Here’s something to start the weekend off pleasantly: soon-to-be-Ethicurean Debra Eschmeyer posted this Farm Aid 2005 video on Facebook, with Barack Obama first talking about family farmers then introducing the band Wilco — three things I really care about, all together in six minutes. (My iPhone’s ringtone is “When You Wake Up Feeling Old” by Wilco.) Enjoy.

When organic gets fishy: The National Organic Standards Board ruled to allow farmed fish that consume up to 25% non-organic feed to be labeled “organic.” Consumer advocates worry it’s the beginning of a downward slide for standards on other organic animal products. (Washington Post)

Pasture perfect (almost): The USDA publishes new draft rules for organic milk in response to calls from consumers and the organic community that the standard’s “access to pasture” requirement should mean actual access to actual pasture. Remarkably, out of more than 80,500 comments to the USDA earlier, only 28 were against tightening the rules. The proposed new requirements stipulate that organic cows must be on pasture at least 120 days out of the year and get at least 30% of their dry-matter intake from grazing during the growing season.  (LA Times via AP)

If only there were a hell: As it does every November, PETA released undercover videotapes taken at workers at the Aviagen Turkeys plant in Lewisburg, W.Va., showing turkeys being stomped to death, punched by workers, and other really sordid horrible things. All of a sudden that locally raised, locally slaughtered “happy” turkey seems worth the hefty price tag. And vegetarianism? Priceless. (New York Times)

Food banks need a bailout, too: Historically food banks have depended on donations from manufacturers and large supermarket chains, but many factors — canned-food production has fallen, federal programs have fewer extras, and manufacturers are producing fewer damaged items — have meant less food for food banks. (Wall Street Journal)

Melamine at home in U.S.: Maybe the inclusion of melamine in our food sources is (a little) less intentional than in China — but it’s there, and it’s insidious. (NY Times)

Does plastic have fat?: Nestle recalls Lean Cuisine entrees for contamination with “foreign matter.” Mmm. (Brownfield)

Gobble wobble: A heritage poultry project is shaken by a leader’s death, but it will continue. (NY Times).

“Meat with a pause button”: Americans have turned back to their favorite mystery meat during hard economic times. Luckily, the “glistening canned product” has a shelf life that could more than outlast even a prolonged depression. (NY Times; amusing follow-up by Gawker here.)

The American way: A Missouri farmer speaks up for good old USA-style farming (KC Star), as does a Kansas commentator. (Emporia Gazette)

He needs a better cook: Why else would Obama not like beets? (NY Times)

Sour on raw milk: Some cold-tolerant bacteria make raw milk go bad. (Int’l Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, via EurekaAlert)

A crappy deal: In the developing world, water treatment infrastructure has not kept up with urban growth, so many waterways are contaminated by sewage. Farms near urban areas often use the contaminated water to irrigate crops, posing a risk to those who eat the produce. (Environmental Science and Technology)

Crying fowl in the city: Across the U.S., urban dwellers flock to raising chickens in their backyards, both legally and illegally. One Brooklyn home boasts over 50 chickens. (Worldwatch; Newsweek has a similar feature)

Out with ethanol, in with food: Food Before Fuel calls for end to ethanol subsidies. (Brownfield Network)

They’re gonna wait ’til the midnight hour: The final weeks of the Bush Administration will see a flurry of new regulations — “midnight regulations” — that attempt to lock in the administration’s radical ideology. Pro Publica has a primer on how the regulatory process works and a handy status chart for the regulatory changes that are in the works. (Pro Publica) Dan Froomkin adds his own two cents on the last-minute rollbacks. (Washington Post)

Food security begins at home: James Surowiecki on why, despite the overall global “marketization” of agriculture, lots of people simply still can’t get enough to eat, and the world food supply seems more vulnerable than ever. (The New Yorker)

Pollan debated: Kansas farm leaders address Michael Pollan’s recent NYT piece. (Salina Journal)

Insecure in the land of plenty: In 2007, before prices really soared and hundreds of thousands lost their jobs, some 11% of American families experienced “food insecurity.” (US Food Policy)

Thanksgiving, but no thanks: The American Farm Bureau releases its estimates for the cost of a traditional Thanksgiving feast this year. Laura of Not-so-urban Hennery calls them out: “They are obviously… willing to see people eat crap to make that number work.”

Over the river and through the… nah, we’ll just stay home: The Eat Well Guide and the Consumers Union suggest making your Thanksgiving local and organic this year, and they offer recipes from celebrity chefs to get you started. (Eat Well Guide & Consumers Union via Culinate)

Just say non to Beaujo Nouveau: Dr. Vino talks about the carbon footprint of France’s much anticipated Beaujolais Nouveau, which is just a little smaller this year. (Dr. Vino)

USDA-listers: Sam Fromartz tells why the sustainable food community needs to give up on petitioning Pollan for Ag Sec and start thinking about Tufts University professor Kathleen Merrigan as… Undersecretary of Marketing and Regulatory Programs? (ChewsWise)

Sustainable excess?: The G-20 gang didn’t go home hungry. (Epicurious)

Food is life: Kate Hopkins shares some thoughts on food philosophy. (Accidental Hedonist)

Last week Friend o’Ethicurean and Rural Policy Organizer Steph Larsen wrote a guest post about the realpolitik choices President-Elect Obama’s transition team are reportedly considering for Secretary of Agriculture. Today Steph’s colleague at the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska, John Crabtree — a pro-subsidy-reform small farmer and also a policy organizer — has taken a close look at the man widely acknowledged to be the leading candidate: former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack.

Crabtree, who has known Vilsack for over a decade, talked to him directly about two issues that the sustainable food & farming community seems most concerned about when it comes to the possibility of Vilsack holding the purse strings of the deep-pocketed USDA: reforming farm payment programs and his previous support of biotechnology. On the latter, the specifics Vilsack gives of safeguards he would want to implement to protect organic crops from genetically engineered ones are nice, but as Crabtree points out, switching philosophies to the precautionary principle that Europe uses would be even better. Still, he writes, “I have disagreed with Governor Vilsack over biotechnology issues several times. But I am encouraged by the responses above and by his open-minded approach and willingness to learn from past experience and mistakes alike.” Crabtree also discussed with Vilsack another pressing issue we’d love to see the USDA concern itself with: livestock market reforms, to protect smaller ranchers from the deleterious effects of the ongoing massive consolidation in the livestock industry.

He ends the post by semi-endorsing Vilsack. Over at Grist, Tom Philpott also weighs in on Vilsack (and the other candidates):

Vilsack hews tightly to the biotech-industry party line; and he hotly promoted corn-based ethanol while governor. On the other hand, none other than Grist’s own David Roberts declared his energy plan during last year’s Democratic primaries the “ballsiest and most detailed any candidate from either party has offered.” And Ferd Hoefner of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition told me that Big Ag commodity groups had mounted a backroom campaign against Vilsack’s bid for USDA chief. Evidently, the former governor is more of a champion of conservation programs than they can tolerate.

The enemy of our enemies just may end up our friend at the USDA.

Salmon dieu!: On Wednesday, the National Organic Standards Board will rule on whether any fish can be labeled organic. Under the guidelines as proposed, wild salmon will not make the grade but farm-raised salmon could, even if they eat fish meal, which is feed spiked with ground-up wild fish. (Chicago Tribune)

Amen, Brother: Mark Bittman lays down the law on farmed fish and the future of our seafood supply. His conclusion: “I’d rather eat wild cod once a month and sardines once a week than farm-raised salmon, ever.” (International Herald Tribune)

Snouts of approval: Philip Brasher reports on how even if the FDA approves biotech animals like the new “Enviropigs,” which have been genetically engineered to be able to digest phosphorus, it’s unclear whether farmers and processors will consider commercializing them. “We more often hear the cries for something that is closer back to nature,” said a Cargill Meat Solutions R&D rep. (Des Moines Register)

One solution to population control: A long-term feeding trial commissioned by the Austrian government has found that mice fed genetically modified corn had fewer offspring and lower birth rates than those fed a closely related but non-GM strain. (Daily Mail)

Enviro-pesterer wins pesticide decision: Britain’s high court ruled that the UK Pesticides Campaign has produced “solid evidence” that people exposed to chemicals used to spray crops had suffered harm, and Britain’s environment department, Defra, must reassess its policy and investigate the risks to people who are exposed. (Guardian UK)

Trees are amazing, part 10,129: Chicken CAFOs can be sources of large amount of dust, odor and ammonia. Researchers have found that by planting several rows of trees at the outlet of the ventilation fan (a “vegetative environmental buffer”), dust emissions can be reduced by as much as 56%, ammonia by up to 53%, and odor by up to 18%. (Environmental Health Perspectives)

Spuds as savior?: As grain prices spiral upward, putting millions at risk for hunger, international agencies are taking a new look at the potato: They have excellent nutritional value, require less water than wheat, and take only 3 months from seed to harvest. Since potatoes can’t be shipped long distances, an emphasis on potatoes could help improve local food systems. (By the way, 2008 is the International Year of the Potato) (New York Times)

A bottle of green: Tara Duggan takes a look at green claims on wine labels, third party certification, and other issues around sustainable wine. The article includes a handy glossary of terms. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Michael Pollan talks about his open letter to the presidential candidates (Fresh Air from NPR)

By Steph Larsen

Editor’s note: With readers clamoring in the comments section and a petition started for President-Elect Barack Obama to appoint Michael Pollan as Secretary of Agriculture (read Pollan’s response below), I asked a Beltway-savvy acquaintance to summarize just how fertile the landscape for change might be. Steph Larsen is a longtime policy activist who has been pragmatically and pithily debating the realpolitik chances of likely candidates on the Comfood email list-serv. Currently the Rural Policy Organizer for the Center for Rural Affairs in northeast Nebraska, she spent three years in Washington, D.C. working with Community Food Security Coalition. She holds an MS in geography from her home state of Wisconsin.

The excitement of the recent election has worn off. In its place, a new horse race has emerged. The media is now obsessed with who President-Elect Obama will pick to help lead his government of change. We in the sustainable food, rural and agriculture community are particularly susceptible to this when it comes to suggesting nominees for Secretary of Agriculture.

In our enthusiasm, however, there is a tendency of some to lose their heads and forget that, new era or not, this is still politics and the rules still apply. Realism is still a prerequisite.

As soon as Obama won, I witnessed a flurry of emails and blog posts suggesting Michael Pollan, Fred Kirschenmann, Denise O’Brien, Willie Nelson (albeit that was a joke), and a host of other stalwarts of sustainable agriculture.

I would cheer if (most) any of these people were actually being considered, but this is not the reality of the situation. There are times to dream, and dream big, but the bigger you dream, the more you need to strategize and organize, and the further into the future you must plan.

Understanding the process

The process of becoming Secretary of Agriculture begins long before a presidential election. Candidates typically have myriad political connections and make themselves useful in the campaign of the eventual winner. By election time, the list of possibilities is already well-established.

This isn’t to say that our collective voices cannot make a difference. They can, and in multiple ways. But at this point it is a matter of focusing our energy and limited resources where they can best be put to use. Instead of fill-in-the-blank politics, where we suggest the names of potential Secretary of Agriculture candidates, we are now in the multiple-choice stage, where we have the opportunity to voice our support — or dislike — for the candidates already put forward. We can also focus energy on getting good people into lower-level positions within USDA, as I’ll report in my next post.

And the finalists are…

Given that, here are the choices as I see them, based on various media accounts. It is not my intent to support or criticize any of the potential candidates, but rather to inform and perhaps encourage you to look their records. Use the comments section to add relevant information about their previous actions and positions.

Governor Tom Vilsack: Vilsack was governor of Iowa from 1999 to 2007. He also served in the Iowa State Senate from 1992-1999. Vilsack backed Hillary Clinton in the primary but afterward campaigned for Obama. He has penned several recent op-eds on agricultural issues. Vilsack appears to be the leading candidate right now, but in politics one never knows until the race is called. (more…)

The Digest is back! Several months ago, our weekly food-politics news digest went on hiatus. Maybe you missed it, maybe not; we did. So starting today, we’ll do our very darndest to bring you regular roundups of the most Ethicurean-relevant news items. Got a tip? Send it to new Digest editor Elanor via digest@ethicurean.com.

Slow on the uptake: Two months after dairy products from China contaminated with melamine were found on U.S. supermarket shelves, the Food & Drug Administration finally stops Chinese dairy imports. Too bad China has since admitted that the routine addition of melamine to livestock feed is “an open secret,” putting all animal products at risk. (New York Times)

Good… no, bad… no, good… no… In another stellar example of food-supply policing, the FDA half-reverses its finding that BPA, used in plastic food and beverage containers, poses no human health risks. The switcheroo comes in response to a new study showing that BPA harms human reproductive systems and jeopardizes the success of in-vitro fertilization. (Washington Post)

This little piggy had its DNA spliced: The FDA proposes allowing the sale of meat and milk from genetically modified farm animals, and a Canadian company cheers the op to market EnviroPig, which has been engineered to produce cleaner manure. (Boston Globe,  Medill Reports via Northwestern University).  So if 90,000 gallons of EnviroPig manure spills into our local water supply, we can be worry-free?

But at least they have an acronym: Last month the FDA unveiled a “food defense training kit” for food industry employees. Better late than never. And it includes a cute acronym, FIRST, for Follow Inspect Recognize Secure Tell. That should fix things. (FDA)

More meat, fewer babies: A study links increased livestock production to higher infant mortality in the surrounding area. (American Journal of Agricultural Economics, via Eureka Alert)

Want some cancer with that baloney sandwich? The Cancer Project files a petition with USDA to stop serving processed meat through the school lunch and breakfast programs, following the release of studies showing a link between processed-meat consumption and cancer. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

States on steroids: Efforts to ban labels saying “no rBGH/rBST” (growth hormones for dairy cows) and the like just won’t die. The Kansas Department of Agriculture takes up where the legislature said “no” and is proposing a rule banning such milk labels. (Unbossed, Sierra Club)

Eaters speak out: The International Food Information Council’s annual survey finds consumer awareness of sustainable food production jumped 11% from 2007 to 2008. A Consumer Reports poll finds the vast majority of Americans support country of origin labeling (COOL) for food, think the proposal for an “organic” label for farmed fish is a sham, and want the government to do more to protect food safety. (IFIC survey via chainleader.com; Consumer Reports via MarketWatch)

Cleaner water: It appears that pesticide residue in groundwater is decreasing. (Journal of Environmental Quality via Eureka Alert). The Ethicurean wonders, how do we know?

Oh, cluck! Chickens lack diversity: …but use of native species may help guard against devastating illness. (Eureka Alert, National Academy of Science)

Whole grains coming up: Study shows that kids will eat more whole grains if they’re added gradually. (U. of Minnesota)

High price of good food: Yep, junk food is still your best calorie value, even if it’s nutritionally bankrupt. (NYT)

Most vacation snapshots spend their days languishing in photo albums, shoeboxes, or hard drives, not really doing anything useful. But thanks to a new field of research called historical marine ecology, some old holiday photos might actually help us understand fisheries.

Loren McClenachan, one such researcher, was recently profiled in Smithsonian Magazine. A graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, McClenachan scours old newspapers, travel photos, ships’ logs, cannery records, and other records to get a sense of fish populations and sizes in previous decades and centuries. A series of snapshots illustrates how fisheries around the Florida Keys have changed in recent decades: the earliest photos show fish large enough to swallow a small child whole, while the most recent photos show fish that could barely threaten a finger.

The historical research of McClenachan and others can help address something called the shifting baselines syndrome. This term was coined by fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly in 1995 to describes the tendency of people to think that the natural world that they have seen in their lifetime is “normal,” when in fact the ecosystems are severely degraded and continuing to degrade. Over time, a baseline — like what makes a “good season” for Pacific salmon — can gradually shift, giving us a false perspective and affecting policymaking or individual actions.

(more…)

We got some nice play on BoingBoing a few days ago (thanks Xeni!) for Ali’s post on President-Elect Obama’s possible food policy, and there’s been an influx of new readers. Welcome!

One of them, Aaron Beckwith, emailed to say he and sme friends run a sweatshop-free clothing company, Tshirt Insurgency, that has a shirt design we and readers might like:

Can’t speak for everyone, but I do. And I love that the corn demon is named  ‘Fructose Fructose Ghali’!

Wear your food politics on your chest #1: The Sun-Food Agenda shirt

When I hear or read comments that dismiss local foods as something only folks in California can do, I’m puzzled. Everywhere I go in northeast Ohio, I see farms and markets that have locally grown and produced foods for sale. So I have to wonder: is no one paying attention to us here in the heartland, or are we just not making it clear how much local food we have available?

That may be about to change.

Since I found out about the Ohio Food Policy Advisory Council at the Farmland Preservation Summit last month, I’ve been eager to find out more about the Council’s recommendations for marketing local foods and for improving access to local foods in disadvantaged communities, among other things. That in turn caused my anticipation of the Northeast Ohio Food Congress, billed as “Promoting a healthy, equitable, and sustainable food system in Northeast Ohio” and held November 7 and 8 at Hiram College, to grow.

The Congress promised delegates from this quadrant of the state the chance to come together, to discuss their most pressing issues surrounding local foods, and to generate possible courses of action to take home to county organizations to implement. Such an open agenda could have devolved into chaos or lethargy, but the organizers presented a good plan to get people talking, and the delegates themselves raised the energy level of the entire conference with their passion for local food activism.

The entire Congress offered a feast of possibilities, and there were plenty of ideas left over to take home and share. (more…)

By Stephanie Pierce

I guess I have always known I was weird, but I didn’t realize that I fit the profile for a bona-fide social deviant until a few weeks ago, when my good friend and housemate Catye asked my husband and me to come and speak to her high-school sociology classes about our lives as “productive social deviants.” Her students usually love the chapter, but she did not want her point to be lost that deviation from the norm does not have to be destructive, and can actually be quite the opposite.

Catye teaches American history and sociology to juniors and seniors in Wyoming, Michigan, a working-class city that is part of the greater Grand Rapids metro area. She’s regaled us with many stories about the kids in her classes, amused by the assumptions they make about the world. To wit, this year, as Catye was teaching the construction of the subway system at the turn of the 20th century she asked if anyone knew when the first subway opened in Boston, adding “and I mean the train system, not the restaurant.”Most of the kids in the class said, “Oooh”- having thought she meant the Subway of the Meatball Marinara.

Before we spoke, we talked with Catye about possible examples of the ways we deviate from the norm. We could discuss how my husband and I met, and our low-cost, no-diamonds wedding, the fact that Tim took my name instead of the other way around, our beliefs about budgeting and being debt free, our recent cross-country trip that I’ve written about here (and here), our preference to live with others rather than by ourselves, and about how and what we eat. With so many possibilities, we figured that we’d end up actually talking about what the kids seemed interested in hearing. But I was a little nervous that talking about our food choices would induce extravagant eye-rolling over what might sound to them like another adult diatribe on eating well.

As usually happens when I make assumptions, I was wrong. We did get a lot of questions about how we showered while living in a van and traveling, but for the most part, the kids asked questions about food. One young man incredulously asked us, “So you guys never eat at McDonald’s or fast food?” In my usual blunt fashion, I shook my head and said chirpily, “Nope!” Filling in my brusque commentary, as my poised husband often does, he explained that once you start eating truly flavorful, quality food, it’s often difficult to eat fast food and find it satisfying or tasty any more.

(more…)

“Gatherers — Fallen Fruit, Elysian Park,” 2005, giclee print,
photo courtesy of David Burns, Matias Viegener & Austin Young
(downloaded from YBCA’s press room)

A new exhibition of artists’ responses to the concept of sustainability opened at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco last week. Called “The Gatherers: Greening Our Urban Spaces,” it brings together artists and activists from around the world to explore urban agriculture, food politics, urban development, and collective action. The exhibition includes an examination of the potato from Swedish artist Åsa Sonjasdotter, photos of green space and gardens in Istanbul, a digital triptych from the Los Angeles collective Fallen Fruit, and several other efforts.

During the exhibition’s run, some of the participating artists will be giving talks, leading tours or participating in discussions with the public. This coming Saturday and Sunday, the Fallen Fruit team will be there to talk with visitors about their installation and their fruit-picking efforts in Los Angeles (they might also be videotaping people’s stories about fruit, as they were last Sunday). Fallen Fruit — whose manifesto calls for streets to be lined with fruit trees and for people to plant food on the perimeter of their property so that passersby can share in the bounty — has received a lot of publicity for their public fruit-gathering tours in LA and elsewhere (see, for example, this video from KCET and an interview on KCRW’s Good Food). Other upcoming events include discussions with John Bela, the designer of the Victory Garden at S.F. City Hall, and Amy Franceschini, an artist who helped to reignite interest in the idea of victory gardens with her Victory Gardens +08 project.

A Salt Apology

After viewing The Gatherers exhibition, I went on guided tour organized by the Yerba Buena Center and led by the National Bitter Melon Council and the South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN). The Boston-based Bitter Melon Council — whose motto is “Better Living through Bitter Melon” — worked with local youth to identify sites in the South of Market neighborhood that they associated with bitterness. For each site, they made a salt shaker like the one pictured at left, and wrote the location and memory on the label. (more…)

We heard plenty of talk about Wall Street and Main Street. We heard about $150,000 wardrobes, Joe the Plumber, Bill Ayers, socialism, and cynicism. But one thing we didn’t hear much about in this election season was food and farms.

According to Speech Wars, between April and October, John McCain uttered the word “agriculture” only twice, and “nutrition” just once. Barack Obama did slightly better, referring to “agriculture” twelve times and “nutrition” four times. He gave farms a passing mention in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August. But let’s face it: for the most part, food was a quiet issue, sacrificed to our discussions about race and religion, gender and sexism, oil and bailouts.

Meanwhile, food prices continued to rise. Our nation continued to lose farms daily. We continued to spend billions of dollars treating lifestyle diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Rural towns continued to wither. Fertilizer runoff continued to damage our drinking water.

There’s no way around it: the Obama administration will need to address food issues head-on.

Last month, Michael Pollan published a sweeping letter to the next president, Farmer in Chief, in the New York Times. After Pollan’s article was published, the American Farmland Trust noted that “there is no topic of greater importance than the issues [Pollan] raises…it is time to elevate these issues to their rightful place on our national agenda.”

Turns out Obama might agree; Obama read Pollan’s article and even worked it into discussions of energy policy.

So what might we expect from an Obama administration when it comes to food policy? Maybe quite a bit. (more…)

Ethicurean headquarters in Oakland, CA, should have been the home stadium for a preview screening of “Food Fight,” the new documentary by Chris Taylor. After all, this “story of culinary revolt” covers the damage wrought by industrialization of the food system and features star players such as Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Dan Barber, and top foodpol writer and friend o’Ethicurean Tom Philpott (who, we’re pleased to report, gets more air time than any of the other three). The Ethicurean’s Marc, I, and my husband were predisposed to like this film: we were primed to sing out some “amens” like good little choir members, in between bites of Marc’s delicious walnut cake topped with some of Tom’s jam from Maverick Farm and Straus whipped cream.

“Food Fight” is among the most professionally shot, lit, and edited of all the food documentaries out there, and it looks fantastic. It is by far the most comprehensive and inclusive to date, chock full of cool old stills and footage and boasting cameos from scores of food-politics writers, chefs, farmers, and activists. And yet. Can you tell there’s a “but” coming? Here’s where I bite the nice hands who fed me the DVD review copy. We three found ourselves squirming restlessly in our pews. Too many putative saints were being paraded past us on litters of glistening lettuces, and the familiar hymns sounded off-key in their new arrangements.

(more…)

When I was young, I hated mushrooms. At least, I thought I did, but I hadn’t really ever eaten them. I was under the impression that they were slimy and gross, which was the basic opinion of my parents. The only mushrooms I ate until my late teens were from a can, fried with onions and well-hidden in overboiled Uncle Ben’s Minute Rice and VH Garlic Rib Sauce. I no longer eat Uncle Ben’s rice, but I still occasionally make my mother’s rice recipe as a nostalgic comfort food. I use fresh button mushrooms and some type of brown whole grain rice. (The VH Medium Garlic Rib Sauce is really good — it is one of the few processed foods I still buy and use.)

My palate has come a long way since my boyhood. Last year I and my then-girlfriend Megan (now my wife) attended a mushroom feast at Les Jardins Sauvages, a restaurant in St. Roch de l’Achigan known as a table forestière, which means that the food served is mostly from the forest. When mushroom harvest time rolled around this year and I received my reminder email from chef Nancy Hinton (who has a great food blog), I reserved a table right away for Megan and me.

Last year our meal began at 7 p.m, which meant it was dark outside and we could not really see or appreciate where we were, which was rolling farmland about half an hour outside of Montreal. It was also raining. We had a fantastic and unforgettable meal, and then we went home.

This year we reserved our table for the Sunday lunch, and luckily, that Sunday afternoon was one of the few dry and sunny days this season (it rained the day before and the day after). The restaurant is usually open on Friday and Saturday nights, but for the mushroom feast they expanded their schedule and added Sunday lunches. The photo was taken from our table, which was on a screened-in porch. We could clearly hear the water rushing around the bend of the river that the restaurant was nestled on.

We arrived early enough to have a glass of wine before our meal began. It’s a bring-your-own-wine situation common to many Montreal (and Quebec) restaurants. This means that your meal will cost you less because your wine won’t be marked up by 250% or more, but it also means that some of the money you are saving may be spent on more food at the restaurant. It’s a win-win situation for both restaurant and diner.

Almost all of the ingredients are foraged by Francois Broulliard, a fourth-generation forager who really knows his way around the countryside. The ingredients are then transformed into food by chef Nancy Hinton, who has worked in some of the area’s best eateries.

Here is the menu, with photos: (more…)