At least the exam was local...

The recording of my food choices this week has been lack-lustre, though it's probably in my best interests to keep it hush-hush anyhow. All that matters is that my midterm is done, and now I can focus on other things, like getting ready for this local food dealie. My diet so far this week has been as follows (excuse the gaps, it's been rough):

On Sunday, I woke up with Vegetarian Chili with cheese (Santropol), presumably with tomatoes(origins unknown), beans(origins unknown), and other assorted veggies (origins unknown). Dinner was pizza from a local spot on my street. I'm starting to realize that the normal state of affairs is just not having enough information to make practical decisions on where my food comes from, especially when I'm eating out as much as I am in the run up to this midterm.

Monday through Wednesday was generally a blur of Super Sandwiches, pizza, tofu pad thai, and Midnight Kitchen (the campus collective that serves free-ish vegan meals every weekday), leaving the only noteworthy (I know, I know, I've already noted those other ones) meal of the week the basmati rice and dill peanut sauce I had for dinner last night. If you want this... creative recipe, feel free to ask. Local food involved this week: the dill was produced in my sister's garden, the garlic was bought directly from the farmer at the McGill Farmer's Market, the apples I've been munching on all week are Québec-produced from Marché Jean Talon and the juice I bought contain pears and apples could only marginally be claimed as remotely local.

But all is not lost, dear friends, as I've stocked up on all the potatoes, eggs, apples, squash and buckwheat I can eat, and I'm looking for more.

On a more political note, it seems to me that one of the biggest obstacle to making proper choices about your food these days is the complete lack of labeling of food in our market society. If I know my capitalism, I know that free markets are based on the exchange of products based on full information of what one is buying. Now I'm no free market fundamentalist, but I would say this is one of the basic failures of our system, and not least of which if you're trying to go local. Don't even get me started on organic!

Before I go on, I must confess to you a secret fantasy I've been harbouring ever since I agreed to this whole project. Somehow, someway I'm going to make pizza from exclusively local ingredients. It will happen, folks, and when it does, you're invited! Leave your local pizza recipes in the comment section.

Tim

Great band name I heard recently: Adam Smith and the Invisible Hands