Hungry Planet Exhibition at the Canada Science and Technology Museum

In 1994, in a popular magazine, I think it was ELLE I brought from France, I saw fascinating pictures from 30 countries showing people’s belongings put outside of their houses. It was Material World: A Family Global Portrait project, inspired by the UN International Year of the Family, implemented by a group of photographers around the world, and directed by Peter Menzel. I think I still keep this magazine among other “treasures” – books, periodicals, and newspaper cuts - for these impressive pictures: a global portrait of our cultures, values, and lifestyles.

Here is another project by Peter Menzel, who is showing this time our global dietary portrait - Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. And here is again this alluring liberty to look inside people’s private spaces and this shocking difference in human conditions.

Peter Menzel’s approach didn’t change: we see again “average” families of four or more people, like, for example, an American family, which in Material World project was represented with 2 TV sets, an American flag and a Bible in the foreground. This time again American family is at the "rich" end of the exhibition - $450 -$350 spent weekly on food: happy faces of two young men holding two extra-large “crunchy” boxpizzas are the first things you cannot help but notice. On the opposite wall an average Japanese family exhibits for a comparable weekly budget a contrasting visual result, with lots of fresh fish among other "stuff", which, seen from our North-American "remoteness", could be classified as “different”.

Walking from the $500 weekly ration of an averge German family to the “meager” end of the exhibition, where people from Guatemala, Mali, and Ecuador are shown with what they can have weekly for their food budget of $20-30, you will certainly notice the following:

- the progressive predominance of naturally grown vegetables and cereals, which breaks at the level of weekly $20 food budgets, where it all becomes just scarcity;
- the complete absence of industrial pizzas in the Italian kitchen, but a couple of pizza boxes on a Britain's table;
- an impressive number of buns and other bread products characteristic for Italy, Bosnia, Cuba, and India; actually, you could say that almost every nation in the world is a big bread eater;
- the average 1.5 bottles of wine on a French table will attest the statistical authenticity of the representations;
- a colorful variety of spices used in an Indian household will awake your imagination, and you might feel a bit hungry yourself.

For the sobering dessert: the very last picture showing a refugee family in Chad with their weekly supply worth $1.

I never forgot my own first “initiations” to the Western lifestyle by my friends in France having a very strong ethical code and a rich humanitarian experience. Among other things I remember that they would never order a Banana Split for the reason of its “aggressive luxury”, offensive for the sight and the mind, imprinted by this shocking number: 1.2 billion hungry people in the world. I cannot remember a single meal I had since then without thinking about it. Especially when I’m looking at the size of an average North-American restaurant order, or see how my party friends are throwing in the garbage generous leftovers. I cannot stop thinking each time when I’m cooking for my small family in Canada what my mother, who lives in a country where food is expensive for many, had on her plate this day.































On our way back from the museum, we reflected on the title of the exhibition: Hungry Planet. We thought that this is an exhibition about those most hungry whose pictures were not exhibited, but who are so strongly present, because once you acknowledge, you cannot forget. We thought that all people everywhere – rich, poor, average – get hungry and need food. And as it was time for us to buy grocery for the upcoming week, we decided to complete the global culinary portrait by our two-women-and-a-cat coalition, which suddenly became a thought provoking experience. We don’t buy any coke, juices, or other industrial beverages, having for all drinks filtered water and countless teas and coffees. We have fresh fruits, vegetables, fish and poultry rather than industrial pizzas, precooked food, or red meat. With 1 bag of Doritos, 4 cans of cat food, one sushi meal, 6 popsicles, one can of beer, and a glass of wine, we are, I think, pretty moderate in our consumption. And yet price-wise, our portrait would go to the “fatty” end of the exhibition. Well, the reality is that eating fresh and healthy is expensive. As Anna said: “Ten apples cost as much as 10 bags of potato chips”.

This week we didn’t buy our usual Kit-Kat – having a break waiting until they stop using the palm oil coming from palm plantation grown in place of cut rainforests in Indonesia. We didn’t buy tuna in spite of the failure of the ban to trade it at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Consumer choices will make the difference. And let's not forget: as Food Bank says, HUNGER HAS MANY FACES.

Bon appétit!

“A Chemical Reaction” documentary presentation by University of Ottawa Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic and Faculty of Law

“There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings.” – this is the beginning of “A Fable for Tomorrow”, opening Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”. We all know what happened to this town, which, as Rachel Carson says, “does not actually exist, but … might easily have a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world.” Over the years we witnessed numerous cases when towns in America and all over the world were affected by pesticides.

Here is again a pesticide story in a little town, in Quebec this time, and one more time a woman is at the heart of it, called, just like Rachel Carson, “fanatic” and “crazy” – Dr. June Irwin, a dermatologist, who noticed a correlation between spring pesticide sprays and skin reactions in her patients. She got ball rolling one of the most powerful community initiatives in North America. For 17 years, residents and the municipal government of Hudson in Quebec raised the alarm over the dangerous health impacts of chemical pesticides. Their fight culminated in a 2001 Supreme Court win banning the cosmetic use of pesticides based on precautionary principle: without waiting until “someone dies”, as says the retired by now Supreme Court of Canada Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dube.

To me this was a story about success-centered values our societies built over centuries, and signs it developed to externalize them: big house, big car, immaculate green lawn… To the extent where we are ready to poison ourselves, our children and pets in order to convey to the world the message about our success and the care we take about our households. Maybe it is time to revisit these values, and those couple of dandelions on our non-sprayed lawn will be the sign that we actually care about our dearest.

It was also a story of a person who has the nerve to be different. At the end of the film Dr. Irwin says: “It’s not about me. It’s about us. It is about community.” Every article about this movie I found quoted this phrase, which certainly tells a whole lot about the morality and sanity of this eccentric-looking person, called “crazy” by many. There is another phrase she says, which explains to me her courage to be, to look, and to act the way she considers her own, no matter what the others think or say: “I know very well where I’m going, and no one could offside me.”

Personally, I found that the case itself, and people who participated in it, are way more interesting than the movie about them. On that night, interesting people were not only on the screen, but also in the audience: Mme L’Heureux-Dube, Ecojustice founder Stewart Elgie, Stephane Dion, numerous Law Faculty professors and students, and Paul Tukey, the producer of the movie.

It was an ordinary Thursday night, as Chelsea said, one of these gloomy nights, when you would rather sit at home having for the whole world your laptop, and the maximum of what you would want as friendly gathering would be replying to e-mails in your inbox. The program gets closer to its end, and midterms are flowing into finals with no interval, leaving us little free time. All these thoughts: “What’s next?” are there. There is a bit of a saturation, too: one more “green” documentary – oh, maybe just bookmark it for the future reference. And yet, an inexplicable force, probably called love for what you are doing, pulled us out of our cocoons to get together for the umpteenth environmental documentary, and we had a great time watching it, being among like-minded people, and having this moment of a real, non-virtual discussion afterwards. Thanks, Chelsea, Jan and Jen for your company!

Non-cooking week: day 7

The "non-cooking" 7-day commitment not to use the stove (microwave is not in the game as it is not good for cooking anyway) is done. As a protagonist in the movie “Julie and Julia”, who aspired to cook using 524 recipes from Julia Child’s cookbook during a year and to blog about it every day, I didn't cook using the stove for the whole week and reported on it in my blog.

The results obtained from the experiment:

1. It reduced by half the time spent in the kitchen preparing food.

2. It made it less taxing because arranging food beautifully on a plate is easier than to cook a meal from scratch.

3. It is fun as it is colorful, fresh, tasty, there is a huge variety of recipes and ideas, and plenty of options in the stores. Few of them are local, unfortunately, "100-miles diet" is a challenge at every level of the food chain in its current state.

4. It significantly reduced the number of dishes to wash - less water to use.

5. It is certainly healthy as it contains much more raw food (and the summer is coming!) and less meat.

6. It was a small-scale contribution to the carbon emission reduction. Well, yes, too small, but it is worth mentioning as all big changes are sum of small differences.

So, the non-cooking campaign will continue. With no excess, of course: we certainly will boil an egg, or cook a good home made soup, or pasta, or this big veggie I have in my basket: rutabaga. But for the busy times, which are most of the times, the no-cook cooking is an excellent option.

To inspire ideas there are books:

Cooking Green Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen by Kate Heyhoe.

Cooking Green is the next step in eco-friendly lifestyle. How to think like an environmentalist in the kitchen? In her book, Kate Heyhoe says that “12 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions (or 14,160 pounds of carbon dioxide per household) result from just growing, preparing and shipping our food” and that “appliances account for 30 percent of our household energy use, and the biggest guzzlers are in the kitchen.” How we cook is as important as what we cook. Heyhoe talks a lot about cooking appliances and methods, rather than to just focus on recipes.

No-cook cookbooks:

"No-cook Cookbook: Over 200 Simple Recipes and Ideas for Mouthwatering Meals without Cooking" by Jason Lowe

For pasta lovers:

Joie Warner's "No-Cook Pasta Sauces"

"The Natural Nutrition No-Cook Book" by Kymythy R. Schultze

Black bean salad

If you have an interesting no-cook idea or recipe, could you please drop it in the comment? Thanks for sharing!

Non-cooking week: day 6

Danish open faced sandwiches

Non-cooking week: day 5

Antipasto: proscuitto, genoa, sardines, artichokes, roasted peppers, olives, cambozola, and fresh focaccia.

Non-cooking week: day 4

Smoked salmon and lemony lentil salad: canned lentils, red onion, cucumber, and red pepper. Dressing: salt, pepper, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, and olive oil (fresh dill is an asset).

Reminder: just as a protagonist in the movie “Julie and Julia”, who aspired to cook using 524 recipes from Julia Child’s cookbook during a year and to blog about it every day, I will "non-cook" for the whole week and will report on it in my blog.

"Midterm evaluation": very positive experience so far: less time in the kitchen, no fry/saucepans to wash, less waste than I actually expected, it is tasty and light (is it because it is meatless?) and so, will be less inches in my waist?

STOMP: tribal dance of the industrial era

STOMP is a non-traditional dance troupe (originating in Brighton, UK) that uses the body and ordinary objects to create a physical theatre performance (Wikipedia).

The objects, i.e. trash cans, chairs, newspapers, boxes of matches, lighters, sand, brooms, kitchen sinks, cans, lids, plastic bags, banana peels, and all the other “stuff” (remember “The Story of Stuff”by Anne Leonard?) found an interesting recycling destiny: they became musical instruments. Musicians: group of janitors, personified eloquently without words by the performers who are percussionists, dancers, and comical actors at the same time. Overall, an eye-opening experience, after which your outlook on ordinary evolves to the point where you see the whereabouts less commonplace but more nervy, venturous, and undiscovered.

It is very non-traditional, and it is unique. To this concert you can bring a can or any non-perishable product to put in the bin at the entrance. The Food Bank bin at the NAC entrance is not what you would see on any concert night.

The show has an interesting touring concept: there are three groups performing at the equal level of energy and spark, one is London/UK-based, and the other two are working in North America. Result: lots of enthusiastic spectators all over the world, and less carbon emissions.

These pictures are not of the show itself, they are of its presentiment. Couple more minutes, and your guts will vibrate, and "the rhythm is gonna get you". What is the music playing now in my head? Water Cooler Bottle Jazz – my favorite!

Watch these amazing moments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7c9ASVfNc

Non-cooking week: day 3

Chinese salad with non-cooked noodles: I just soaked them in the mixture of soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, peanut and sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, and mustard. Other ingredients: peas, celery, red pepper, green onion, water chestnuts, and peanuts.

Non-cooking week: day 2

Simple classics: greek pita with humus, kalamata olives, veggies, and tuna in oil.

Supper of a “green” student

“Green”, or conventional, student’s life is hectic this time around: midterms. It is twice as hectic because there is a couple of students in the house. Last week with my daughter we signed a non-cooking agreement. No more mental math: “How long it will take to cook this and that?...” No more cooking, for the whole week. The agreement came into effect only this week, because at the moment of its ratification there were some cooked leftovers to finish in the fridge. And as a protagonist in the movie “Julie and Julia”, who aspired to cook using all 524 recipes from Julia Child’s cookbook during a single year and to blog about it every day, I will non-cook (please forgive me this grammatical whim!) for 7 days in a row and will report on it in my blog.

So, today is our day “eins”: Rotkraut Salat - red cabbage salad with green apples, walnuts and lingonberries sauce.