SALSA SALSA!

August 13, 2008

If you’re in or near Los Angeles this Sunday, may I suggest that you spend your entire allotted carbon footprint for the weekend on visiting the Fallen Fruit art collective’s summer harvest event SALSA SALSA. There you can make and taste tomato salsas while listening and dancing to salsa music. SALSA SALSA is a celebration of public space and the culmination of the LOVE APPLES project in which 72 tomato plants were installed on 12 traffic islands in LA and carefully tracked to see which thrive and which perish, à la Survivor.

LOVE APPLES is an experiment in public space in the city of Los Angeles, imagining new ways in which such spaces could be utilized to make our communities more livable and engaged. It promotes community awareness, sharing, food safety, public resources, and organic gardening. LOVE APPLES is a collaboration between the art collective Fallen Fruit and Islands of LA. The artists of Fallen Fruit investigate urban space, ideas of neighborhood and new forms of located citizenship and community all through the lens of fruit. Islands of LA is an art project that is turning traffic islands into territories of art to create community, foster discussion and explore the use and availability of public space.

PLEASE JOIN Fallen Fruit from 3 to 7 p.m. on Sunday August 17th at Farmlab (1745 N. Spring Street) to make salsa and dance together. There will be music from Mestizo L.A., a local salsa band, and a free Salsa dance class taught by Miguel Candela, a local Salsa teacher. Meet new people and talk about the future shape and texture of life in this city, including the artists and organizers listed above. Bring your homegrown or street-picked tomatoes (or chiles!) and collaborate with your neighbors on new and remarkable salsas. Bring a good food eating and dancing friend – this event is free to the public.

debra at 11:07 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us

The French Paradox,
Occitanian kids and food

August 11, 2008

Small child napping on the dinner garden path

A few weeks ago at a dinner where a meat-rich hors d’oeuvre was enjoyed during the conversation course, two little girls, probably 9 or 10 yrs old, were standing before an elaborate platter laden with rillettes on toast, discussing this informal snack.

“Oh, I just LOVE Laure’s goose rillettes, the bay, the thyme, it’s SOOO aromatic. It just opens up in your mouth!”

“I could just eat them every day.” “Mmm mmmm, me too!”

Little Occitanian girls discussing a heady mixture of everything-but-the-squeal goose parts, butt and brain, and skin and vein, meat and fat, nose hole to tail hole eating.

And although not meat related, child-behaviour-related: What a delightful little boy last night at the restaurant, 3 yrs old, playing with another guest’s dog. The boy had too much energy to sit down, but his parents just let him do his thing, focussing on their exquisite dinners, and anyway unable to reign him in as he trotted out a dance with the dog between the tables. He weaved through the clumps of hedge-couched guests, all around the garden with the dog in tow. As the evening got on, he wore himself out, twice collapsing in a puddle of his own fatigue and falling into slumbers right on the ground. Very cute. Then one parent or another would scoop him up, and he was suddenly really small again. He refuelled on a snuggle, a micro nap and morsels of meat from their plates, and then took off again for more adventure, the source of all our smiles.

Maybe this is the real French Paradox, children enjoying eating. Appreciation of the entire animal starts early here and I witness time and time again children who are actively interested in food during preparation, but especially during dining. Could it be that the secret of getting children to eat is about making it delicious?

debra at 7:56 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us

An urban vegetarian in the land of meat

August 10, 2008

Mauve and merveilleuse, the house terrine

“In the city she’s a vegetarian, but here in the country, she puts entire pigs in her body!”

And sheep. And geese. And this is how my dear friends describe me, as an urban vegetarian.

Each day on my way down to the kitchen garden, I ride past a gaggle of geese that live in a large enclosure with views to the surrounding mountains, the river and a wall dotted with 12th century water wheels. On walks up in the mountains we encounter herds of sheep foraging for chestnuts and in another nearby microclimate, we find them nibbling and kicking up loads of dust perfumed with wild thyme. Considering the quality of life led by the animals here (and the lives of those that tend to them), it seems downright unethical not to tuck in.

Here in Occitania the quality of every single link in the supply chain, from the living animal to the prepared meat dish that I’m about to taste, is fuelled with a love of quality, a quality that gives honour to the environment of both the humans and the animals, a very high quality of the food craft, something stronger than love for the materiality of the ingredients and their ambling route to the end product, and a praiseworthy understanding of how to optimally use every single part of an animal once you’ve taken its life. It seems to be common practice here, and common knowledge. Meat without one secret. Thank you, Beautiful Beasts! For what it’s worth, you have become memorable!

Charmed garden during twilight dining

debra at 11:26 | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us