University of Toronto’s Independent Quarterly September 7, 2010Vol. I N0. 3

URBAN FORAGING 4

the newsmagazine

FOOD&

DRINKBIG GAME THEORY 8

CAMPUS EATS TV 7

DUMPSTER DIVING 5

CAMPUS FOOD GUIDE 3

FORAGING FIELD GUIDE 5

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September 7, 2010

Editor-in-ChiefHelene Goderis

Features & Podcast EditorDiana Wilson

Web EditorJerry Saskatchewan

Illustrations EditorMelinda Mortillaro

Contributors: Moe Abbas, Jeff Bafaro, Tim Clarke, Natalie Rae Dubois, Dan Epstein, James Hewitt, Joe Howell, Peter Mohideen

the newsmagazine

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CALLING ALL...THE USUAL SUSPECTS: hardened newswriters, gossips, plucky young reporters,

ilstrators, copy editors, ad sales people. Meetings at our 1 Spadina o� ce, Thursdays at 6pm.

With the end of summer, it is time for us to reap what we have sown. No, we're not talking about liver failure and lung cancer, but rather the fall harvest.

Friends, the wheat is fl axen, the corn is as high as an ele-phant's eye, and the cliches are ripe. The moment is nigh for us to grab our scythes and end the languorous growing season in style. Yes, it'll be hard work, and at times we'll miss those lazy days of sitting under apple trees, playing the fi ddle and watching the sun slowly arc across the sky. But think of the laden tables! The smorgasbord will make it worthwhile – no longer shall we be subjected to a wretched diet of fast food and Red Bull.

In seriousness, with the aca-demic year about to begin, your diet will likely revert to just that. You'll gorge on endless slices of greasy pizza during all-night essay marathons, and your cup will runneth over with noxious energy drinks. But not if the newsmagazine has anything to say about it.

Dan Epstein talked with the head chef of Kensington's La

Palette to learn about ethically sourced meat, discovering that the sweet fl esh of animals can be far more moral and sustain-able than the naysayers at PETA would have us believe

Joe Howell went into the wilds of the Rouge Valley in an anach-ronistic attempt to live off the land, chronicling the diffi culties he experienced along the way. A woodsman he ain't

Helene Goderis details the ed-ible delights that can be gleaned around campus, if you'll only keep an open mind. Sure, it'll require more prep work than the day's $2 sandwich at Burger King, but you'll respect yourself more in the morning.

Melinda Mortillaro and Jeff Bafaro look at more conven-tional ways of eating healthily at school and resisting the siren song of those ubiquitous hotdog venders. Because really, do you want to fi ll your gullet with yet another serving of mechanically separated pork and/or chicken by-products?

Peter Mohideen tries his hand at dumpster diving, for those

nights when both your cupboard and wallet are bare. With only a modest investment in a sturdy pair of boots, you'll never go hungry again.

And fi nally, Moe Abbas re-counts his woes in trying to feed a special friend with a severe nut

allergy. Sure, peanuts might be delicious to you, but to others they taste like salty death.

Welcome to the Food & Drink issue of the newsmagazine. When you fi nish reading it, wrap some fi sh with it or use it to start a hobo-style cooking fi re, will you?

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Food & Drink issue

Campus food guide

the campus

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the newsmagazineby Moe Abbas

Campus foodie experience

Picture this: a guy comes home and plants a wet one on his girl-friend. Minutes later, when her blood vessels leak, blood pres-sure drops, and she goes cold, he stabs her with a needle, hop-ing that the jolt of adrenaline jerks her away from a coma or the pearly gates of Heaven.

No, the girl didn’t overdose on heroin and the guy isn’t John Travolta. According to the Ana-phylaxis Association of Canada, at least half of you know some-one who is among the estimated 600,000 Canadians that risk having a serious anaphylactic allergic reaction, the causes of which range from peanuts to bee stings. Soon after we started dat-ing, peanut-free Natalie taught me how to use the needle, called the epinephrine auto-injector, so I wouldn’t end up becoming the doltish douche with the kiss of death. But the threat of sali-va-swapping pales in compari-son to the allergen minefi elds of tainted surfaces - and my mine-laying habits are dying harder than Hans Gruber.

Here’s a day in the life of Bum-bling Idiot Moe: Upon arriving at Natalie’s I make a beeline for the bathroom to wash my hands with soap, Nat’s only line of de-fense because hand-sanitizers don’t kill peanut protein. And as for that kiss? After Nat, with knee-jerk puckered lips, cranes her neck toward me, she’ll re-member to ask, “can I kiss you?”

Feeling guilty for robbing her spontaneity, I’m back in the washroom to decontaminate my mouth, following these words of wisdom: Soap before toothpaste, a fairer aftertaste. But like a dys-lexic with words, I’ll accidentally reverse the order, brushing yet again to remove the bitterness of Dove. When handling food I

often forget to wash my hands only after, not before, opening a box, bag, or carton. At grocery stores, Nat and I still squabble tenderly over what I should and shouldn’t buy. And since I suf-fer from Chronic Unsanitary Dwelling Disorder (CRUDD), which mainly targets males of all colours and creed, I get blasted for peppering my apartment with granola wrappers that may have contained peanuts or were processed in a facility that yada

yada yada.Is Nat a hopeless neurotic,

or am I just a slob who needs a crash course in domestic clean-liness? Well, both. Natalie is someone who cringes if I crinkle a wrinkle-free bed, while brave souls who venture into my kitch-en often fi nd ecosystems grow-ing in my sink. That being said, Nat’s microscopic vigilance is justifi ed in light of her sixty per-cent chance of having an ana-phylactic reaction. And that vigi-lance is an antidote to CRUDD, for which I have no excuse other than apathy.

My dirt detox is not the only blessing in disguise: since Mc-Donald’s, Wendy’s, Domino’s Pizza, and Panago Pizza are the only restaurants with peanut-free guarantees, Natalie and I are inclined to eat at home - a much

healthier and wallet-friendly al-ternative. When too lazy to cook, we indulge by eating take-out and watching HBO on her bed - a ritual far more endearing than dining at some over-priced res-taurant could ever be. Besides, Idris Elba and Michael C. Hall for company trump noisy pa-trons and smarmy servers any day.

Ironically, the real silver lin-ing is the challenge of changing deep-seated habits. Breathing the air of vigilance that perme-ates Nat’s world serves to remind me of how important mindful-ness is, especially in today’s techno-spastic environments. It calls to mind a quote by Shunryu Suzuki: “it is the readiness of the mind that is wisdom.” Me? Wis-er? She’s a keeper.

Personal essayPE

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There are two things that most would agree are essential to the hu-man experience: food and a sense of commu-nity. University of To-ronto students are for-tunate enough to have multiple avenues by which to both nourish their bodies and make social connections. Just a few of the op-tions provided by the U of T are Dinner with 12 Strangers, the Sky Garden, and the Good Food Box.

Dinner with 12 StrangersDinner with 12 Strangers is an opportunity for students and alumni to gather for a free meal generously hosted by, as the name suggests, a stranger - ei-ther a U of T alumnus or faculty member. The aim is for students from various programs, colleg-es, and residences to commune with alumni and faculty mem-bers over a meal. The program is gaining popularity and is look-ing for more individuals to host at their expense at a location of their choice. Interested students can sign up to be placed on the invitation list and potential hosts will fi nd a "Guide to Host-ing" that provides valuable in-formation about this stimulating evening. Interested? Investigate further at: alumni.utoronto.ca/dinnerwith12.

by Melinda Mortillaro & Jeff Bafaro

Good Food BoxFor students living off campus who can no longer rely on the good ol' residence meal plan, consider picking up a Good Food Box. The boxes are packed with as much local produce as the season will allow, and can be picked up at U of T's Centre for Women and Trans People. Prices for the Good Food Boxes vary, starting at $12 for single students or small households or $17 for larger households. The small boxes are sumptuous enough to get some friends to-gether and make a week's worth of freezable meals. Contact The Centre for Women and Trans People at staff.womenscentre@utoronto.ca or (416) 978-8201 if you have any questions or to ar-range a GFB pick-up at U of T.

Sky GardenWe have all heard about the re-cent boon of rooftop gardens, and now thanks to a group of volunteer U of T Engineering grad students we can add U of T’s “Sky Garden” to the rapidly growing list. Now in its second year of operation, the garden has grown considerably thanks to a grant from Live Green Toronto and boasts one of the biggest yields of any rooftop garden in all of Toronto. Using local, or-

ganic sourced seeds, the garden has a projected yield in excess of 100 kilos which is used by its volunteers and by the commu-nity at large. Run by students and providing produce for the university (used by Hot Yam at the international student cen-tre), the "Sky Garden" allows for no ambiguity: the community knows exactly where its food came from.For more info on the Sky Garden visit http;//uas.sa.utoronto.ca/

Fighting anaphylaxia: a hard nut to crack

4

By Joe Howell

Food & Drink issueSeptember 7, 2010 the newsmagazine

The case for urban foraging

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. Hav-ing heard from newsmagazine editor Helene that the latest is-sue would be dedicated to food and drink, and having recently read Walden (okay, several pag-es of it), it seemed a great idea to head as far into nature as the TTC would take me. There, I’d be self-suffi cient for the day, subsisting only on whatever I managed to hunt or gather with my own hands, and recount the adventure here, alongside ur-bane yet soulless tales of cafes and bistros.

I settled on the Rouge Valley. Helene came with to keep the venture honest, and for good reason. I am a man of constant hunger—if my plane were crash-ing in the mountains like in Alive, I’d probably be chewing the arm of my seatmate before we even hit the ground. In order to prevent such a situation, we’d need some supplies.

First, we acquired an ancient book of edible plants in the Americas, which informed us that “young people in blue jeans who were on limited budgets revived the culinary art of the roadside.” Then we picked up a knife and a fi shing rod at a Ca-nadian Tire, where an old man whispered to us that spraying artifi cial minnows with WD40 would really get the fi sh a-bitin’. I love folksy wisdom, but unfor-tunately fi lling a river with en-gine grease didn’t quite seem in the spirit of what we were going for here. Helene was convinced that corn would reel them in, and so we justifi ed the tin can of it we bought by resolving to rus-tically bash it open with a rock. It’s how Natural Man would have done it.

By now, it was midday. While we would surely be feasting on nature’s bounty soon enough, we had a long trip ahead of us through the wilds of Scarberia, and our stomaches were already growling. Okay, some fruit ‘n’ nuts trail mix bars would care-fully simulate the smorgasbord we’d later scavenge. Of course, we’d have to wash them down with something.

I’d recently heard that ele-phants in Africa will eat the fer-mented fruit of the murula tree, in order to get a buzz going. This posed a variety of questions—do blotto elephants see pink hu-mans? Elephants supposedly never forget, but what about when they’re black-out drunk? And could this even happen? Their tolerance must be huge. Truly, pachyderms are the frat

boys of the savannah... but I di-gest.We weren’t nearly as clever or in-dustrious as those nobel beasts, but since we theoretically could get sauced in nature it didn’t seem like cheating to pack a bot-tle of Ontario white wine.

There was just the small mat-ter of the fi ve-alarm hangover I was nursing from the previ-ous night’s marula fruit. He-lene begrudgingly tolerated the pregame Gatorade and chicken paninis I insisted were crucial to my survival (did Thoreau set out for Walden pond hungry? I think not), but drew the line at the box of Oreo Sippers I tried to pack for later. “But they’re new!,” I argued in defence of the straw-shaped cookies. “And they’ll go great with pinot grigio.”

The Sippers were left behind, and the enormity of the sacri-fi ces I’d have to make this day suddenly hit me.A couple subways, a bus, a hot-air balloon, and a donkey down a cliff later, we were at the Glen Eagles Vista, overlooking the valley. We plunged into the un-tamed wilds, and found a wel-come mat in the undergrowth. Clearly, we were expected for dinner.We began gathering things our book had promised would make for good eating. Yarrow would steep some decent tea, so we fi lled my now-empty Gatorade bottle with it. Crabapples would be nice barbequed, despite their position as the grouchiest of fruits. Emboldened by our suc-cessful foraging, we became even more ambitious: these el-derberries would go great with spare crabapples in a jam! We could make lousy candy from pine trees! Every darn shoot and leave out here was delicious!

It turns out that when you fi rst become a hotshot nature man, it’s easy to get carried away. Much of the fl ora takes exten-sive preparation, and the blaz-ing sun coupled with a crippling Red Bull shortage can make you lose sight of this. To make mat-ters worse, half of the plants out there are toxic.That’s right, friends: nature hates us. As if the unrelent-ing typhoons and tidal waves weren’t enough, nature has fi lled her hills and dales with poison. While some sumac makes for a drink that “tastes like pink lem-onade” (or so says our book), the wily poison sumac is “more virulent than poison ivy.” And

while wild cherries sound pretty delicious, their seeds contain cyanide. Cyanide! I made a note that if we saw any, I could make some progress pruning my En-emies List.Learning this fact about cherries scared me off foliage for a bit, so we left the hill and made our way to the river. It was quite a hike along the side of the road, but no cars would pick us up even though we were white and sober. It might have been the long knife Helene had demurely placed in her back pocket, business-end up.We fi nally made it to one of the Tywn Rivers (I can’t tell ‘em apart) and cracking open the vino, set about catching some fi sh to go with the crabapples. Wouldn’t you know, though—I drank on a rock in the water for over an hour, making as little noise as possible, shouting only when absolutely necessary, and I didn’t see one fi sh bigger than a minnow. No amount of industrial lubricant would have helped us catch supper here, be-cause there was none to be had. We did see some crayfi sh scoot-ing about, and Helene plunged in, catching one with her bare hands. She insisted the craw-daddy would be amazing fried in butter, but I wanted nothing to do with it, because I am not a barbarian. She let it go.

Now the sun was going down, and it was time to admit that we had nothing. I bit into a crabap-ple, and my eyes began watering. Nature had failed us. The earth had not provided for us, and in the waning light I could see that Stalin was right in scorching it.

Night had long since fallen by the time we made it back to the bus stop, and more importantly, its adjacent gas station. Inside we bought some Doritios® Late Night® All Nighter Cheeseburg-er® Flavored Tortilla Chips, and as I enjoyed the complex sym-phony of artifi cially simulated fl avours, I thought “look what man hath wrought.Back at home, my roommate saw my fi shing rod and asked what I caught. Upon hearing that we didn’t even spot any fi sh, Stevie said “welcome to the 21st century, bro.” You know what, though? I’m okay with that. The 21st century has brought with it bacon gumballs, Le Whif “whif-fable chocolate powder,” and edible metallic spray paint, for giving your steaks that Midas touch. If declining fi sh popula-tions are the price we must pay for not getting poisoned in the woods, nature can shove it.

the city

The locavore movement has gained serious momentum over the past few years, and for good reason: eating locally-grown produce is supposedly more environmentally sustainable than eating pro-duce transported across great distances (and of course the food ar-rives fresher). But that sustainability equation isn’t perfect or easy to calculate, considering that the energy expended in transporting produce pales in comparison to the energy required to actually grow that food. Which means the locavore system is imperfect.

Enter urban foraging.There’s a case to be made for foraging – the gathering of edible

wild plants found in abundant supply on our city streets (see side-bar for some good campus pickings). While foraging won’t realis-tically fulfi ll your daily caloric requirements, it’s a hobby that can supplement an environmentally-conscientious diet.

Foraging is the least obtrusive food system – you don’t need to allocate land for planting, wild plants don’t require any deliberate tending, and the growth process necessitates no extra energy.

But most importantly, foraging is a way to reign in our bloated existence. Somewhere along the line, egged on by technological progress, people became enamored with the “convenience” of being far removed from the means of producing their own food. A look at obesity statistics belies the convenience of our food system. We’re at a juncture where the realization has sunk in that more so than being convenient, our system is unsustainable. It’s important now to have a basic knowledge of native edible plant species as we reach the na-dir of sustainability. There’s a clarity and fulfi llment that come with working to attain your meager fi xings.

A good way to enter foraging as a hobby is to get a fi eld guide to edible wild plants (may I recommend Lee Allen Peterson’s Edible Wild Plants as a great regional resource?). Take a look at our sug-gestions for plants found around campus and your neighbourhood – it’ll give you a taste for foraging.

Hoods in the woods

By Helene Goderis

Urban foraging: Exploring alternative food gathering in the city

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Food & Drink issueSeptember 7, 2010 the newsmagazine

FORAGING FIELD GUIDE

Dumpster diving

the city

By Peter Mohideen

We here at the newspaper will go to any length to bring you news you can use. After our li-quor budget climbed into the four-digit range we had to, like many students, consider some ways of saving money. Now the last time we tried to save money on food we had an anxiety attack that only temporarily abated af-ter eating fois gras at La Palette, but this time the situation was desperate. Our accountant sug-gested we rummage in the trash until we found something that was unopened and wasn’t mov-ing. We decided to give it a try.

We went to the Metro fi rst, reasoning that as the largest grocery store on the block that’s

open at 4 a.m. they would have enough cheese puffs and cola to last until our next OSAP check.

In the parking lot at midnight we found the most formidable dumpster we have ever seen in our young lives. It was like a three-story tank, and though completely sealed, the smell was overpowering. Readers, I tell you frankly, we lost heart.

Minutes later at New Gen we had eaten an unagi dragon roll and were waiting for bacon-wrapped scallops. Our resolve strengthened and our wallets thirty dollars lighter, we decided to give it another go. Regretta-

bly, there is no dumpster behind the Loblaw’s - we found that out the hard way. After wander-ing around in circles for what seemed like hours, we found ourselves in the alley behind the Green Room, walking into what looked like a drug deal. After asking if they knew where the Superfresh dumpster hid, there was a moment of silence. “Why are you looking for dumpsters?” came the slack-jawed response. “Isn’t it rude to answer a ques-tion with a question?’ we impro-vised, before scampering away.

At the Fresh Mart we found what we had been looking for all along: a broken chain and in-side, all the riches of a wasteful grocery store. Two backs of Ro-maine lettuce, brown and wilted at the edges but still somewhat green at heart. A carrot in need of heavy peeling. A slightly bruised apple. An eggplant that, already being purple, was hard to fi nd fault with. We stopped, satisfi ed that we had remained solvent for another day, and then went home to pour ourselves a couple of tall Grey Goose and Perriers. We deserved them.

quor budget climbed into the four-digit range we had to, like many students, consider some ways of saving money. Now the last time we tried to save money on food we had an anxiety attack that only temporarily abated af-ter eating fois gras at La Palette, but this time the situation was desperate. Our accountant sug-

FORAGING FIELD GUIDE

gested we rummage in the trash until we found something that was unopened and wasn’t mov-

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...ON 30 DOLLARS A DAY

The lawIs scrounging in someone

else’s garbage illegal? Well, as-suming you didn’t break into their house to do so, it depends. As Cory Doctorow wrote in Wired over a decade ago (pre-sumably before he was wealthy and famous), “Trash is a strange legal gray zone in Canada. The Trespass to Property Act - a hunk of legislation dating back to the British North America Act of 1867 - grants property owners and their rent-a-cops the power to ban anyone from the premises, for any reason, forever. The catch is, they have to actually ask you to leave - serve you with a notice pro-hibiting entry - then you have to return for it to be trespassing... So as long as we don’t make a mess - that would be littering - we’re on the warm and fuzzy side of the law.”

That being said, don’t expect grocery stores to put out a wel-come mat in front of their tasty, tasty trash. If you go during busi-ness hours, you’ll almost certain-ly be asked to leave, as watching someone root through garbage might make customers feel bad about buying that Fiji water. Go at night, and be discrete.

The gearIt might sound obvious to

bring some basic safety equip-ment, but our intrepid report-ers overlooked this in their ex-citement to wade through other people’s refuse. Said one shame-

How to dive and thrive

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By Joe Howell

faced newspaper staffer, speak-ing on condition of anonymity, “there are sinkholes in parts of the trash, so bring boots. Wear clothing you don’t mind hav-ing to bleach afterwards. And gloves. My lord, please bring proper gloves.” Also consider a head-mounted fl ashlight, and a car or cart in case you unexpect-edly fi nd something big you sud-denly can’t live without.

The peopleDon’t do this alone – bring

along an open-minded friend that’ll have your back if shit goes down. Dumpsters apparently attract the fringes of society, as our secretive staffer can attest: “Half the dumpsites contained rapscallions, so be prepared to deal with hoodlums. There were druggies rolling stuff on one of the dumpsters, and at another a guy named Lopez said he had been thinking of robbing us, un-til he realized we must have even less them him. In the end he of-fered us bus fare. At one bin we drew a crowd of fi ve or six people to watch, some of whom even ended up climbing in too.”

Good luck with the garbagio, faithful readers! If you fi nd any food, please bring it summarily to the newspaper offi ces so we can wet our beaks on that ac-tion.

Food & Drink issue

Wild sorrelWild sorrel resembles clover, but you can tell by its three heart-shaped leaves and compound stem that this plant has a deli-cious, sour taste.

Add its leaves to salad, or steep the leaves in hot water and then chill to make a sour, cold tea.

Day liliesThe day lily is found all over cam-pus, and is a versatile wild plant that can be enjoyed all seasons.

Early in spring, add young shoots to salads. Steam young shoots and flowerbuds and enjoy on their own. Prepare the day lily’s white tubers like corn through-out the season.

Wild carrotCommonly known as Queen Anne’s Lace, the first year root of wild carrot is delicious when boiled like your garden-variety carrots.

CAUTION: Be sure to pick plants with hairy stalks. Hairless leaf-stalks belong to the Poison Hem-lock plant, which may cause pa-ralysis/death if consumed.

A beginner’s guide to foraging on campus

tomato is picked, this molecule is volatile and it starts to evaporate out of the tomato. So a day, two days after that tomato is picked it doesn’t taste as fresh. It’s like the fresh-er something is, the better it tastes. And as soon as that clicked in me I started becoming more interested in [the farms] the food was coming from, and the more I thought about food the more apparent it became that what the chef does with the food is very important but the initial product, the base medium is tantamount. You can give a good chef really crappy food and at best he’ll be able to cover it up. But the best food starts with the best product and it’s really easy to make something taste good if you’re starting with amazing product.

tn: I understand that you’ve been able to create something of a new direction for the menu at La Palette at this new location here on Queen St. Could you describe the philoso-phy with which you approached this menu and some of the things on the menu that you’re really proud of?

BK: My philosophy when it comes to cooking food is to start with incredible ingredients and prepare them with care and a strong technical insight. I’m all about technique. When I create recipes I think about what’s happening with the food on a molecular level so that I can best design reci-pes to create the most ideal outcome. Cooking is like a science project - there are so many variables to con-sider. I’ve taken the menu in a direction that’s hard to explain; it may look very similar to the menu we had fi ve or ten years ago, but it’s the way that we go about putting the food on the plate that’s changing, the way that we cook that’s changing.

tn: Describe some of those techniques, for in-stance with the wild boar chop.

BK: One important thing is where I’m getting that boar chop from. I deal with small, local farms, where I know the animals are being treated with the utmost care and respect, and where the slaughtering practices are humane and decent. When I get that meat, it’s my turn to treat it with care. I don’t portion any meat until it’s ordered, so it’s fresh as possible. It may take a little bit longer, but if you get a steak here, if you get a wild boar chop here, it was literally cut minutes before it was cooked. Then the next thing in the process is seasoning it properly, not over-salting, it not under-salting it, making sure that the meat surface has been padded dry. If you put meat that hasn’t been padded dry in a really hot pan, it doesn’t matter how hot the pan is or how much butter you have in it, the fi rst thing that’s gonna happen is water on the surface of the meat is go-ing to evaporate. So instead of caramelizing the meat, instead of getting it crispy, you’re essen-tially steaming it. The next thing is cooking it properly - I usually recommend rare to medium rare for a lot of our leaner cuts of meat. For a re-ally fatty wild boar rib chop, I might go medium rare to medium to break down some of the con-nective tissue and fat. The next step in the pro-cess is pairing it with things that don’t diminish the meat, but accentuate it, and don’t contrast too heavily, but give it some contrast. Choosing accoutrements is part of that respect.

tn: Let’s go in to what you described fi rst, the types of farms that you buy from. What makes a good farm for the meat that you buy?

BK: How the animals live is tantamount to the fi nal prod-uct. What I look for in a farm is somewhere where the ani-mals have lots of room to run around. The more an animal moves, the better its life is, and there’s a correlation be-tween muscle activity in mammals and fl avour precursors and darkness in the fl esh itself. That’s why veal is really pale and kind of bland tasting compared to a well-aged cow. That’s why a chicken’s breast is white and a chicken’s leg is dark. The more an animal uses its muscle, the more fl a-vour builds up in it. I love caribou; it’s one of my favourite meats. I get mine from Nunavut. Its meat is almost black, it’s a very dark purple colour, and it’s because caribou is a migratory species. They’re always running so there’s all this action, and that action eventually gets turned in to colour and fl avour. Another thing I look for in a good farm is if they feed the animals well. I work with a man who con-nects me with all these artisanal local farms from around Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba. He’s my in-between man; he tells me what the animals are being fed. I get iron-aged pork from Perth County, and these animals are fed acorns, walnuts, and cream.What an animal eats eventually determines its fl avour. If you eat cows that fed on crappy corn mash, the fl avour

will be very one-dimensional. If you eat the meat from a cow that was raised on a variety of grasses and fl owers and herbs, you will taste it in its meat. [It’s the same with cheese, because] the microbes present in their milk con-vert the remnants of those original plants into all-new aro-matic compounds. If the diet is one-dimensional and fl at, there’s not a lot of opportunity for change or adaptation in the meat or in the milk. When you’re aging a steak, there’s enzymes and microbes that live in the meat and they con-vert the fat and the proteins into amino acids and soluble aromatic compounds, and the more originality and variety in the original diet, the more potential for fl avour. The two main things are activity and diet - how much the animal can live how it wants to live and eat what it wants to eat. Cows don’t naturally eat corn. If you give a cow a big plot of grass and clover and a pile of number two corn mash, it’s going to eat the grass and clover. But there’s such an over-abundance of cheap corn that it’s much more profi table to have cows eat corn. Because cows didn’t evolve eating corn, they have stomachs that aren’t receptive to corn so they get sick, and we have to give them antibiotics to keep them from getting sick. And you can taste it in the meat - it’s fl abby, it’s one dimensional. If you eat meat from a really well-pastured cow, it’s dense, it’s got a greater depth of fl avour, and it’s got more character.

tn: It’s well known that La Palette is a sustainable busi-ness. There’s debate as to whether or not eating meat is sustainable. Is there a sustainable and ethical way to eat meat?

BK: There’s a lot of land that is fl at and very receptive to growing grain and other crop. But there’s also a lot of land, especially in northern Ontario, that is rocky, and hilly, and doesn’t really work well with a tractor. So the best way to get energy from that land is by growing grass and having cows eat that grass and convert it into meat and milk, and then having chickens that move in where the cows once were, and eat the grubs that were living in the cow patties and spreading the cow patties around, growing more grass, and rotating the animals throughout your pasture. There’s a really amazing farm in the states called Polyface farms in which the farmer has about 400 acres of land, which he’s divided up in to 13 zones. He calls himself a grass farmer, be-cause when you’re growing grass, the grass wants to maintain an equilibrium with its root structure. So it’ll grow really quickly when it’s short (clipped or eaten down), so it can get back to the same length as its roots really fast within a week. If you cows come in and eat it down, you’re growing far more grass. And then he does what I was just talking about, he has his chickens come in after the cows work on one area of the land and eat the grubs. And since they have such a high-protein diet, the eggs - the egg yolk themselves - have this almost red colour. They stand up in the pan, they have so much more protein. To get back to the point of whether it’s okay to eat meat - there’s nothing inherently morally wrong with eating meat. It depends on where the meat comes from and how the meat lives. If it comes from a good farm that has good practices, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I think it can be very sustainable. I think there’s a lot of land out there that can be brought to its fullest potential.

6

science project - there are so many variables to con-sider. I’ve taken the menu in a direction that’s hard to explain; it may look very similar to the menu we had fi ve or ten years ago, but it’s the way that we go about putting the food on the plate that’s changing, the way that we cook that’s changing.

tn: Describe some of those techniques, for in-stance with the wild boar chop.

BK: One important thing is where I’m getting that boar chop from. I deal with small, local farms, where I know the animals are being treated with the utmost care and respect, and where the slaughtering practices are humane and decent. When I get that meat, it’s my turn to treat it with care. I don’t portion any meat until it’s ordered, so it’s fresh as possible. It may take a little bit longer, but if you get a steak here, if you get a wild boar chop here, it was literally cut minutes before it was cooked. Then the next thing in the process is seasoning it properly, not over-salting, it not under-salting it, making sure that the meat surface has been padded dry. If you put meat that hasn’t been padded dry in a really hot pan, it doesn’t matter how hot the pan is or how much butter you have in it, the fi rst thing that’s gonna happen is water on the surface of the meat is go-ing to evaporate. So instead of caramelizing the meat, instead of getting it crispy, you’re essen-tially steaming it. The next thing is cooking it properly - I usually recommend rare to medium rare for a lot of our leaner cuts of meat. For a re-ally fatty wild boar rib chop, I might go medium rare to medium to break down some of the con-nective tissue and fat. The next step in the pro-cess is pairing it with things that don’t diminish the meat, but accentuate it, and don’t contrast too heavily, but give it some contrast. Choosing accoutrements is part of that respect.

tn: Let’s go in to what you described fi rst, the types of farms that you buy from. What makes a good farm for the meat that you buy?

tn: It’s well known that La Palette is a sustainable busi-ness. There’s debate as to whether or not eating meat is sustainable. Is there a sustainable and ethical way to eat meat?

BK: There’s a lot of land that is fl at and very receptive to growing grain and other crop. But there’s also a lot of land, especially in northern Ontario, that is rocky, and hilly, and doesn’t really work well with a tractor. So the best way to get energy from that land is by growing grass and having cows eat that grass and convert it into meat and milk, and then having chickens that move in where the cows once were, and eat the grubs that were living in the cow patties and spreading the cow patties around, growing more grass, and rotating the animals throughout your pasture. There’s a really amazing farm in the states called Polyface farms in which the farmer has about 400 acres of land, which he’s divided up in to 13 zones. He calls himself a grass farmer, be-cause when you’re growing grass, the grass wants to maintain an equilibrium with its root structure. So it’ll grow really quickly when it’s short (clipped or eaten down), so it can get back to the same length as its roots really fast within a week. If you cows come in and eat it down, you’re growing far more grass. And then he does what I was just talking about, he has his chickens come in after the cows work on one area of the land and eat the grubs. And since they have such a high-protein diet, the eggs - the egg yolk themselves - have this almost red colour. They stand up in the pan, they have so much more protein. To get back to the point of whether it’s okay to eat meat - there’s nothing inherently morally wrong with eating meat. It depends on where the meat comes from and how the meat lives. If it comes from a good farm that has good practices, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I think it can be very sustainable. I think there’s a lot of land out there that can be brought to its fullest potential.

the cityBig game theory: local grazing (continued from page 8

Food & Drink issueSeptember 7, 2010 the newsmagazine

The interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.

7the artsUTtv

Food & Drink issueSeptember 7, 2010 the newsmagazine

by Tim Clarke

Curt Jaimungal, a 4th-year math and physics student, has for the last year devoted his days and nights to University of Toronto Television, a fl edgling club he founded, which aims to create web-based programming for students. And strangely, he’s completely unable to explain why he’s devoted his life to the project.“Almost every thought goes into this for me,” Jaimungal shrugs, “and I don’t know why.”UTTV’s web programming in-cludes news, a restaurant review show, and a forthcoming sketch comedy called ‘Alive Without Permission’, which looks to be the site’s best shot at going vi-ral.The venture offi cially began last September, but its genesis can be traced back a few years ear-lier, to when Jaimungal was in his fi rst year of studies. It was then that the introverted aca-demic realized that he longed to be a performer. He says, “I really wanted to become a comedian for some reason. I went to Yuk Yuks and did stand-up, and it didn’t go well.”He then decided to channel his love of comedy into a different medium. “I thought maybe I could write for sitcoms, and so I wrote something, sent it to Com-edy Central, and they said that it ‘wasn’t for us right now’.” He laughs, “It wasn’t for anyone; it was really stupid.”It was around this time that he met computer science student Arup Ghose. Recalling their earliest conversation, Ghose says, “Curt hadn’t attended class for a long time, and he needed notes.” The two became friends, and Curt’s newfound interest in fi lm wore off on Arup. Jaimun-gal says, “I begged him to go to a fi lm workshop with me because I didn’t want to go by myself.”One night in conversation over Chinese food, Arup mentioned that Concordia had its own cable The program caught the eye of

Naylor, who sent an email to say he was impressed with the group’s gumption. Jaimungal says, “I took the opportunity to email him back to ask for a very small amount of money. He gave us what we asked for.” UTTV now has a small executive staff in addition to Curt and Arup, and though their funds are ‘al-most depleted’, they intend to fundraise to keep the site going into the coming semester.Ghose says that though both he and Jaimungal are on-track to graduate within the next year, he hopes that this could be the start of a new campus tradition that carries on without them. “There

is no real fi lming community at U of T, so we’re trying to make a hub for it.”However, it has recently come to their attention that U of T at Mississauga boasts a very similar website, unsurprisingly called UTMTV, which bears no affi liation to UTTV. “We don’t consider them a threat, but I don’t want to dis them,” Jai-mungal says. When asked if the two sites might ever form an al-liance, he dismisses the idea, but says, “we’ll probably be making fun of them a lot [in our pro-gramming].”Though his time at this school is nearly over, Jaimungal’s person-al goals are lofty. “What I hope

TV station. Though they ‘weren’t even sure where Concordia was’, they contacted president David Naylor to see if the University of Toronto would be interested in launching a similar project. Jaimungal recalls Naylor’s re-sponse: “He said that it would cost way too much money, and that even if they did do it, it wouldn’t get off the ground for three years, and by then I would have graduated.”Curt and Arup were disap-pointed, but didn’t give up on the idea. After a series of meet-ings with U of T offi cials, the pair were granted club status, and they went to work re-imagining UTTV as a website. Jaimungal says, “Because we’re so new, the University didn’t want to fund us… we had to prove ourselves. But it’s hard to prove ourselves with no funding.”Undaunted, the two pooled their money, bought some consum-er-grade video equipment, and managed to put together their fi rst show, UTTV News. The 10 minute-long program, which aims to have a new episode ev-ery two weeks, features a pair of students, Charles Nunno and Stephanie Provato as affable and professional-sounding anchors. Though it lacks most of the trap-pings that make up your average TV news program, such as stu-dio lighting, a teleprompter, and a studio, at fi rst glance it appears that UTTV News is working very hard to be taken seriously. It’s when the show cuts away to its special interest pieces that its ir-reverence reveals itself.Jaimungal himself narrates an animated segment based on U of T research fi ndings, full of cheeky, conversational tangents including a rant comparing over-pollinated fl owers to his under-sexed self. When asked about the uneven tone, he says, “if we presented it as a straight news show, it wouldn’t be fun to watch.” to accomplish, in the next two

months, is to be the best Univer-sity TV station that exists,” he says. “And I think that’s achiev-able.”His aspirations may seem Quix-otic, but it’s clear that Curt Jai-mungal means it. His dedication is real, and he’s got the grades to prove it.“I’ve sacrifi ced my schoolwork and I’ve failed courses for this,” he says. “I’m not getting paid, I know there’s no reason I’m pas-sionate about it, but that’s just the way it is.”

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Campus TV proves the internet isn’t just for porn

8 the marketLocal grazing

by Dan Epstein

September 7, 2010

BIG GAME THEORYIt was a late night back in March that I ran in to Brook Kavanagh at a party in Chinatown. I knew that he was the head chef at Kensington Market’s amazing little French bistro, La Palette, and was inebriated enough to not be shy about asking him some questions. As I queried him about how things were go-ing at the restaurant, the con-versation quickly turned to the subject of meat.

La Palette serves all types of farmed and game meats, from choice cuts of beef to exotic Ontario venison and wild boar. They also serve horse, alone or paired with duck in a dish called “Quack ‘N’ Track.” He told me about the new location that they were about to open on Queen Street near Bathurst, and that they were planning on serving a new plate of horse there. The dish, called Cheval, is described on the menu as “Hay-roasted Horse tenderloin (Québec) served rare to medium-rare w/ herbed, whole toasted oat ‘ri-sotto,’ rainbow heirloom carrots and a rosemary demiglace.”

Brook described the dish as a

tribute to the animal being eat-en, saying that it is always pref-erable to serve an animal with what the creature itself ate. This gave me an initial idea about just how passionate he is about meat. I asked him more gen-eral questions about how meat is raised and farmed, but as in

most drunken conversations, we drifted on to other topics.

Weeks later I popped by the new location after it opened to ask Brook a few more questions. What transpired in a few more visits lead to the interview that we are printing for you here (the

audio is also available for down-load at thenewspaper.ca). The interview focuses on a few of the dishes on the menu at the new location of La Palette on Queen Street, including wild boar side

ribs and bison rib eye. I asked him questions about where meat comes from and what gives meat the best quality. La Palette is well known for being a green busi-ness, and almost everything they serve is about as local as it can be. They were recently profi led in The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business, in which writer Josh-ua Knelman describes Brook and La Palette’s owner, Shamez Amiani, riding their bikes to or-ganic markets and fi lling their carts with produce.

the newspaper: Would you say that you fi rst became interested in the process of farming when you came to La Palette?Brook Kavanagh: The more I start-ed to think about food the more I thought about where food came from. As a chef I want to put the best food on the table possible and when I was 17, my friend’s father was a chef, and he was telling me about the molecule in food that’s comparable to MSG. As soon as a

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