This Photo Friday’s shots: from the Chefs Table Society who provided delicious local food at the Michael Pollan event at UBC Farm. Fitting for the season we’re in, and with what’s on the horizon for me.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Cheers,

Jackie

As a food photographer who shares in the belief of the importance of local food and supporting our farmers that grow it, there are few things more totally awesome than being welcome to shoot a few food and local farming people enjoy a fabulous lunch in a farmers garden of all places.

This is what I had the opportunity to photograph, prior to Michael Pollan’s talk and book signing on his latest book, In Defense of Food. Having written about his books in previous blog posts, and since then seeing his name pop up in documentaries and casual conversations with friends, it’s clear that people identify with what he’s saying. To quote Michael and the premise behind In Defense of Food:

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

The day was beautiful, the food was delicious and nutritious, and the company was inspiring. Thank you Barbara Jo and Carol for welcoming me and for organizing the event; and to Mark & Samara for hosting everyone at UBC Farm, and to Vikram & Meeru Vij for filling our stomachs with such tasty Indian cuisine (and for that chick pea & mung bean recipe that I have yet to perfect, but will continue to try!). And thank you of course to Michael Pollan for being part of this movement towards more local, more nutritious, food.

A while back I did some research into food related books and posted what I found over several posts. Clearly this is something that people are interested in because the posts got some much appreciated responses and some great traffic. I took up reading one of the books, The Omnivore’s Dilemma by the award winning author Michael Pollan and I must say that book is making me think; I love it. I mean, it’s always nice to to have spare time entertainment, whether it be books or movies, that are somewhat spoon-fed and allow you to turn off your brain for a little while, but I love a book that makes me really question things; and especially question things about what I eat. Pollan has written another book called In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (love the cover photo), and if you are familiar with Pollan or his books you may want to check out this upcoming Vancouver event:

In partnership with Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks, the UBC Farm is pleased to announce a Saturday afternoon presentation and book signing with award-winning author, Michael Pollan. Vancouver will be Michael’s only Canadian city on his book tour for the paperback version of In Defense of Food.

This unique opportunity to meet Michael takes place at UBC Farm on Saturday, June 6 at 1:00 p.m. At this fundraiser for UBC Farm, Michael will share his manifesto of: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.” He will also be available to sign copies of In Defense of Food.

This exciting afternoon includes a signed copy of In Defense of Food , guided tours of UBC Farm and live music and entertainment. All are encouraged to bring a picnic lunch and a blanket to sit on.

Tickets to this rain or shine event are $45 (includes GST) and are sold exclusively through Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks. The ticket price includes a paperback version of In Defense of Food, and all proceeds from the event will go to support the UBC Farm.

For more information about this and other events, visit Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks website and please call 604-688-6755 to purchase tickets to hear Michael Pollan speak.

I thought I would continue an earlier post, divided up into part 1 and part 2, on recent books surrounding food issues that seem to be so very prevalent in our society, as there are some new interesting sounding books I’ve seen around. There was also a request from one of these earlier posts to include a short description of each book, so I’ll do that from now on too. Here goes…

•Food Security for the Faint of Heart written by Robin Wheeler, published by New Society Publishers, 2008. Wheeler, a BC resident, permaculture activist, author, teacher and founder of the Sustainable Living Arts School, writes about the trip to the grocery store we all so often take for granted. What would we do if there was no grocery store? Where would we get our food? She tries to empower her readers into re-gaining control over their food and where it comes from with chapters such as “Preserving garden food” and “Saving freezer food during a power outage”.

• The Omnivores’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is written by Michael Pollan, published in 2007 by Penguin Press. Simply put, Pollan as a self-proclaimed omnivore, writes a narrative work in which he evaluates where his dinner could come from; specifically from fast-food/industrial, organic, or self-gathered.  Pollan also wrote In Defense of Food which I mentioned in part 1, and Botany of Desire in 2002.

• The End of Food: How the Food Industry is Destroying Our Food Supply and What You Can Do About It by Thomas F. Pawlick. I like the look of the table of contents of this book because though it starts off with chapters titled “The End of Food”, “Collateral Damage” and “The X Files” and a little tale about a tomato that won’t ripen and bounces like a red tennis ball, which all sounds pretty grim (necessary to read, but grim just the same) he follows these with chapters of solutions, called “Think Locally, Fight Locally”  and “Being Human”. I like it already. BONUS: there is an interesting interview of the author by Malcolm Jolley on Gremolata.

• Slow Food Nation by Carlo Petrini, with Forward by Alice Waters, published in 2007. Petrini has written a stack of other books on the slow food movement, is the founder and driving force of Slow Food and was recently acclaimed as a great innovator in Time Magazine’s list of European Heroes.  Slow Food Nation teaches it’s readers about the ways in which they can re-gain control of what they’re eating. BONUS: see a little youtube clip of Petrini.

And if you want to ponder the world of food in a different way, you can check out Food by John Knechtel, Editor, and Director of Alphabet City Media in Toronto, Canada. This book puts together a variety of both visual artist and writers examinations of food: healthy food, unhealthy food, new food, old food, food with emotional ties, food as it’s told from different peoples points of view. What a novel concept; this will most certainly be my next purchase. Knechtel has also edited books on the topics and appropriately titled Trash, Fuel and Suspect.

Happy reading!

~ j