Test Tube Meat is Bullshit

There’s a strange buzz going around the technologically-addicted, affluent West: people are excited about “in vitro meat,” the idea that flesh could be “ethically” eaten if it were grown in a laboratory.  The idea has even gotten a publicity group (I won’t call them an animal rights organization) in a flap: PETA has offered $1 million to whoever first perfects the technology.

This is very, very strange stuff.  Some are so cut off from material realities that they are willing to look to technology for new solutions, even where there isn’t a problem in the first place.  We are being sold the concept of test-tube meat as if it were an ethically-neutral solution to the problem of animal exploitation and death raised by the call to veganism.  (There isn’t a problem because it’s easy to not ask for an animal’s exploitation or death, simply by not eating or using products made from them).

But what is forgotten is that test-tube meat is not alchemy.  Something can’t be made from nothing.  Test-tube meat will still require nutrients to “grow” the tissues.  It will also require complicated and expensive set-ups for tissue cultivation: laboratories with sterile equipment, autoclaves, chemical cleaning agents, stainless steel and glass, particulate filters, and all that is involved with such high technology.  None of this is cheap.  None of this is environmentally friendly.  None of this is ethically pure.

Test tube meat won’t be cheap.  It’s not a solution to world hunger.  It will be another lifestyle choice of the rich and affluent, who would pride themselves on their ‘purity.’  Meanwhile, people still starve in the streets, the ghettos, the villages, and soil keeps eroding under the tractor tires of wasteful industrial farming.  We could be joining efforts to plant trees in arid regions, helping them retain groundwater and control desertification.  We could be promoting careful farming methods that promote diverse seed stocks, natural resistance to pests and diseases, organic practices and permaculture techniques that will insure that there are plants and seeds for future generations.  Instead, we waste our energies on foolish whimsies like laboratory-grown meat.

Apart from no longer being able to stomach fatty, dense animal flesh, and no longer desiring it, I don’t want test tube meat because I don’t think it makes any sense morally or practically to “grow” food in a laboratory.  What makes sense is to GROW food in the SOIL.  Walnut trees produce two tons or more per acre of protein- and omega-3- rich food; cattle can only be grazed at a rate of one cow per acre.  (While test-tube meat is supposed to improve the rate of this inefficiency, it is still inefficient – and wasteful).  And trees generously provide shade, erosion control, beauty, wildlife habitat, and fuel and wood for future generations.  A quarter-cup of almonds has more protein than an egg, and more calcium than a quarter cup of milk (see chart).

I want my minerals, vitamins, carbohydrates, proteins, fats, anti-oxidants from a garden, direct from the earth.  That’s the only place they come from, anyways.  Coming from an animal, or from a laboratory, means those nutrients have been filtered up the food chain, with subsequent loss of efficiency.

And it’s blind faith in the goodness of increased technology that is helping to destroy the one habitat we have, the one habitat all creatures share.  What about, for once, exercising restraint.  Saying, “Just because we have the technology, doesn’t mean we should use it.  Just because something can be done, doesn’t mean we have the right to do it.”

Test-tube meat is no solution.  The solution is to stop eating meat and using animal products.  The solution is to change the foolish mind-set that would even lead to the concept of laboratory-grown ‘food’: the same mind-set that has led us towards what many predict will shortly be an ecological collapse, and what has already been an utter devastation of species, habitats, and peoples and cultures all over the world.

The solution is stop using fossil fuels and pumping CO2 and pollution into the environment.  Stop enslaving the rest of the world, its peoples and its creatures and its habitats, for our wants and needs.  Get over ourselves, and start addressing how to live in low-impact relationship with the biosphere, instead of lording over it.  Use appropriate technology – enough to satisfy our needs, not more.  Eat nutritious food, not animals.  Learn how to plant food gardens, especially perennials.  Plant trees.  Harvest rainwater.  Help others.  Be modest and careful with the only home we have.

ack – a hack

Well, I’m the unwitting victim of some sort of virus, through Twitter of all things.  I clicked on an direct message from a trusted connection, which led me to a website with nothing on it.  Next thing I know the computer is having trouble booting up – something to do with the CPU.  Turns out, my contact was unwittingly sending ’spam’ e-mail as they themselves had been infected with a virus.

Anyways, all that is to say – well – first of all, apparently Twitter can host viruses and hacking – and secondly, I don’t really have time to write much as I’m trying to figure this computer thing out and fix it.

But in the meantime, here’s a few links to cool people I have encountered, thanks to Twitter:

Catherine Burt – In-A-Gadda-Da Vegan blog

Ed Coffin – Eating Consciously blog

Enjoy the words of these thoughtful people!

A year of blogging

Well, I’ve been blogging for exactly a year now, as my first post was this date last November.  So, I have cause to reflect a little.  I’d say it’s going well so far, the blogging project – though I’m still a little puzzled about how to approach it.  How personal do I make this blog?  How much theory, and history, and how much narrative?  I’d say so far I’ve struck an uneasy balance – I feel the blog moves wildly between subjects with little continuity except my writing style.  Is that acceptable?  I’m not sure.  But I’m constantly refining what I want to talk about, what my grasp on animal rights is, and how I want to apply it.  I’d say that the blog helps those things move along.  The more I’m forced to write, the more I try to wrap my head around an issue, the more I develop my own understanding and way of writing about it.

There are certainly a lot of topics I would love to get more in-depth about on this blog.  So much could still be said about non-violence, about feminism, about anti-racism and issues of poverty.  And about free-living animals and how we impact them – something which many animal advocacy groups miss.  Ever heard PETA say one word about free-living animals and our impact on their lives, their habitats?  I haven’t.  It’s all one great circus about advertisements, KFC, celebrities, and undercover factory farm expose.  On the other hand, there are organizations like the revered World Wildlife Fund, which takes no position against whaling or the seal kill in Canada and which supports hunting animals.  I loved the WWF when I was a child and it’s heartbreaking to know that they don’t actually care enough about animals to speak out unequivocally against them being killed, even for sport.  So – yet another reason I support Friends of Animals, as they are consistent advocates for the rights of free-living animals, and they don’t waver from their position that we should stop interfering in the lives of animals.

What I’m most proud of in the year of blogging?  I would say, my in-depth research about the seal kill in Canada, which I wrote up in article format after making a speech at a chilly, rainy demonstration in Victoria.  I’m proud of my article about vegan-organic farming, which got listed in a Denman Island website on the same subject.  And I’m happy to have written about “silk” screening, vegan style, as that brings hits daily to my blog from people searching the internet about D.I.Y. silk screen printing.  Finally, I’m proud of having spoken out against Canada’s visa restrictions against Mexico and Czech Republic visitors.  The comments I’ve received on that post indicate that I’ve reached some people who it’s affected, and I’m happy to show solidarity and welcome – Canada is NOT a xenophobic country, and it’s hypocritical to try to close the doors on new immigrants seeing as we’re all immigrant squatters on indigenous territories.

Where to go from here?  I’d like to focus much more on the history aspect which I occasionally touch on.  I think it’s interesting that vegetarianism has been with us so long – before the 19th century, abstainers from animal products were called “Pythagoreans” after the famous mathematician, whose school in 6th century BC Croton was one of the first to accept women students.  The idea that vegetarianism has been around for so long and in so many cultures counteracts the accusations of trendiness, or twentieth-century invention, or granola-crunching hippyness that vegetarianism is so often slapped with, by people who are averse to considering the ethical reasons for not harming or using animals.  Resurrecting vegetarian history can go a long ways towards asserting its ‘legitimacy’ as a philosophy and practice that has reverberated through time and permeated the boundaries of cultures.

don’t just Buy Nothing today …

Well it’s that whole Buy Nothing Day today, I believe.  The Friday one month before Christmas, where the whole North American continent is supposed to go nuts with Christmas spending.  Eventually some people got together and said to themselves, “This is wasteful and excessive.  Let’s boycott this!”  And the Buy Nothing Day movement was born.  Which is fine and good, except that it’s kind of … insulting for people who don’t have money in the first place, and who would love to be able to buy anything.  Saying, “I have the choice to boycott non-essential consumer spending for one day” doesn’t fully recognize the situation of rich and poor, of class divides, of global North consuming the global South.

Yet it’s a start, and this is why: when you buy cheap consumer goods, you are sending most of the profit to the middleman.  The money gets spread out along the line: there’s costs for production, packaging, shipping, marketing, warehousing, distributing, labeling, managing and so on; and at every step, some of it pays workers and costs, but the rest is taken for profit by the owners.  So what’s the deal on the other end of that product?  Somewhere there is a person who is getting paid pennies, or less than pennies, to produce something that costs dollars.  Your money disappears, filtered up, up, up through the layers, lining the wallets of CEO’s and business owners, while somewhere else in the world, someone’s getting screwed.  There’s someone on a production line, many someones, and their days are hell.

I think about this often right now, as I’ve been moved temporarily to a different part of the bakery, to accommodate the ‘low season’ slump: I’m packaging cakes on a production line.  My days are hell, and boring, and repetitive, and a strain on my back and on my hands.  I feel unimaginative, dull, a part of a machine, a number.  I like to complain.  And yet, I look at the plastic packaging that we put the cakes in, and I think – somewhere in the world, there is someone else working in that plastics manufacturing plant.  Along with all the other complaints I have about my job, they are working in dangerous conditions, being exposed to noxious fumes, and being paid a fraction of what I make.  And possibly being exposed to overt racism and intimidation on the job, and being punished if they’re too slow, like having their lunch break taken away from them.  And this is the situation for millions of workers all over the world right now.

So … all this spending that’s encouraged in the wake of the holiday season … well I’m not sure people would spend so much on so many unnecessary things, if they realized the cost that is paid at the other end of the line.  The cost of good people’s time, and energy, and lives, in exchange for cheap plastics and other commodities that really, we could do well without.  And that’s just the human cost – not to mention the environmental costs of production, shipping, wastage, packaging.

It’s not to blame all the evils of the world on the consumers.  There are many, many businesses to blame for all that is wrong – and the worst is how successful they are at hiding all that happens all along the production line, and how infrequently they are held accountable for it by governments.  How many labor laws they break, and rivers they pollute, and communities they wring dry just for the sake of a dirty profit, and how infrequently that is made public knowledge, let alone punished.  Yet it also starts with those who willingly support such businesses – the consumer is certainly not blameless for not knowing (it’s not an excuse legally to “not know” you were breaking the law, either!)  And also, I see the solution as coming from citizens, not from corporations.  We can end this, we can change this, even if the big bosses never, ever change their tunes.  We can drown them out, run them out of business, just not give them our money.  And that’s basically the tune of Buy Nothing Day that I dig: empowerment for the people.

Please, don’t just Buy Nothing for one day.  Don’t buy it if you don’t need it, period.  Don’t buy it pre-made if you can buy the ingredients and make it yourself, either – it’s almost always cheaper and better that way.  And support local farmers, local artisans; people making quality, well-made products out of durable, ethical (for people and animals), environmental materials.  Join a local exchange trading system (LETS) where you can trade your time and skills with others in the community for mutual benefit.  And be willing to pay more for union-made goods, where you need them.  Because we can’t fix what’s wrong at the end of the line unless we’re willing to make ethical, enduring systems of trade and barter that work on this end of the line, and all the way along it.  There’s a long way to go … But we’re not consumers, we’re human beings.  Let’s live that way.

Many of us are active in creating and maintaining a sense of community amongst our friends and neighbours. But more and more our hands seem to be tied: the world is in serious trouble, both ecologically and economically. Few people would argue with this, but how many would recognise a major cause of our problems? We assert that a major problem, perhaps the major problem, lies in conventional money and the form that it takes.

Every modern community depends on the flow of national currency through its internal economy. The money swirls in and it rushes out again. Money flows into the community from exports, visitors and government spending. It flows out on imports, travel and taxes.

When local industry loses an export market, when fewer visitors arrive or when governments cut spending, the money that leaves is not replaced.

As the amount of money circulating in the community falls, so does the level of trading. Business declines and people lose jobs, not because they have nothing to offer, but because there is not enough money to go around.

In the contest for a share of this limited supply, people work in ways that damage their own health, the environment and the well-being of the community.

People are prepared to do almost anything for money because they need it to take part in the game. This is the source of the problem, since money, by virtue of its very structure, is scarce and hard to come by.

There are three reasons for this:

• there is only so much in circulation;
• it can go virtually anywhere, and so it does;
• you can’t issue it yourself.

All over the world communities suffer from a shortage of money, simply because there is only so much of it, it’s gone elsewhere and they can’t print their own.

When you think about it, this situation is nonsensical. Money is merely a means of exchange, a set of tickets, a number in your bank account. It has no value in itself – you can’t eat it, wear it or build anything with it.

It is a measure of value, like an inch measures length or a ton measures weight . There need never be a shortage of the measure.

Imagine a carpenter not working because he has run out of inches!

- The LETSystem Design Manual

mouse prevention, vegan style

So, living in a rural setting has its drawbacks.  And we have discovered a bit of a mouse problem: they have been nesting beside the house, within the basement walls, and also in a storage shed/art studio in the yard.  Clearly, I don’t want to kill the mice.  They are doing their own thing, and have found access to warm environs which are very convenient for them.  It’s not their fault that humans have gone and built such tempting shelters on the land; otherwise, they would hole up in a hollow log or dig their little tunnels in the forest, disturbing no-one.

So I’m on a mission to find humane ways of REPELLING – not killing – the mice.  So far, only one has died, by accident: it climbed into a batch of bread dough that I left downstairs near the wood heater to proof overnight.  It would have lifted the lid, climbed in, and drowned in the dough.  It was a very awful thing to find the next day.  Selfishly, I was sad for the loss of the bread dough as much as the death of the mouse.  But at least it alerted us to the problem of mouse-human space conflict, and we can work to find a solution.

Anyways, to prevent tragedies of this nature, I’m researching natural rodent deterrents.  So far, the most promising seems to be the use of peppermint oil, which they find repellant.  The oil is dripped onto cotton balls and the balls are dispersed wherever the mice want to nest.  But don’t use peppermint extract, because they’ll laugh and then poop on it, like they did to me.

Further, the leavings of their natural predators can prove daunting to mice.  I’ll be raiding the litter box of the long-tailed cat who lives with us, to disperse a few nuggets beneath the art studio/shed.  Doesn’t seem like a recommended practice for indoors!  On a related note, there are ‘mice deterrents’ for sale which are ‘organic’ and ‘non-toxic’ – being made of urine from wild cats or foxes.  But this isn’t really a good option if what you’re looking for is something that’s humane to animals – while it doesn’t involve killing mice, it does involve either killing or holding captive the wild cats and foxes for the sake of taking their urine!

Here are some simple steps to insure that mice aren’t invading your habitat:

1. Make sure your building is sound.  Any crack or crevice can serve as an entry point.  If mice are getting into your building, shore up, repair, patch, and seal the exterior of your house so that they don’t have an easy access point.  If your house is at the point where rodents are finding entry, maybe thoughts of renovation are in order.

2. Careful storage of food.  Mice are attracted not only to warm spaces but also to smells of food.  Make sure all food is properly stored, with tight-fitting lids, in plastic, metal, or glass containers.  Ideally, food should be stored in areas where humans are frequently present – mice are more hesitant to venture into high-traffic areas.

3. Repellents.  I’ll report back on the success of the mint oil and cat leavings. There are other options like sonar emitters, which are small devices plugged in to walls which pulse out tones inaudible to humans, but supposedly intolerable to rodents.  We had no success with these devices in a mountain cabin in British Columbia, but maybe there are better brands, or better places to put them.

4. Humane traps, like that tube – Havahart I think it’s called.  Not the best option – where are you going to relocate the mice?  Are they going to come back?  Are they going to become someone else’s problem?  Unless you sort through steps 1 and 2, step 4 isn’t going to get you very far, I think.  Plus it’s more work for you.

5. Landscaping.  Foundation plantings of mint around the house are reportedly helpful.  I will certainly try this with my own house.  Plus you’ll have delicious mint to enjoy.  But remember that mint is a plant that can overtake whole gardens – box it in with something so its roots can’t spread, unless you love it enough to want it everywhere!

vegan love cake, plus a look at my recipe folder

Not much time to post, but here are some photos. This is the cake I made today. Simple vanilla cake (from How it All Vegan cookbook) with ‘Buttercream’ (that is, Margarinecoconutcream) frosting plus a vegan Nutella-like substance and some melted chocolate:

 

And here is the second-hand file folder I jazzed up to keep my recipe cards in, with lots of pictures of delicious organic vegetables:

Lee Hall disrupted at the London Vegan Festival

Finally, the post I’ve been avoiding – I’ve got my thoughts together on the subject:

Today it is my task to have to speak out against some tedious happenings in the world of animal advocacy.  I had heard about this, but didn’t realize it was all over the internet: I came across a website recently where a small group of people were crowing about disrupting a session at the London Vegan Festival this autumn.  They report happily that they prevented American activist and author Lee Hall from speaking on a prepared topic.  These activists, allied with Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), were still furious about a book published by Hall back in 2006.

Entitled Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror, the book is a thundering critique of SHAC’s actions in Britain and abroad, and a treatise against violence, intimidation, threats and vandalism in the name of animal rights.  Hall argues that these actions come across as misanthropic and desperate, and that they do not serve the cause.  Much of Capers is dedicated to showing how public opinion and media coverage become intensely negative regarding animal rights when tactics such as firebombing, vandalism, or personal threats against vivisectors are employed.

According to SHAC and the website authors, Hall didn’t get the facts straight, in that the protesters who did employ vandalism and intimidation were innocent of the grave-robbing associated with their campaign – which was to shut down a family-operated guinea pig farm which supplied to Huntingdon (a contract animal testing company).  Even so, Hall’s critique stands in place.  Who have the protesters convinced?  The guinea pig farmers won public sympathy as victims of vandalism, and have since reverted to exploiting other animals – dairy cows.  If the idea was to expose these people to concepts about animal rights, or even to literally save animals from exploitation, this can’t be counted as success.  And the press in Britain and abroad was terrible.

The whole SHAC campaign puzzles me.  Why target only one company, when there is a whole industry devoted to vivisection and cruelty for profit?  Why focus on small-time employees, while the head honchos are the ones making the decisions, and raking in the cash for the abuse of animals?  Why intimidate and threaten, when it turns public opinion against an achievable cause?  (In that public opinion is generally not favorable towards vivisection, especially for non-medical purposes).

Whenever I encounter SHAC-allied activists I have a sense that indeed, here are people who deeply care about animals, but who lack a deeper and wider understanding, a big-picture focus.  These seem like kind and deeply sensitive people who are outraged and hurt by the abuse of animals which they perceive all around them.  Their narrow focus seems to be their downfall.  They have no trust in the powers of persuasion and little faith in the average person to “see the light” about animal cruelty, as they have themselves done.  They feel the issue must be forced, and it must be forced now. It is easy to imagine what little prodding is needed to persuade such people to adopt methods of force and coercion.

Yet those who carry compassion and humility, who are grounded in a sense of community and hope are not convinced by such tactics.  Why the sense of desperation?  Why the lack of human feeling for the vivisectors and their families, so that bullhorns outside the windows or threats against the children are seen as acceptable?  Lackeys though they may be for a company which requires them to perform cruel experiments, is there no chance they could be convinced to change careers through reasoned dialogue?  And how is it that the lowest-ranking workers are always those under attack – the janitors at the labs, the scientists who do the dirty work?  Are they easier targets than C.E.O.’s?  Not as rich or well-protected?

How about Lee Hall?  Is it easier to go after and silence a pacifist than to do something significant and risk-taking?  Right now, Friends of Animals – the organization for whom Lee Hall is legal director – is taking the United States National Park Service to court for their plans to kill huge numbers of deer in a national park.  And whether or not they win the case, they will have the chance to create national headlines about the issue and to advocate for the animals on their own terms.  Several years ago, the organization risked its financing and its donor base in order to save a primate sanctuary in Texas, despite being repeatedly sued by PETA in a messy squabble.

Friends of Animals (FOA) is an organization which reaches many people.  They seem like reasonable, thoughtful people who care deeply about animals, and their simple, direct messages reverberate across a wide demographic.  I think that’s some indication of how to “do” animal rights activism.  Have a message and a modus operandi that reaches a wide segment of the population – people who may never have thought about animal rights in a  serious way, but who can begin to do so after being exposed to good literature and sound arguments for the rights of wolves, dairy cows, feral cats, and all the rest.  But that’s not to dumb down the message, or to ask for less than animals deserve.  But the message from FOA is consistent and simple: animals deserve freedom from our interference in their lives and their habitats.  I respect what they do as an organization.

That’s why I feel angry and weary just thinking about the disruption that was made at the London Vegan Festival.  And I wonder, how must Lee Hall have felt?  How about the other conference-goers – how must they have felt to witness this?  Was it a suitable introduction to veganism and animal rights?  I expect that they had come to Hall’s particular speech in order to learn more about the motivation and philosophy of an author at the forefront of the animal-rights movement, not to be party to an unpleasant confrontation regarding a book published three years ago.

Aside from the posturing and the promotion of violence and coercion in the name of animal rights, there’s also a basic issue of free speech at stake here.  If you disagree with someone, will you prevent them from speaking?  Will you use your energy hounding and disrupting them?  And then count that as some sort of victory?  I certainly hate Paul Watson (a patriarchal and egotistical figure in the world of animal rights), but if Watson came to my town to speak, I would not be snatching the microphone away.  I would protest outside the venue, write angry letters to the editor; making it known that I disagree, and why I disagree.  But I would still not think it appropriate to take away his right to speak.

As for Lee Hall, I love the writing and the activism that comes from this person because there I do see the big-picture focus, the wide-angle lens missing in the SHAC activists’ view of the world.  Hall has an overarching vision which is connected and hopeful, and a style of writing that is subtle and passionate and full of care for human and non-human animals, and for the biosphere.  I wonder if those who disrupted the session had taken the time to read any of Hall’s articles (mostly on Dissident Voice), or to take a look at the archives at the Friends of Animals website to see the breadth and depth of activism Hall is engaged with in the United States, if  they would have paused before disrupting this person.

Lee Hall has written a response to the event here.  It’s an interesting read and a good rebuttal.

sounds delicious

- a vegetarian cookbook about wild foods.

That’s a true locavore – someone who’s not afraid of hunting dandelions, munching chickweed, and making soup from stinging nettles.  These are delicious, fresh, local foods with great amounts of minerals and vitamins.  They are (usually) perennials who help hold the soil and bring up minerals from deeper layers, improving the soil for more sensitive plants.  They are plants who give their pollen for the humble bumblebees.  Why not celebrate them by partaking in some of their harvest?

Few people realize that the local environment … has sources of foods that are delicious, healthful, and organic, including herbs, greens, fruit, berries, nuts, seeds, and even mushrooms.

-Steve Brill

letter-writing; more on Jason Kenney

In case you are interested, I am pasting in a copy of the letter I wrote to Jason Kenney regarding Canada’s Immigration policies.  Feel free to use parts of it if you are writing to Kenney about these issues.  For now, my letter was polite, much as I wanted to add some scathing and deeply sarcastic commentary.

I did not like what I found on the internet when researching my letter.  Kenney seems like a very socially-conservative person, who is keen on implementing policies that hurt people who are vulnerable.  He is against abortion, supports Israel against Palestine, and is closing Canada’s doors to refugees.  His web site (oh yes, he has his own website!) has a heading for Canadian Sovereignty which links to the Department of Indian Affairs.  And there is a lot of noise about him running for Prime Minister at some point.

Now that I’m away from Victoria, I’m finally starting to feel like an engaged citizen again.  (I don’t want to get into it, but a lot of the activists in Victoria were unpleasant in many ways, and I felt alienated amongst them, and discouraged from being active in the community).  And I’m worried about Kenney.

———————

Dear Jason Kenney,

I am writing to you to register my objection to the recent policies you have announced regarding Canadian Immigration.  Specifically, I have read with dismay about your decision to impose visa restrictions on Mexican and Czech visitors to Canada, and now your plans to limit the number of refugee applications accepted in 2010.

I understand that there are problems with the refugee system, with many thousands of claimants waiting for their applications to be processed.  However, I would think it reasonable for the government to allocate the necessary funds and personnel to process this backlog, rather than suddenly imposing visa restrictions upon all visitors, including tourists.  As a tax payer and a citizen I am happy to have my contributions go towards providing safe haven for those who need it.  I do not think it is right to make it more difficult for refugees to apply, or to discourage tourism from Mexico and the Czech Republic to Canada by imposing visa restrictions.

I fear that Canada may appear to international onlookers to have succumbed to the xenophobia rampant in the United States.  I am afraid that refugees are being turned away and are facing torture and death in their countries as a result of our refusal.  As well, I object to the dismissal of ‘economic immigrants’ as people without rights to seek a better life for themselves and their families.  All of my ancestors were ‘economic immigrants’ from Ireland, Scotland and England, in search of better prospects.  They made a living here, and as a result, I have had a good, happy and comfortable life.  With what arrogance can we turn around and close Canada’s doors to others wishing to do the same?

Please show that you truly care about upholding human rights, dignity and opportunity in Canada by cancelling the visa restrictions and arbitrary refugee claim cutoffs.  Allocate the necessary funds to swiftly process the refugee backlog.  Investigate the opportunists who are preying on refugee applicants by swindling them into filing fraudulent claims.  Intelligently advocate for the needs of Immigrants and Refugees, as it is your job to do so, instead of playing in to the fear, mistrust and misinformation currently surrounding ‘illegals’.

——————–

The Baguette Experiment (Success!)

So, last week I got super ambitious, and finally tried something that had been brewing as an idea for quite a while: home-made baguettes.  I have to report a moderate success, and a mild inkling to try it again sometime.  I guess I found it a lot of work for a little pay-off as a day-to-day thing; however, making baguettes for, say, a dinner party would be just smashing – or a great way to out-delicious most things at a potluck.  (that is, if you’re like me and you take on potlucks like competitive events).

I began with a search on the internet for levain baguette recipes.  I found a long and winding discussion at The Fresh Loaf forum, which increased my understanding.  I wanted to use levain because I had pinched some dough off the No-Knead Bread dough five days previous and popped it in the fridge.  That’s not really the technical way of making levain, but it’s basically how we do it at the bakery – hold back a small portion of dough from the day’s baking, put it in a plastic bucket loosely covered in the fridge, and then add it to the next day’s dough.  It seems to work well enough at home, too.

Anyways, what I deciphered from the Fresh Loaf website discussion was that I could substitute 10% of a baguette recipe with an equivalent 10% of levain.  The Baker’s Math was interesting to learn about too – we’ve been using it at the bakery but I never understood it until reading this.  To make things even easier, I found a baguette recipe enticing enough to try, and the same website included instructions for how to add levain to that recipe.

I began the recipe at 2:30 on one weekend afternoon, adding in 1/2 cup of the levain as the recipe indicated.  I don’t have a dough mixer, so I mixed the dough by hand in the bowl.  Then, covered the bowl of dough with cling wrap and put it in the fridge overnight.  At 8 a.m. the next morning, I took the dough from the fridge and shaped it into baguettes.  It was disgusting – cold, slimy and sloppy!  Next time, I’ll let the dough warm up first, and dust it with flour before moulding it.  Due to the addition of levain, I was able to bake off the recipe sooner than indicated.  Instead of putting it back in the fridge for another day, I left it on a warm counter, and was able to put it in the oven at 10:30 the same morning.  It took 50 minutes rather than 30, to achieve a golden, caramelized crust that had just the right look and flavour.

It was delicious!  I’m sorry I don’t have any photos, as this recipe was made in the cross-over between my Nikon FM2 and my new beautiful second-hand digital camera.  At any rate, they really were what you’d expect from quality baguettes.  They had a pleasant natural sweetness from the wheat (organic sifted bread flour), and a very hard, crusty crust.  Good flavour, good aroma, good crumb.  But … I’ll stick to the no-knead recipe for my weekly needs.  Or maybe, this no-knead baguette recipe!

Happy baking!