlic, a couple of chili’s, salt and pepper and then used this and my food processor to fill the sausage casings. I also sauteed some Brussel sprouts from the sfu community gardens with crushed hazelnuts, then topped with a dollop of home made creme fresche. It was all ever so tasty.
Filed under: Uncategorized
It’s Saturday morning, sunny and the birds are singing outside my window. I am doing what I do ever Saturday morning. I am feasting. On this particularly fine spring morning, I have thrown together a simple meal of poached eggs, fried fingerling potatoes with fresh rosemary, minors letters (a wild green I collected from the mountains) with an olive oil and lemon dressing, organic whole toast with a nice doux coeur cheese.
The miners lettuce is peppery and fresh. The cheese is pungent. The earthly taste of the fingerling potatoes dances a perfect duet with the freshly picked rosemary and the eggs attain perfection with nothing more than unrefined salt and freshly cracked pepper.
This posting is the first of what will be an on going description of my exploration and experiments with local produce. I’m starting small, trying to find ingredients from the North American continent. Then I will attempt to only cook with food from Canada, then only BC, and finally, I will try and cook with food grown within 100 miles of East Vancouver.
Some might ask “is this posable?” My answer would be yes. I am a horticulturalist, naturalist, aspiring biologist and I already grow many kinds of vegetables and herbs. In the blogs to come I will describe the crops I have grown, experimental crops I am attempting and I’ll fill you in with my ongoing research into potential vegetables, herbs and fruits for our area.
My biggest success’s with vegetables that require little tending are wassabi greens, bears garlic, mustard greens, chives, onions, shallots, beans of many varieties and fingerling potatoes. This year I plan on growing edible chrysanthemum, wild varieties of Mexican tomatoes, tomatillos and a marginally frost hardy chili pepper that thrives in cool summers and produces smoking hot chilies. I also like collecting wild greens such as watercress, chicory, miners lettuce and arugala, berries and this year I will try out crayfishing.
Research I’m currently doing involves attempting to compile a list of local wild foods and trying to compile another list and sources for seemingly more subtropical produce. It is my belief that many store bought items could easily be produced locally, or already grow here in abundance. Utilizing such potential sources of sustenance is the key to eatting locally.
Wild foods I will look for this year include crayfish, chantrelles, Oregon white truffles and other wild mushrooms, wild rice (which apparently can be found growing wild in the Lower Mainland), wild berries, such as current, blue, huckle, goose and saskatoon berries and cranberries. Crabapples are apparently good for cooking with meat, like quince.
Surprisingly, many plants that were thought to be to tender for production in Canada can in fact be grown in coastal B.C. These include Citrus specie and varieties, a few kinds of gingers, wassabi (which I already grow), banana (mostly just for the leaves, though. It flowers rarely here and the fruits are undesirable). There are also numerous spices that we can grow here, like Mexican Pepperleaf, which is closely related to black pepper, szechuan pepper and a few others. I am constantly researching for information on such plants and I will also be testing a few out this year. I’ll let you know how it goes.
The reason why I’m going to all this trouble is quite simple; First, it’s my passion in life; Second, it’s not that hard; third, healthy food is good food is local food. Need I say any more?
