Fullness of summer-taste of the valley

The taste of the valley is in my mouth. The summer has been wet and buggy here in Edmonton, but this afternoon was bright and breezy, so I went down into the ravine for a walk. The saskatoons are still ripening- a few are wizened and past their prime, some fully ripe and others still tinted pink. The saskatoons (Amelanchier alnifolia) are not as sweet as some years, perhaps because of cooler weather and less sun- but they still refresh the mouth. Misaskwatomin….important food plant for the Cree of the Prairies, and ingredient in pemmican. The soapberries (Shepherdia canadensis), also known here on the prairies as “russet buffalo berry” were abundant, very juicy and sweet on a patch of bushes in a less fertile gravelly area [soapberries have the ability to fix nitrogen, so thrive in dry sandy or gravelly soils with little organic matter]. Not so appreciated on the prairies, the saponins in the eponymous soapberries enable making soapberry froth “Indian ice-cream” or, to the Gitksan in northwest British Columbia, yal is. I always eat a spoonful when passing the bushes. They are medicinal as well as food, said to be helpful for arthritis and for stomach problems. The medicinal dose is one spoonful. Soapberries are also high in vitamins A and C, and have relatively high calcium content, as well as sugars. So they are nutritious as well.

I’ve been reading Nina Etkin’s last book….it came out in 2010 after she passed away in 2009. It’s entitled Foods of Association, Biocultural Perspectives on Foods and Beverages that Mediate Sociability (University of Arizona Press). In it she explores the ways that foods are social actors, or facilitate association, and also (being Nina Etkin) looks at the nutritional and medicinal consequences of ingesting– or not ingesting– these foods. One of the chapters I found very rich was the consideration of street foods, not to be confused with (industrial franchised) fast foods. Etkin points out that street foods are not new, and that many of the world’s peoples have relied on street foods for a significant part of their nutrition for a long time. This is a sector of the informal economy, often the realm of women, or at least prepared cottage industry style by women in their homes. Although usually associated with urban areas, recent migrants and dislocations, Etkin demonstrates that the Hausa village she worked in in northern Nigeria also had street foods. She reminds us that, as a Muslim village, the women observe a form of purdah and do not venture out of their compounds to participate freely in public life, a gendered dimension of street foods I hadn’t thought of. Hence men, and children, more often have access to street foods than women (who usually prepare it). Neither can the women ordinarily sell the foods they produce– but their children can, sitting outside their mother’s compound. I was also fascinated to hear her analysis of the significant nutritional input that street foods could have for children….this is a polygynous society, so one man provides for several wives and for their children. His contributions are distributed evenly among the wives and their children. However, the women ordinarily contribute only to their own children….so women who have more cash (perhaps earned by selling street foods) can send their children to buy the (usually quite nutritious) street foods, thereby significantly enhancing the quantity and quality of food available to them. My connection to the book today was through considering my casual supplementation of my diet with a snack of local berries. I also spotted several large Agaricus specimens (perhaps A. augustus, the Prince) growing in the compacted and mowed meadow where people go to run their dogs. Several species of Agaricus, and also shaggy manes (Coprinus comatus) can be found in the meadow after summer rain, and I brought them home to cook up for dinner. Local foods….together with the mixed herb salad I picked earlier from my own back yard (Good King Henry, sorrel, lovage, chives, tarragon, a leaf of apple mint, and a handful of raspberries for the vinaigrette).

The Solstice is past and the light slowly diminishes, but the earth has not yet peaked in its warmth…the ancient Celts recognized this in their Sabbats which are halfway between the Equinoxes and Solstices. The Solstices and Equinoxes mark the shift of light regime, while the Sabbats track the seasonal shifts in the soil and air temperatures, vital for agriculture. There is inertia in the warming and cooling of the land. The feast of Lughnasadh or Lamas is coming up. In the Celtic cycle, as now understood in Neo-Pagan writing, this is the time of first harvest. In our northern latitude, fruits are ready, but the grain lags. In any case I think of it as the fullness of summer, and praise the ripening raspberries.

Reflections on local food self sufficiency-

Processing local apples today for apple butter and applesauce. I prefer to use the fruit of local trees…besides being pesticide free, they often represent old varieties, or the unique qualities of fruit trees grown from seed. The flavours are distinct, more interesting, less bland, than applesauce made from commercial fruit. When I lived on the Skeena, I used to harvest the fruit of a motley assortment of apple trees, each one distinct, that had been planted 50 years or more before by an early homesteader, and apple trees from seed “planted” by birds sitting on the fence post, or by the scat of a passing bear. I used to pick the fruit green to try to get it before the bears broke the trees down, harvesting the fruit the same way they would the berries of a tall saskatoon bush. The flavours were unsurpassed, and the fruit was tangy, sour, bitter. My daughter and I would sit on a low stool and run the cooked pulp through a hand cranked Foley foodmill in the kitchen of our cabin cum new-old-farmhouse. The pectin from the green apples made the sauce thick before it was reheated with sugar to can.
Today I am processing the fruit from three old Edmonton apple trees. Apple trees planted by homeowners decades before are often neglected by contemporary supermarket-oriented residents, the fruit a nuisance rotting on the ground. Fruit trees are an investment that take decades to reach their prime, and stability over decades is a rare thing in today’s urban areas. The mentality to put food by, the skills and equipment to can or make jelly, are no longer universal, especially in urban areas where even home cooking from “scratch” is increasingly rare. I went to the market to buy apple juice needed for the cooking liquid to make apple butter…the closest source I could find was organic apple juice processed in Chilliwack near Vancouver. The sugar I will add is organic fair-trade demerara- hopefully ethically produced and both socially and environmentally “OK”….but certainly not within my 100 mile radius for “local”. I would have to search out a local honey producer for that, and I would find, in our climate, that the overwintering bees must be fed on sugar syrup, most likely tropical cane sugar, and neither environmentally nor ethically produced…so the honey I eat is local, but the bees are sustained by the global food system. We cannot escape the connections.
In urban North America our social system no longer supports food self-sufficiency either; we have jobs and time commitments. There is neither time to harvest food nor time to process it around our work obligations and our family and other social relationships. Today is a work day, and I have a nagging sense of guilt as I process the apples rather than marking papers, reading student web posts, working on my new course. We don’t get time off for harvest…but the apples need to be processed now. They have their own seasonal imperative.
Yesterday I also nibbled some high-bush cranberries on a walk and collected some mushrooms in the ravine by my house, an urban greenspace used mostly for urban dog-walkers, joggers, and mountain bike enthusiasts along with occasional pram-pushing parents taking babies out for a walk. The mushrooms are a gourmet treat- wild relatives of portobellos. The trick is to find them before they are too old, riddled with the larval excavations of mycetophylid flies. And of course to wash them well. I manage to find enough for a couple of skillets full that are still good, and now have a couple of freezer packs of “wildcrafted” mushrooms in the freezer. Mushroom harvest requires experience, local knowledge, and detailed ethnobiological knowledge of how to recognize edible kinds and distinguish them from unknowns or poisonous varieties. Some of my fellow harvesters come from mycophllic cultures like Italy or Poland. Most of my Euro-Canadian neighbours lack the skills necessary (and the inclination) to add local edible fungi to their diets.
I found it poignant when we were in Regina a couple of weeks ago after my partner’s mother’s death to go out into her tiny backyard to pick some things for my sister in law to add to the family lunch and find a neatly tended and highly productive vegetable garden, with chard, carrots, potatoes and onions ready for harvest. Few yards in my Edmonton neighbourhood have a ready source of fresh vegetables outside the back door, though it was common a generation ago. Jean came from a farm family, and valued growing her own.