Things I learned at Taste of Limmud

Finally posting about the recent Taste of Limmud, which I promoted a couple of times on this blog:

Convening in a volunteer’s house, I first went to see/hear Debbie Field, Executive Director of FoodShare give a talk called, “Good Healthy Food for All: Building a New System so Everyone Has Access to Affordable Healthy Food” in the basement. I’d seen Debbie on a panel at a preview screening of the movie Food Inc., last spring, then again at the Food Share annual general meeting.

Debbie made reference to  Slow Food Movement founder Carlo Petrini when she said that politicians need to wake up and stop putting good food at the bottom of the political agenda.

Debbie made some great points including:

• Hunger remains a big problem (sadly, this isn’t news)
• The least healthy foods are promoted by the dominant food system
• Farmers have a hard time making a living (a good reason to support local farmers by shopping at farmer’s markets and joining CSAs among other activities)
• Many illnesses are connected to what people eat (and, I’d like to add, what they don’t eat).
• In a world of plenty, hunger is a distribution problem.

She talked of the idea of a public food system along the lines of public schools, public transit, public infrastructure and public health. In Canada the government pays for all of part of these through taxes. A week later I heard a colleague of hers echo this concept with credit to Debbie.

I learned that there is more grade A food soil in Toronto than in all of Newfoundland. She wants to see food literacy incorporated into high school programs, making it a mandatory part of the curriculum.

All of these are interesting notions. I can’t imagine them happening because they’re so idealistic, but I like her thinking. You need to dream big. I applaud this.

The other interesting speaker I listened to was Rabbi Adam Cutler, who was quite engaging with his talk called, “What Do You Mean My Cashews Are Treif? Kosher Challenges Of An Industrialized and Globalized World”.  He addressed five issues:

1. Globalization. Basically, in the olden days you knew where your food came from. Now there’s a big chain between producer and consumer. Furthermore, more than 80% of our food contains pre-processed ingredients.

2. Industrialization: An interesting lesson on different ways to prep and kill animal.

3. Technology: Eg. Genetically modified organisms. If a gene from a pig is inserted into a potato does that make it unkosher? (The answer is no.)

4. Eco-friendly Food production: Too much to discuss here. There’s the fact that to be considered kosher vegetables have to be free of bugs, and organic produce is more likely to have critters living in it so leaves of lettuce, folds of leeks, creases in kale and so forth need to be checked well. Then there’s egg checks for blood spots and more.

5. Ethics: Includes worker’s rights. I could write more but there’s another blog post in the works about this when I have the time and the stamina (this entry has been written in bits over a few days and it’s currently past my bedtime mid-week, having trouble keeping my eyes open and this won’t even be finalized this evening).

I took many notes. So much was presented in 20-30 minutes. I learned a lot but recognized that I knew a lot of it too because I read too much. Sometimes I wish I read less and knew less.

One discussed item that related to a book that I read over the summer was kopi luwak, or civet coffee.  The book In Bad Taste by Massimo Marcone begins with a look at kopi luwak and moves onto other strange food finds. It’s the process that makes this coffee unique: the civet eats the coffee cherries (the fruit that encases the bean), digests the fruit, and the undigested coffee bean is excreted. In Toronto, Merchants of Green Coffee sells it.

As for the title of the presentation? Cashew shells are poisonous. They’re only sold without shells, which is why cashews tend to be more expensive. In Asia shellers were shelling with knives from home. It brought up issues of kashrut because what happens if the knives were used for unkosher food? Ah ha. Bet you never thought of that, did you?

Here‘s a photo of me, in my pigtails and Trash Palace t-shirt looking engaged in the talk. I don’t remember if I smiled because I saw the camera or if Adam had said something funny, but it’s one of my favourite photos of me in recent memory.

I skipped the blintz-making workshop and chatted instead. Met some cool people, noshed on some good food. Check out the photo stream on Flickr.

What’s next for Limmud Toronto? One of the original founders of Limmud in the UK will be joining. That’s all I know.