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May 27, 2007

Two Thumbs up for Ecoholic

Posted by greenlivingottawa under Ottawa, books, clothing, energy, food, health, household, organic, transportation, waste reduction
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ecoholic.jpgI picked up a copy of Adria Vasil’s Ecoholic at my neighbourhood bookstore, Singing Pebble Books, a couple of weeks ago and the more times I’ve consulted it, the more impressed I’ve been with it.  Adria certainly did her homework.

The book is subtitled “Your guide to the most environmentally friendly information, products and services in Canada,” and for the most part it delivers on this promise. The information she provides goes far beyond other guides to eco-friendly living both in terms of the environmental and health impacts of our choices, and in terms of the specifics of how to practice a greener lifestyle.

I admit that I was leery of buying something that purported to be national in scope while proudly bearing its Toronto “NOW column” origins on its cover. But for the most part it doesn’t appear to be  biased towards Toronto, covering companies across the nation.  However, the city specific appendix for Ottawa was disappointing, barely scratches the surface of what is available here.  Fortunately there are other resources on green living in Ottawa  ; )

Ecoholic is strongest on those services and products that are available nation-wide, and through the internet. The one purchase I’ve made so far that was a direct result of reading Ecoholic was a Preserve razor made out of recycled yogurt containers in Massachusetts–so not even made in Canada–which I ordered on the web.

The lists of companies and web-addresses that Adria provides will  go out of date soon.  This is simply the result of the rapid changes in this sector of our society.  Beau’s beer, for example, was not included in Adria’s list of organic beers, and I’m being generous in assuming the oversight had to do with the newness of the brewery (it just celebrated its one-year anniversary) and not the distance of the Eastern Ontario company from Toronto. However, even though eco-companies may come and go, because Adria outlines exactly what to look for in a product or service and why, Ecoholic will continue to be a useful reference for anyone interested in making more sustainable choices in their day-to-day living for many years to come.

The book is available at most book stores and at the Ottawa Public Library.  While the library has 20 in circulation, be forewarned that there are currently 85 people on the waiting list to borrow a copy.  Ecoholic retails at $24.95, which is a bargain for its 340 pages of information printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper.

 

May 14, 2007

A Simply In Season Mother’s Day Dinner

Posted by greenlivingottawa under 100-mile, books, fair trade, food
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One of the most difficult parts of trying to eat as much as possible from within 100-miles of my house has been finding recipes that respect the seasonal changes in locally available produce. I’ve tried a few cookbooks that were advertised as “seasonal,” but the only one to live up to its cover blurb has been Simply in Season, a World Community Cookbook edited by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert. I could tell that these people were serious about season from the cover photos, which actually feature turnips.

I picked up this cookbook a week ago at Ten Thousand Villages (a fair trade store) and I’ve already used it multiple times; most notably to cook my mother dinner last night. The recipes I used for Mother’s Day dinner were from both the winter and spring sections of the cookbook. We are still transitioning to spring in terms of the availability of local produce. I cooked “maple parsnip soup” with the remnants of last years parsnip harvest from Bryson Farms. A truly delicious and simple recipe that I will definitely add to my menu rotation when next years’ parsnips start arriving at my door. I also cooked up the “shiitake mushroom pasta” from the spring section, substituting the last of Bryson Farm’s sweet potatoes for the pasta. Also a yummy recipe. I served the mushroom and sweet potatoes with Nigella Lawson’s salmon cakes using tinned Raincoast Trading wild caught “selectively harvested” sockeye salmon. The guest of honour seemed pleased with the dinner and that pleased me.

Ten Thousand Villages, 371 Richmond Road, Ottawa, ON K2A 0E7, 613-759-4701

 

May 7, 2007

Reading Ecological Memoirs

Posted by greenlivingottawa under books
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My PhD work is on using ecological memoirs as a source of inspiration for re-storying our lives, individually and collectively, along more sustainable plotlines.

An ecological memoir is an autobiography in which the author writes of his or her self as intertwined with the place where he or she lives and the animals and plants that he or she shares that place with. Ecological memoirs challenge the modern Western separation between the human community and the rest of nature. They are usually told in the small details of everyday life and everyday relationships and because of this they are potentially revolutionary.

Some of my favourite ecological memoirs are available at the Ottawa Public Library:

Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: an unnatural history of family and place

Linda Hogan, The Woman Who Watches Over the World: a native memoir

Alison Watt, The Last Island: a naturalist’s sojourn on Triangle Island

Lisa Couturier, The Hopes of Snakes: and other tales from the urban landscape

John Hanson Mitchell, Living at the End of Time

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss

Scott Russell Sanders, A Private History of Awe

Richard Nelson, The Island Within

Linda Hogan, Deena Metzger, and Brenda Peterson (editors), Intimate Nature: the bond between women and animals

 

May 3, 2007

The Plight of the Bees

Posted by greenlivingottawa under books, flora and fauna
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I’ve been worrying a lot about the bees lately, with bee colony collapse disorder happening in the U.S. and decreases in bee populations up here in Canada as well.

Robin Wall Kimmerer in her beautiful book, Gathering Moss, writes that if we don’t appreciate and respect the other living beings that comprise the web we live our lives in, they will leave us. I admit to taking bees for granted. I gave them little thought except to wish them away when they flew too close, until the buzz of CCD started leaking into news and conversation. The truth of the matter is that we’re not above nature, we’re not even independent from nature. The truth is we are very dependent on a range of organisms for our lives and well being. Bees are essential to much of our agriculture, without them we’re screwed. It would be much better to learn to appreciate and respect them now while they’re still around, rather than waiting until they’re gone. So I’m trying to notice the bees in my neighbourhood and to stop fearing them and to instead appreciate the diligent, vital work they do for the biosphere.

bee.jpg

Here’s a photo I took of a little bee who yesterday landed on my turquoise yoga top, which was hanging outside on the clothes line to dry. This morning she was still there, still clinging to the fabric even in death. I don’t know why she stayed there overnight, if that’s what killed her or if she was already on her way to dying when she landed but I can’t help feeling a little disturbed by the incident. I hope her sisters are faring better than she did.

 

April 2, 2007

An Introduction to the 100-mile Diet in Ottawa

Posted by greenlivingottawa under 100-mile, Ottawa, books, food, organic
[8] Comments 

There’s been a lot of well-deserved press about the release of Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon’s account of eating locally for a year in Vancouver. The book is published as The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating in Canada and as Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally in the U.S.

As it should, their book has sparked interest in other regions in eating locally. Not surprisingly, one of the best places to start thinking about and eating locally is their web-site, which has a handy modified Google Maps that allows you to enter your postal code (or zip code) and then draws a circle for you with a radius of 100-miles around your house.

I tried it with my own coordinates and was happy to see the as-the-crow flies measurement goes almost all the way to Montreal to the East, passes Petawa to the North West, goes down to Tweed and Napanee in the South West, passes Kingston and extends down to Watertown, NY, to the South, and goes up past Maniwaki and Mont-Laurier to the North. That area encompasses a lot of farmland. Still, given that most grocery stores get their stock from central depots in Toronto or Montreal, it can still be a challenge to buy locally produced food. Even the Byward Market has come under criticism in recent years for allowing stall owners to sell produce that has not been grown by them and in many cases has not even been grown in our region.

So where can you buy local food in Ottawa. By no means do we manage to source all our food within that circle, but we probably manage on an average week to source about half of it locally even in the winter and we don’t even go to that many different places. Most Saturdays we try to get to the Ottawa Organic Farmer’s Market, which is particularly difficult to find, located as it is in the Canada Care Centre, behind the Heron Road Canadian Tire. Here you can find locally produced, and organic, meats, baked goods, eggs, herbs, dairy products and vegetables year round. At the moment there are still some root vegetables left over from last season as well as some new greenhouse crops like mixed salad greens coming available. The hours for this market are from 10am to 2pm every Saturday. However, things run out so get there early to avoid disappointment.

We supplement our organic farmer’s market purchases with a home-delivered weekly vegetable box from Bryson Farms, a 140-acre farm just north of Shawville, Quebec, and well within the 100-mile circle. We have subscribed to their home delivery program for almost a year now and have been very impressed with the variety of vegetables we get each week and the quality. They too use greenhouses and have been providing us with mixed salad greens and super tasty micro-greens most of the year along with peppers, tomatoes, brocolli (even in March), cauliflower, herbs, exotic potatoes, garlic, onions, chiogga beets (the yummiest), carrots etc. I’ll try and take a photo when we get our next delivery on Tuesday.

Sundays last summer we also bought local meat, cranberry juice, veggies and some of the most amazing bar-b-que pizza (no I’m not kidding) at the Lansdowne Park market which is explicitly a 100-mile market, meaning everyone selling there has to produce their food within that boundary. Last summer was their test run. It went well for them and they’re going to be starting up again May 6th. Their hours are Sundays from 8am to 3pm.

We buy most of our meat at the Organic Farmer’s Market or the Lansdowne market, but another source for local, naturally-raised meat that friends of ours use on a regular basis is Aubrey’s in the Byward Market. They don’t have a web presence but their real world coordinates ar: Aubrey’s Meats - 613-241-4093 9 York Street, Ottawa, ON K1N 9B7.

Two other resources worth mentioning are the Ottawa Buy Local Food Map put out by Just Foods Ottawa, which includes markets and farms that do farm gate sales that are located within the boundaries of the City of Ottawa, and the web-site of the local Slow Food Convivium which is a work in progress on local food that is good+clean+fair.

 

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