Beorc - Berkana

And so we begin again…

The Nordic Rune Beorc (also known as Berkana) represents the birch, a symbol of rebirth/renewal and is associated with spirituality

Welcome to the relaunch of my blog - yes, I did what I swore I wouldn't do, I became an absentee blogger for a year. Stopping went against the plan and indeed knowledge of my distraction from the blog lurked in the back of my mind like a guilty secret for most of the year. But I was riding the ADD rail and you don't usually get a choice of destination, you just hang on and hope to arrive intact. 

There has been a name change, a few template changes even though it does resemble the previous one, and there have been some removals of posts I didn't feel were a part of the original vision for the blog - just evidence of when I veered off course. However, the 'mission statement' and the heart and soul behind it remain unchanged. My statement is shop local, shop small, shop right with a sidebar of pragmatism I call 'just shut up and eat it'. Our attention is so taken up with the minutiae of food nutrition and health information that we lack focus on the truly pertinent details.

I am a firm advocate of small farms and markets, which you will see if you look at my earlier posts - markets that care about the quality of the foods they produce. The food that we obtain from the supermarkets typically contain 30-50% less nutrients than just a few generations ago and chemical usage is up to astronomical percentages. That was true when I first wrote about it and it remains true, sadly.

Most grains we ingest, knowingly and unknowingly, have been tampered with both genetically and in terms of what chemicals they have been exposed to as seed and seedling, all in the name of consistent profit for 'them' and health risks/ depleted genetic diversity for us and the plant kingdom.

Land that used to belong to small farms that could have remained in their and their descendants hands had the government chosen to support small businesses rather than persecute them, is now given over to Factory Food growers who push the land to its limits and beyond. The Powers that Be are handing over prime agro areas to foreign interests that in turn sell us what we could be doing for ourselves, all in the name of pandering to BigBusiness. (google Melanctin Ontario for a prime example of an attempt)

Diversification is slowly but steadily becoming a non-word, a non-issue as small producers of heritage breeds are being dogged and harassed out of business and this will continue until we have a perverse rendition of Noah's Ark occuring... We will have only one kind of chicken, one cow, one pig, one sheep and you will buy them from a BigBusiness grower. All heritage breeds will be lost to time and knowledge. This is not an issue for just farmers but for our own future. Heritage breed growers are the keepers of the past, not just for a euphemistic historical symbol but for the fact that they are not tampered with through scientific manipulation or through heavy chemical exposure. That surely is important enough to alarm everyone at the threat to their existence.

Unification is the goal. That is the plan, the ideal plan for a modern government. Diversification is expensive. Standardization, conformity and consistency is cheap - cheap to regulate, cheap to administer, cheap to enforce. 

If there are no choices, no 'wrong' choice can be made.

By making the choice to shop local and in season, by finding quality small markets for your shopping needs, you not only vote against Factory Food with your wallets, you gain a new perspective and appreciation for your food; gain a foothold to better health for you and your family; gain a greater involvement in your community and you keep the money circulating within your community. On a side note, by shopping local you help diminish the carbon footprint that our food shipping creates on a daily basis.

My goal remains the same - to share some pragmatism and hard won wisdom and knowledge. Knowledge is power. We should be and feel empowered, especially when it comes to our food sources.

 I wish to share my love of food, love of cooking and my love for learning. I admire those that live close to the land and live a life that is hard but rewarding in the sense of freedom that subsistent living can engender. In an ideal world, I would still be living a part of the life I had during my childhood. 

I would be growing my own food for my family, shopping at a neighbours for a side of beef and picking up what vegetables I didn't grow myself from a farmers market at the weekend. My bread would be hand made and filling the house with the yeasty smells of yesterday and made with unbleached locally milled flour. I would have a dairy room where I would make fresh and aged cheeses and a cold cellar where I would store my surplus foods for the winter. My canned and preserved goods would line the walls of the cellar, on their shelves, bright like jewels; standing like ceremonial and decorated soldiers. 

There are those that can live that life and I do so envy them for their determination, their drive, their ideals and their challenges. However, we all can't live that life, not unless necessity drives us there. Does that mean we can't live a better life than the one we are 'meant' to have in today's society? According to media we are supposed to shop Big, eat Big, drive Big and live Big or we are not patriotic, we don't support our countries. It is a load of codswallop but we are force-fed it nonetheless. The screaming fanatics from both sides of the issue would have you believe in an all or nothing campaign but I believe that we can live better in terms of our health and lifestyle choices that can blend with our budgets, time constraints and general level of interest. I don't believe in all or nothings, just win-wins. 

I want to show everyone that it is possible to be earth-friendly, wallet-friendly, and health-friendly while still living a modern lifestyle of your choice. I want to show you that food is our friend, our lifelong companion, our drug of choice, our survival kit, or arsenal if you will, for a long and enjoyable life.

Thank you for joining me :) You will notice changes occurring over the next few days/weeks as I find my footing again and begin walking in the direction that holds my destination. Thank you for coming along.

Be safe. Be happy. Be well.

Click below to read the recipes I just posted or move to the right to the Pages tab and click on the Home button to see all posts.
Meyer Lemon Chicken
The Hen Party
all photographs and text ©michelle levasseur The Groaning Board 2014

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The Depraved and the Indifferent

I received more mail this morning from the bovine, as I do every morning, and the story was about the Occupy Monsanto protest in Queen’s Park in Toronto as well as the rest of the world, on the 17^th of September.  They are “unified in exposing GMO food and industry; pushing GMO’s out of our food supply; and at minimum, demanding labeling of GMO products in North America.” Apparently the turnout was not overly impressive in Queen’s Park but the necessary communications in networking were made to create progress in this issue.

photo from the bovine

While I am 100% in agreement with exposing Monsanto for the chem giants they are and educating the public about the very wrongness of a herbicide/poison making company also monkeying around with the foods we buy and feed our families, I don’t believe milling around an indifferent government office is going to accomplish anything. Today, the quickest way to being ignored or marginalized is to gather and protest. The gov’t and the media have done it’s job at turning any protest into a circus to be ridiculed and sloughed off as an irritant. While protesting will and does bring focus briefly onto the subject—from the general public who happen to be walking/driving by or who follow such issues like I do from the the bovine, every other person who has to go to work, take care of kids or elderly relatives or simply think the whole Occupy movement is ridiculous is not paying attention.

It’s a counter-intuitive stance to take but for every person standing outside with a sign and a loud shout, there are five armchair protesters who do nothing. Educating the public who are apathetic as to what is going on with their food is an uphill battle that I don’t believe starts at the top, aka the government. Yes, they are the policy makers but they are also solely concerned with money, not what the average citizen has to say.

I firmly believe, and that is why I started this blog in the first place, is that the individual is the place to start. Once we begin to learn about the very things we should be concerned about and to utilize the information within our own microcosm of the family and individual, then we can see change start to trickle UP.

The respective governments of the United States and Canada will unequivocally state that in a world with a population: land use ratio like what is a reality today, it is a necessity to make ‘designer foods’ in order to increase production to feed us. BigBusiness will, and does, try to state this in a way to make us believe that it is global concern for people and not profits that motivates them but we can just throw that out right now as a lie. Of course it is a lie. You don’t go from a 40 year monopoly in chemical warfare to altruism and hand-holding around the campfire singing folk songs. Just doesn’t happen. Monsanto and companies like them have their mission statement firmly in place and they are not looking to adopt a ‘kinder, gentler’ world vision. That does not bring home the big bucks, which we all know, or should, is the bottom line. Period.

Press conference on the threat of GM wheat

Change at the top starts at the bottom. Us. The everyday citizen. We have to remember that we outnumber the politicians, the CEO’s of too BigBusiness, the supporters of said peoples aka those whose palms are being greased and those who are waiting their turn at the lube bottle. We have the power to enforce change simply through our purchases and the level of involvement we decide to take in their world of spend, spend, spend.

Can you imagine if we took the population of just one province and educated them to the point of action—stop buying from companies that support GMO’s, heavy industrial farming and the use of dangerous pesticides—what a difference it would make? Now multiply that by ALL the provinces in Canada and ALL the states in America—these companies and Governments would have to change their standards and policies.

Right now, as things stand, education and availability of non-tampered foods is woefully inadequate. Some of us make a ineffectual stab at shopping local or we placate ourselves with lowering our meat-filled dinners or we watch the news and shake our heads at the depravity of a company’s behaviour in third world countries but we are discouraged to do more. How? By being distracted with the new and latest “innovation” brought to you by your BigGrocery store. New labels, new products carrying less of the bad and more of the good, increasing the amount of seasonal, local produce, new meats being offered with no anti-biotics but with a definite increase in the price tag, and new advertisements extolling said improvements. We allow ourselves to be soothed with empty words of false concern.

On the surface, which is where we are only supposed to look, these ‘improvements’ seem a good thing—and they are to a miniscule extent. What they truly are is a binky, a soother we can suck on and just go away. It’s like asking your parents for an increase in your allowance and receiving monopoly money. “There, you got what you asked for, now go away, No I don’t care that you can’t spend it anywhere, it’s money isn’t it? That’s what you wanted and that’s what you got” What would you do in response? Get a job or raise a protest? Probably go your own way and get a job. That is what is necessary here—go your own way and buy the foods you know are right to eat and not what they give you; go your own way and get a job educating yourself and using that education whenever you shop.

We vote with our feet and wallets and it is high time we all realized that and DID it. It’s one thing to read about it and another to make the commitment to send a message to these companies that we are not increasing their profit margin anymore. We don’t have to gather in groups to do this, we don’t have to make enormous changes in our eating habits, we don’t have to increase our workloads to eat and shop better. We do however, have to learn—who supplies chem-free foods; who is local and small that could do with our shopping dollars, how do they raise their meat, which stores carry seasonal and local products, where do the restaurants we’re eating at get their supplies.

 It is not a difficult task, regardless how much we may be made to believe that, and it is something we can all do right down to the youngest member of the family. In the age of the internet, this information is literally at our fingertips and we can make better decisions. By doing something so simple we can send a message of NO MORE to everyone from the BigGrocery store on the corner to the BigBastards at the top of the skyscraper.

The answer does not lie in attacking the 1% or dragging them down to level the playing field. The answer lies in our pulling ourselves UP.


Something to check out:

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