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64 The Power of Food
15 Plays16 days ago
Food has always had a magical influence on my life. From feeding sourdough as a child, to learning about immunity triggered as babies begin eating diverse foods, I've always counted on food to provide a thematic background to each era.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
- Fit for Life by Marilyn and Harvey Diamond
- The Macrobiotic Community Cookbook by Andrea Bliss Lorman
- The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
- Who's Coming for Dinner by Jeffrey W. Suddaby
Recommended
Transcript
Childhood Food Memories
00:00:00
Speaker
My name is Tracy Ariel and I am Unapologetically Canadian.
00:00:09
Speaker
When I was a little kid, food was magic. I remember rushing to the the fridge in order to feed the monster. and we called We called it monster dough. My mother got it. She would exchange it with friends in the neighborhood and it was actually just sourdough. which is funny thinking about COVID and how many sourdough recipes there were and how much sourdough took on another life again.
00:00:35
Speaker
When I was a little kid in the early 70s, sourdough was quite prevalent. And I can remember smelling the fresh bread and rushing to cut pieces off and smear it with peanut butter because that was the only thing I was allowed to touch. At that age, wasn't allowed to turn on the stove anything, so I just slurred on the the peanut butter on this fresh bread and devoured it. And oh my gosh, it tasted so good.
00:01:02
Speaker
And was, think, tasty. and it was i think tastier because I had to feed it every day or every couple of days. I mean, that time, how knows, you know, it could have been every week for all I know as a kid. You just know you're feeding the monster and it doesn't really matter how many times you have to do it. But it was super, super fun.
00:01:22
Speaker
And, you know, if you were lucky, then we could put brown sugar or peanut butter or that was also the time when we would be we would pull pears and rhubarb fresh out of the garden and The rhubarb, we would like have a bowl of sugar and we'd dip the rhubarb in and we'd suck
Family Traditions and Teenage Hunger
00:01:40
Speaker
on it for hours and hours. oh my gosh. It was like the world was full of magic food everywhere.
00:01:48
Speaker
And whenever I think of food, I always try to remember those times. Just... you know going to visit my grandparents. i One grandparent used to make us specialties. Each one of us got our special element. I got rice pudding and my sister got what we called smushed peas, which we were, i guess, Savoy peas. And my dad got pickled eggs.
00:02:12
Speaker
and And my mom just got to not have to cook because she didn't like cooking. And so that was like so fun. And then we went to the other grandmothers and she had this massive garden in it. So I can remember going and picking up fresh peas and taking out of the string, all the strings out of this green beans and picking apples from their apple tree and cutting cabbage and and putting it into jars and pouring vinegar on it for sauerkraut. And they were,
00:02:43
Speaker
um families of the depression and so they every single year they did a massive sauerkraut filmmaking day and so food was just magic all the time when ah you know up to about the time I was 10 maybe 12 food was just magic and the ages between 12 and say going to university I just remember being hungry all the time and my mother used to have
00:03:15
Speaker
ah boiled eggs and cucumbers and onions sitting in vinegar and baked potatoes sitting in bowls in the fridge so that you could go and eat whenever you wanted to because it just seemed like I could never get full enough and I still do those tricks to to this day right now I have in the fridge squash baked potatoes and it's just so nice being able to go and have a snack whenever I want without having to cook something i don't get as hungry now as I used to but It's just such a pleasure. It reminds me of those times and of being taken care of
University Food Experiences
00:03:50
Speaker
because you have food in the fridge.
00:03:52
Speaker
And that period of time is almost magical when it comes to food because so much of the food era at that time has changed. You know, I remember when the fire hall across the street got a Coke machine and the bottles of Coke were the size of a small, like I think they were They were really, really tiny little bottles. They were the and maybe six ounces. They were really, really tiny and they were adorable bottles too. And we used to rush over and spend our money on these tiny little bottles of Coke. And I guess that was the era of the ultra processed food coming the daily routine.
00:04:37
Speaker
And I didn't know then. that people would be loading massive bottles of these fake foods into their cars every single week and stuffing their bodies through it. I mean, it's... And when I think back on it and how how much fun it was when that era started, um i understand why people really appreciate those kinds of foods. They're cheap, they're filling, they're sweet.
00:05:09
Speaker
They're salty. They fulfill absolutely everything. And it's, uh, I think we've, they're definitely hurting our health, but, um, when they first came in, it was magic.
00:05:21
Speaker
Uh, and then i remember, um, moving away to go to university and you know, not being able to afford anything. And I had a roommate who used to make, she loved cooking and she didn't want to eat too much. And so I would come home like at eight or nine o'clock at night because i would be i had I worked to pay my way through university. And so I was always finished work quite late, seven or eight at night. maybe And then I wouldn't get home until about 9 and I'd be starving and I'd come home and there would be like um chicken stuffed with broccoli and ham and fresh baked. like Oh my God, I just love Barb. She made me the most wonderful meals and was such a joy. living with her and being able to be spoiled again like I was when I was a little kid.
00:06:13
Speaker
What a sweetheart. um And you know, at at school we actually had some interesting things too. We had a, they they they did a long, they bought a massive submarine, but like about four times the size of the little single submarines. So that, and then they would sell sandwiches that were full of cheese and vegetables, like five different layers of different kinds of vegetables, and then a layer of cheese at the bottom. And they would sell it for, you could pay dollar per inch and you could get this wonderful sandwich for really, really cheap in the center spot. When I went back to the University of Western not that long ago, I was so dismayed to see that that center spot tradition had been wiped out and now it's been replaced with all of the chain restaurants, you know, the Harvey's and the Tim Hortons and all that kind of crap.
00:07:11
Speaker
It was, I mean, those sandwiches were heavenly and I never, i've I've tried to make them a few times. I never really got the knack to, I don't know, who came up with them, but they were filling and delicious and cheap and what a, what I don't know who came up with them, but they definitely made my university days completely.
Literature and Food Perception
00:07:35
Speaker
they they I'm sure that i managed to get through them because of those dollar an inch sandwiches.
00:07:43
Speaker
uh then i was living in toronto and this was the early career days and actually i like to think about books as sort of indicators of era and at that time the book that was i think the most compelling to me was margaret atwood's edible woman and the The edible woman is all about basically female angst and trying to become a career woman and not knowing and basically being worried about your weight and worried about how you look and worried about how you come across and worried. i mean, basically it's a lack. You're always thinking you're not, at least I was, not good enough. And how do you fit into this patriarchal society? And how do you make a career that's worthwhile?
00:08:33
Speaker
And that book captures all those emotions and basically a this has a wonderful scene in it where it uses food to wipe out all of that kind of angst.
00:08:46
Speaker
It's just a wonderful book. If you haven't read it it's a classic. and And I think it's actually my favorite book of Margaret Atwood's, actually, just after Payback.
00:08:58
Speaker
ah Although I haven't read her current memo, so maybe there's, maybe there'll be something else that I love. But anyway, loved Edible Woman. It really captures a moment in time for young women in Canada, and I really appreciated it. And particularly for me, reading that book brings me back to that moment in my life.
00:09:22
Speaker
The next period of time that I think of and in connection with food is when I first moved to Montreal and I was in a new place. Oh, actually, to go back to the Toronto space, there was actually that period was also the time because I'm a small town girl, i grew up eating, you know, pot roast, beef pot roast on Sunday and fish sticks and very, very uh, Ontario base food, you know, potatoes, uh, vegetables, uh, chicken,
Culinary Exploration in Montreal
00:10:01
Speaker
beef or fish. My favorite recipe, was actually a chicken and rice and carrot, um, casserole that my mother cooked, um, in a electric fry pan, uh, which she just loved. And, um, you know, very, very bland, mild,
00:10:22
Speaker
really foods the only real foods that we got that were even slightly exotic was Chinese food which isn't particularly exotic the way that it's done in Ontario especially at that time and I think we also had and you know pizza when you when you went out late at night you would grab a pizza from Pizza Delight which was you know because it was square pizza and had pineapple on it with considered a unique thing.
00:10:53
Speaker
So then when I moved to Toronto, so i'm I'm from a small town at that time, I think they had 17,000 people or something in the town, but anyway, now it's much bigger and it's some bedroom community of Toronto. So, you know, they have all the foods that everybody has and everywhere. But at that time, you know, I actually remember the first takeout restaurant, chain takeout restaurant that I went to was, um,
00:11:18
Speaker
was a Red Barn. So that's how, you know, i'm I'm relatively old. So before that, it was all diners and you would go to the bay or to what was it called? Kmart. And they would have this little diner in the corner and you would get chicken on bread with gravy soaked all over it and then French fries beside it. And this would be considered a huge treat. or And at lunchtime when in high school, we used to go for mushrooms on toast, which I still love. But it was those old little canned mushrooms, which I don't have a ton of flavor, but when cooked with tons of butter and salt and pepper and put on Just white bread toasted. It's an amazing meal. And so I think I spent most i think I ate more of those during my high school years than anything else.
00:12:12
Speaker
And so then when I moved to Toronto, there were all these restaurants from every part of the world. You know, there was um you could have Indian one night and Mexican the next night and and Japanese the next night and Korean the next night and i never and ti and and I never tried so many different kinds of food in a short period of time as I did in that period. And it was only, i guess, maybe four or five years that I was there. But I think I must have tried more restaurants at that period of time than any time since. ah
00:12:50
Speaker
So it was ah definitely a discovery period. Then moving to Montreal, I discovered the wonders of a crockpot because I lived on my own and my parents bought me a crockpot as a housewarming gift. And I moved to Montreal in November. and It was the coldest winter. Actually, I don't even think I've had such a cold of winter since. It was the coldest winter I've experienced in Montreal. It was typically minus 40 degree weather. you couldn't You had to cover your face in order to cross the road that year. And so I would go off to the library if I you know put all these things together the night before. and I'd plug the crockpot on my way out in the morning, and then I'd come home from either work or the library or wherever I was during the day, and the whole house would smell like fresh dinner, and I felt like i was being spoiled again, even though i was the one that was cooking it. Oh, what an adventure that was.
00:13:47
Speaker
Anybody who hasn't tried a crockpot and loves soups and chilies and roasts, It really does ribs really well and beef and all sorts of wonderful things. So I loved, loved, loved that period of time. i Got to try a lot of different, a lot of different casseroles.
00:14:07
Speaker
Then the next period of time, and in terms of books for that period of time, i was really getting into different kinds of books like Who's Coming for Dinner by Jeffrey Sudebi.
00:14:23
Speaker
He's a chef who was in Ontario and he had really unique kinds of ways of putting different elements together for a meal. Like he would put fruit with meat and he would put lots of greens and fresh vegetables. And and I loved that cookbook when I got it At that period of time, I also was really interested in Fit for Life, which was by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond. it was a it was a trend book then. it was They advocated eating fruit before when you wake up for breakfast before you eat anything else. They advocated some wonderful things like a sandwich that they advocated. was it called a Goodwitch, and it was basically a pita with tons and tons of vegetables. and It very much reminded me of those one-inch sandwiches that I had in University and it's the simplest sandwich ever. It's just a ton of vegetables all in a wrap or a pita. It it it tastes delicious and I really, I still rely on that recipe to this day and it's such a good way to eat.
00:15:29
Speaker
I just, that was that was the book I think that was sort of, is epiite but basically ah that when I think of that period of time, that book is one of the highlights.
00:15:41
Speaker
And then when I had young children, all of a sudden I became a baking fanatic. I would wake up in the morning and make them cookies or muffins or popovers or bread for sandwiches or soups. or i mean, I was cooking like a fiend and because I remembered when I was young that I was always hungry and I wanted them to get the best food.
00:16:09
Speaker
And, you know, I would cut up fresh fruit and they would come down and they would be, you know, they would smell the popovers from upstairs and so make it easier for them to get up. And at that time, the the cookbooks that I really appreciated were things like the Moosebud cookbook and the Macrobiotics cookbook, which was my and John Denver had a blueberry muffin in there that i that I basically loved.
00:16:35
Speaker
And I was just experimenting with you know cooking beans in the in the pressure cooker and making really large meals for a family that could last over the period. that you know You make enough for dinner and then be able to have sex afterwards. We also had things like grilled cheese with you fry up to make onions and ah you not just grilled cheese, but apple and onions. Oh my gosh, that was a great sandwich. It's funny how so many of my favorite meals are sandwiches, um especially because that was also the period that I discovered that I actually have celiac disease and I can't eat gluten. So all that fresh bread that I grew up eating, now mind you, it was sourdough
Dietary Changes and Career Shift
00:17:30
Speaker
bread and that's one of the breads that's not quite as dangerous for people with celiac, so maybe that was a sign. But it's funny that so many of the meals that I've had that i've had and made over my lifetime have featured carbs and many of which I can't even eat now and couldn't and shouldn't have been eating then, actually. um I probably had it in high school too because I kept fainting at various events and nobody could figure out what was wrong with me.
00:17:59
Speaker
and I had migraines and I had a lot of things that when I stopped eating gluten, I no longer have. So I suspect that I had glu celiac disease the whole time, but just no one ever found it.
00:18:12
Speaker
So that was and that was, anyway, it was an interesting discovery. When you when you have celiac disease, when I was first diagnosed, there were the labeling did not include wheat or gluten or or barley, they, you could put the, the companies would actually hide what was in it and they often put wheat as a feel full filler. So I would have to go shopping with a 50 page guide to all of the additives that actually contained gluten and that I have to avoid. So I had to read every single label and compare it with the book to see. And then I would basically find foods that I could eat and then just buy those. But, uh, oh my gosh, grocery shopping was such a nightmare at that period of time.
00:18:59
Speaker
And at that period of time too, I was studying in journalism and I remember bringing to a conference a story about the challenges of feeding my kids and talking about food and the journalists that were judging All of the people, they hated my story. They were not interested. And that was my first exposure to people who actually see food as, there's it's nothing to be curious about. It's not the least bit interesting. And stories about it are not to appreciated. mean, clearly this was before Michael Pollan's omnivorous dilemma. And it was before a lot of the
00:19:45
Speaker
you know, Barbara Kingsolver's trying to live um off of the fresh food that you can grow all year. year and All of that curiosity about trying to be self-sufficient with food was not a trend yet. And I remember that they just and they just reamed me for that story. And i i i I really wish that I had ignored them and worked on that, published that anyway, because I really wanted to create a book about the challenges of feeding a family and feeding a family seasonally from the freshest ingredients possible. And so I'm probably going to publish that now. It's like it's still it's still a passion of mine. And I still have a lot of incentive to try and put together tools for people who are in that situation because it's actually quite hard to feed a family well.
00:20:40
Speaker
And it's quite hard to eat seasonally and especially in a place like Quebec. And I think, but I think it can be done. Uh, at that period of time, I remember being really inspired by the hundred mile diet. And, uh, there were two Vancouver writers and they, they basically put together, a whole year they spent only eating local foods and their book just, you know, talks about all the farmers that they met and the small, food transformers who, you know, really care about food and bringing good food to people. And so that's part of what inspired me to help create a farmer's market here with a buddy of mine. And that started in 2013. And now we've actually got a ah full-time location now and we just got a kitchen. we're, we've become a real food hub. And so in many ways, food has become my my career. i mean, uh, that particular co-op helped create Grand Pot de Jays, which is like a, uh, an urban agriculture resource center that's in the local, uh, municipal greenhouses, which were just full of blue boxes before that. So, um, this food has been a driving force, uh, in my life from the
Food Ideology and Family Cooking
00:22:00
Speaker
beginning. And I think, uh,
00:22:04
Speaker
I think finally people are realizing how important food is. um Like I said, the omnivores dilemma changed how people saw ultra processed food and the prevalence of corn in almost everything that we eat. And he introduced us to people like Joel Seleski, who basically will not will not let his food be chipped and provides food and basically has a farm that is a permaculture farm. And that gave
00:22:37
Speaker
Basically, if you've ever looked into the permaculture movement, it's all about living locally, living locally well. And not to say that you're not connected to the world either, because when you eat good food, you actually recognize a lot of the the ways that food is contaminated. i mean, I'm really inspired by the heritage seed movement and the um basically trying to keep the seeds that are not patented in open source seeds, I guess they're called.
00:23:18
Speaker
So I'll probably be bringing some interviews about that over the next year because I'm really interested in all those movements and I think they're very important and so food has become It's it's trendy now I mean part of it Like i said Omnivore's Dilemma started the passion towards food, but it's continued Guns, Germs and Steel is there So that period of young children and trying to raise and trying to cook for a family, I think was probably the hardest stage. And when it came to food, trying to prepare food for an entire family regularly every single week multiple times for the week. At that time i got into I created a system where we planned the menu on Sundays for the entire week and oh my god that makes such a difference. And then i did which i think actually i did something that I am so happy I did. it probably makes me It's probably the best parenting thing I ever did. I decided i decided um both kids were teenagers, they both could cook. we had We started with pizza nights on Friday and so they made their own pizzas and then they got to the point where my daughter when she was like 10 she would actually cook big cookies and cook dinner and everything for her brother. So both of them were very accomplished cooks, very young but at about the time when i don't know maybe what anyway when they were teenagers i decided to divide the week up and everybody would have to cook one of the one of the suppers and so that i was no longer required and so there were four of us so i would cook two suppers their dad would cook two suppers and then eat and then they each
00:25:14
Speaker
child would cook one and then we'd go out for dinner at a restaurant for the other one or we'd cook together for the other one. And that meant for a couple of years, i don't even think it was that long, that period of time, but for a few years they actually got into the habit of cooking regularly. And I am so happy I gave them that. Both of them now are able to cook if they want to. um and And they've since actually become quite accomplished. They've looked up other kinds of recipes. they've become So they've become their own kinds of cooks. And I'm really, really happy that they left home with that skill intact. They also did their own laundry. And it was just something that I established when they were young enough to actually, you know, be able to do it. and they and they loved eating, so of course they did it. And ah they would basically, on Sunday, we would plan the meals for the week, and then they would tell me what they would want so that I could make sure that we had the groceries in for them to actually cook that item. And then in the summertime, because we started this farmer's market, we would get a a basket of fresh vegetables every single week.
00:26:24
Speaker
And invariably, there was a vegetable that none of us knew how to cook or what it even was sometimes. in every basket. You know, I remember when we started getting daikon radishes. And now I think, well, why the heck didn't I know what daikon radish is? We've never seen this thing before. You don't know what to do with it. And so we learned how to make salads with that. and We learned how to, ah I know that one time my daughter took a summer camp where she learned how to make cold, different kinds of cold foods. And she made rice noodles and then made salads out of them. And There were a ton of things that she learned at that particular camp that was that that was helpful for all of us that we all got to learn.
00:27:08
Speaker
So that was a very big adventure as well. And at that time, of course, that's when I discovered that I have celiac disease. And so we had to take gluten out, which means that a lot of the carbohydrates that
Diet Experiments and Health Research
00:27:20
Speaker
we originally had relied on had to be taken out of our diet. And we had to learn to cook everything else. And that was a good stage in terms of ah making food, like basically taking carbs out of the center of food. And I'm sure that that actually helped our metabolic health quite a lot. um I've since been learning a lot about the ketone ketone diet and fasting and feasting. I'm doing the alternate daily protocol when it comes to fasting and feeding and that and I really have started enjoying my food even more. ah It's amazing how ah
00:28:04
Speaker
It's amazing how focusing on not eating for one day actually makes eating more enjoyable the next day and they're doing so much research now into the microbiome and how ah protecting your and how food affects how good food affects your health and how you can actually heal yourself by eating properly.
00:28:31
Speaker
And I just learned today, actually, that and that it's babies when they first start breastfeeding and
Conclusion: The Magic of Food
00:28:40
Speaker
when they first start getting introduced to real to to to them hard, basically typical foods, that's actually what creates their immune system.
00:28:51
Speaker
I just heard someone talking about the study today where their immune system gets charged up by the diversity of foods that they're introduced to in the first in their early in their early years. And that was so inspiring to learn because it it goes back to when I was a kid and I understood that food was magic. And it just finishes.
00:29:17
Speaker
It's funny how the more science we do, the more we find out that actually things are ah more spiritual and that we didn't know. we had No matter how much we study, we just don't know enough. And the natural world continues to be an inspiration and it's magic.
00:29:41
Speaker
So I hope that you have had some wonderful food adventures as well. I'd love to hear about them in the comments and let me know what food means to you. If you're one of those people who basically outsources it as Alex Harmozy says, then let me know that too. I'd love to hear about the services that you use. I know my daughter loves factor meals um and I know that A lot of people like those boxes that they get delivered. We got those delivered to the house, but I couldn't stand all of the waste. So I don't get those anymore, but I certainly love the idea of having a nutritionally sound meal and educating people about how much they're supposed to be eating, which I think those boxes do a very good job with.
00:30:30
Speaker
ah And all in all, let me know about your food adventures. I'd love to hear it
00:30:39
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Unapologetically Canadian.