Why The Fuck Does It Say ‘Vancouver 2010′ On My Package of Veggie Sausage?

So last night my boyfriend and I did something that is a bit uncommon in our household – while at the grocery store we decided we would compliment our pasta dinner with some Yves Italian Style Veggie Sausage. A bit of an abnormality, as we don’t eat a lot of ‘fake meats’… but otherwise, it was fine. We do treat ourselves to these things from time to time.

Fast forward to a few hours later, back at home, making dinner. As I’m chopping the ‘sausage’ to be fried up with some garlic and onion and whatnot, I noticed something on the package. A Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics logo. A (perhaps beer induced) exclamation followed of ‘Why the fuck does it say Vancouver 2010 on my package of veggie sausage?‘.

It seems that Yves is ‘An Official Supplier of the Vancouver Winter Olympics’. Concrete barriers and chainlink fences, furry mascot toys and skyscraper sized banners aside, the Olympics cannot be escaped in this city. Even in my own kitchen.

Now my stance on the Olympics is this: They are entirely unncessary, especially for a city the size of Vancouver, facing the challenges Vancouver is facing (severe homelessness and drug use issues, high child poverty rates, ridiculously high property values, high unemployment, schools being shut down/teachers being laid off, etc. etc. etc.). I understand why the protestors protest. The Olympics are less about celebrating atheleticism and more about money, branding, power brokering, and politics. In someways, I think you need to be living in a host city to understand just how entirely NOT about athleticism the Olympics really are. At this point, it kind of feels like, ‘Oh yeah, I heard there’s going to be some sporting events at somepoint too..‘ Sporting events that most people cannot afford to participate in, of course. But I digress.

However, the Olympics are here, and I work in an industry that will require me to be on hand and work nearly 60 hours a week for the next month or so, as the city swells with people seeing the sights, participating in events, and getting drunk at parties. On my handful of days off, I will probably be walking around with a camera, taking in the crowds and offerings, checking out the many art installations the Olympics made possible, trying to put my cynicism aside. I have already gone to one ‘Cultural Olympiad’ event, and will admittidly, be going to a few more. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a supportor of the gams. I’d rather that they weren’t here. I do try to avoid any unncessary bandwagon jumping, and I’m certainly not paying $450 for the pleasure of an evening in the Molson Canadian Hockey House.

Which is why I am so irked about my veggie sausage. The Olympics are so impervious in this city that they are nearly impossible to avoid or boycott if one should so desire. Boycotting the Olympics isn’t about being a downer, it’s about economic concerns, the battle of the wealthy vs those in poverty, and about paying stupidly high taxes for the next 10-20 years to pay this thing off. And it isn’t as easy as not going to any events or turning on your tv for the next few weeks. Not everyone has the pleasure of getting out of town, and everyone will have to deal with near impossible commutes, subway lineups, police checkpoints, the large amounts of noise coming from the outdoor ‘livesites’ downtown (remembering that downtown Vancouver is mostly a residential district). To properly boycott the Olympics, one has to opt out of the games economically. Which means not putting your money towards supporting the games (anymore than one already is being forced to do already, see: property taxes in City of Vancouver, next 10 years). Which apparently means, double checking what you buy at the grocery store.

I’m not boycotting the games entirely myself. But I am being selective about where and how my money is being spent. I didn’t expect my veggie sausage purchase to be connected in -anyway- to the Olympics, yet here we are, purchase already made, dinner already ate, me ranting away in my blog. This is the problem the Olympics has on a host city: There is no opting in or out, everyone is playing a part of this corporate game, whether we want to or not. Which means we are all furthering corporate agendas in favor of supporting the least of those around us, instead of taking care of each other, instead of looking after our neighbors. Those we live next to and see daily are starving on the streets, and we have chosen to spend our money not on helping them, but on inviting the world over for champagne and caviar. It’s embarrassing.

It’s just another reminder of the corporate politic-ing involved with many a food purchase. I’ve yet to watch Food Inc. because part of me already knows exactly how much I’m going to dread what I see in the movie. I’ve read enough books on Food Justice issues to be disturbingly aware of how much the food industry is less and less about actual food once you get so high up the corporate ladder. I’ve got my head in the sand at the moment, as my last few months worth of reading and docu watching has been focused on theological studies. Maybe it’s time to switch back. It seems I need a good reminder of why we tend to avoid pre-packaged foods in the first place.

Seriously though. Vancouver 2010 on my fucking veggie sausage? Ha! I still can’t believe it…

Tundra Songs – Review

Last weekend my boyfriend and I got to experience a rare and incredible treat – a live performance by Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq live with the Kronos Quartet.

Some of you may know Tanya’s throat singing from the Bjork album Medulla, but for those of you who haven’t heard her, you are missing out on something special and spectacular. Tanya takes traditional Inuit throat singing (normally performed by two women) and turned it on it’s head with her amazing solo performances and contemporary collaborations.

Watching her live, she is a force to be reckoned with. The sounds that she creates are raw, visceral, beautiful, sexual, and emotive, not at all pretty but intensely captivating. Her collaboration with the Kronos Quartet was called ‘Tundra Songs’ telling the stories of the tundra combining recorded audio (ice creaks, snowmobiles, airplanes, children playing hockey, dogs barking), Tanya’s singing, and the string quartet. The night felt magical, and watching Tanya sing felt like I was looking inside of someone, seeing someone make intimate sounds in such a beautiful public display was truely mind blowing.

If you haven’t heard of her yet – check her out. Her MySpace Profile is here.

The People’s Grocery – Food Activists Tackles Issues Local Authorities Won’t

Though this video is old (from 2008), this gem is a great example of a food revolution created and started by everyday people in circumstances where local authorities turn a blind eye.

West Oakland is a community of 30,000 people. And as of 2008 when this video was made, the area boasted 53 liquor stores and zero grocery stores. Most people got their food from convenience stores and fast food joints. Until the arrival of The People’s Grocery. The People’s Grocery is a local activist led organization that bases it’s philosophy on food justice: That everyone should have access to the best, healthiest food available, regardless of race, social standing, economic status, or physical health. In addition to being a food co-operative, The People’s Grocery runs 3 community gardens, an urban farm, and adult cooking classes.

I tried to do some research into what the organization is doing now, 2 years later, however their website seems to be temporarily down (a cached version shows it was active as of Jan 28 2010 so I’m assuming it’s just a temporary outage). However they do seem so have an incredible cache of youtube videos about the various facets of their organization. I’ll be tucking into these with some tea this afternoon…

Friday Five – Five Ways to Easily Reduce the Amount of Meat in Your Diet (1 of 2)

mOO... d LiL... by flickr user poonomo

Whether for health, ethical, environmental/sustainability, or food safety reasons, we could all stand to consume a little bit less meat in our diets… even if we can’t fathom going fully vegetarian or vegan. That being said, we all have to start somewhere. While my diet is almost strict vegetarian (I say almost b/c I am still transitioning, and have a few products I am still learning to give up), I too, used to be among the people who claim that they could “never give up meat”. What started as an experiment almost 2 years ago has developed into a life changing journey. As I started, here are some things that helped me at the start of the (at times painful) process of reducing the amount of meat in my diet.

1. Use Mushrooms instead of meat. There are a few dishes that immediately come to mind in which early on, I started to use mushrooms instead of meat with great success. Any dish in which chicken would be cut into small strips and fried, added to a sauce, etc. we started to use oyster mushrooms instead of meat. Think butter chicken, (or any other curry chicken) teryaki, stirfrys, etc. The mushrooms take on a similar texture as meat and absorb the flavors of the dish without losing their own. Another great success we had with mushrooms is portobellos. Their large size and meaty texture make them a great replacement on the grill (or in the frying pan) for burgers, they can easily be stuffed and baked to replace chicken/beef, and they also work quite well as ‘beef’ or ‘chicken’ strips added to a salad.

2. Discover Vegetarian Pizza. Most pizza places these days seem to carry a wide variety of vegetarian pizzas. Everything from the basic (plain cheese) to the expected (greek vegetarian) to the exotic (pesto with pine nuts, sun dried tomatoes, roasted garlic, and blue cheese). Vegetarian pizzas are equally delicious to their meat loaded counter-parts, but without all of the issues (sodium, nitrates, etc.) of meat. Better yet – once you’ve found a favorite and conquered the world of vegetarian pizza, try ordering your next pizza cheeseless! It sounds odd but is actually incredibly delicious, low in fat, and easier on the cows . In the words of a friend of mine in regards to pizza with just sauce and veggies – “I’ve never met a bread and sauce combo that I didn’t like!“

3. Find a good vegan or vegetarian blog to add to your blog roll. Having a good vegetarian or vegan blog in your blogroll (or regular blog reading list) can inspire you to make more meatless dishes. Getting regular updates on the wide variety of dishes in which meat isn’t even a thought in the process will inspire you to try more in your home kitchen. A blog with great photography is key, especially if you are new to the world of vegetarian cooking. A great place to start, and one of my favorite blogs, is 101cookbooks.com.

4. Use Veggie Ground Round. Or a similar product if this is not available in your area. This was the first and is the only ‘meat replacement product’ that I use on a regular basis in my kitchen. The colour/texture is exactly that of ground beef, which makes it a perfect substitute – especially in the many dishes where ground beef is meant to absorb the flavours around it. Think Tacos, Sloppy Joes, Spaghetti Bolognese, etc. There are countless times when I have fed dishes with this in it to the most diehard omnivores without telling them it was vegetarian – and no one has ever noticed the difference.

5. Participate in Meatless Mondays. The goal of Meatless Mondays is to “reduce meat consumption by 15% and improve public health and the health of the planet“. Endorsed by people such as Paul McCartney, Al Gore, and Michael Pollen, the campaign challenges people to remove meat from their diets on just on day a week. The website is a wealth of information from environmental and nutritional impacts of eating meat, to recipies and articles. Just one day a week. Think you can do it?

Stay tuned next Friday for part 2 of this series – 5 MORE Ways to Easily Reduce the Amount of Meat in Your Diet…

A Walk to Beautiful – Must Watch Documentary

PBS’s A Walk to Beautiful is one of the most heartbreaking documentaries I’ve ever seen. It tells the stories of girls in Ethiopia left incontinent due to a complication in long difficult childbirths (where the child is almost always stillborn), that causes tears in the walls of the vagina that connect to the bladder, or rectum, or sometimes, both. Girls with urine and body waste leaking from their vaginas are left as outcasts in their communities. Their husbands leave them. They are made to sleep in shacks outside of the family house. They have little hope for work or relationships. This documentary follows the girls as they make 17 hour journeys by bus and foot to a clinic Addis Ababa, seeking a cure, and a new lease on life.

The story is tragic, lighted only by the amazing work done by Dr. Catherine Hamlin and other clinic doctors at the non-profit Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. Patients who arrive from all over Ethiopia are treated for free. While the clinc completes about 22-30 operations a week, over 100,000 girls and women in Ethiopia suffer from this debilitation condition.

While it’s hard to not want to weep while watching this documentary, seeing the new life that these girls are given touches something so familiar and joyful inside of me. It’s easy to forget that if it were not for our birthplace geography, any of us in front of our computers could be any of those girls on the screen.

To find out hMore information on the documentary, the hospital, and fistulas can be found here. A direct link to the hospital featured in the documentary is here, which includes how to make a donation.

Entering My Vagina Without My Permission is Rape. Period.

Well isn’t this just lovely? According to the Globe and Mail, Canadian Medical Students are rountinely performing pelvic examinations on unconscious women under anesthetic before or after their normally scheduled surgeries. Without notifiying them before or after – that is: without obtaining consent.

According to the article, this is common practice in Canadian teaching hospitals. Under the assumption that when asked, women would deny students the opportunity to practice pelvic exams, somehow, the most appealing alternative is to do so without asking the women at all. What makes this even crazier is that the article goes on to cite research that shows over 60% of women, when asked, would consent to a pelvic examination by students as a teaching tool.

I am speechless. This is an unethical practice at best. I certainly know that I would expect to be asked prior to having medical students put their fingers in my vagina and/or rectum. I certainly would not expect such a thing to happen without me knowing while in a most vulnerable state – unconscious for the purposes of a medical procedure. In a medical system run predominately by men – this is just another example of “doctor knows best”. However, my body is not just something that anyone can access at anytime for any purpose.

For the record, I would count myself amongst those who would consent when asked. But I would have to be asked. I want to be aware – and further – awake when someone is accessing such a sacred part of my body.

The Pixel Project Weekend Webinar Series

Courtesy of ‘We Can All End Violence Against Women BC Campaign‘ via Facebook:

The Pixel Project, an innovative global Web 2.0 fund and awareness raising Violence Against Women (VAW) campaign, is pleased to announce “The Pixel Project Weekend Webinar 2010 Series”, a number of live online public education seminars on gender-based violence that will be broadcast live from February 2010 onwards.

The first webinar will be by Clay Jones of White Ribbon, the largest campaign in the world of men working to end VAW and will take place at 6pm EST on Friday 5 February 2010. Aside from White Ribbon, upcoming webinar speakers include representatives from UNIFEM, Cairo-based El Karama, the award-winning India-based Bell Bajao campaign, Malaysia’s Women’s Aid Organisation and the USA’s National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

For more information, or to register, click here.

I’ve never heard of the Pixel Project before, but I will try to watch all of these webinars. Unfortunately I will be working when most of them are broadcast live, so I’ll have to catch up after the fact. Also, I’d previously never heard of the Pixel Project but am incredibly intrigued by the concept. Will have to do some research…