Jan Švankmajer's "Food" (Jídlo)

A fantastically bizarre live-action and claymation film in three parts - Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Jídlo reminds me of Terri Timely's "Synaesthesia" though it is more of a political allegory than a re-imagining of a condition/concept. Švankmajer has a food fixation it seems, as he has presented in many other works (and most likely in some I have not seen yet): "Picnic with Weissmann" - 1968, "Flora" - 1989, "Meat Love" - 1989,  and "Little Otik (Otesánek)" - 2000.

So, now that I have posted half of Švankmajer's filmography, go out and buy something.

Organic Turkeys and Canadian Thanksgiving

This weekend I visited my grandparents' house in Elgin, ON for Canadian Thanksgiving. As much as some of my American friends have ripped on me about the Canadian version, it is not as spurious as I first thought (or at least not a simple imitation of the American celebration): Canada's first Thanksgiving.

Over dinner, I had a bit of a "trash the current state of affairs" talk with my grandfather. It's surprising how much my liberal-minded gripes over the environment and mass industrialization can overlap with that of an old man disturbed by changes in material relations (production, labor, etc.) as well as cultural transformations (some of which I can't say I agree with him on). I get the feeling however, if he had not been raised in the first half of the 20th century with its set of traditional social and cultural values, and if people in our era hadn't turned out to be such white-collar wimps, he may have been a social democrat like his grandson.

Anyway, we got around to talking about farms and groceries. When he was younger, his idea of a farm was a varietal and familial institution - they were to have many animals, many crops and to respect the animals. Now we have mono-cropping and restrictive raising standards that force out the small or organic farmer. There are only three suppliers of meat for grocers locked into distribution contracts with companies like President's Choice or independents without affluent clientele who can support a market for organic and heritage products. These products would not be so expensive,  would be more widely-available and would not need an affluent clientele to support the market, if the restrictions imposed on farmers did not so heavily favour mass production. It seems like there is a hell of a lot of paranoia, and plenty is justified by the fear that our birds and pigs are going to be infected by wild animals.

From Tea Hill Farms.

So, following my Thanksgiving dinner and a talk of times gone by that someday I hope to reclaim, I came across this article on turkeys that better explains the challenges that small-scale farmers face today: "The Toronto Star: Turkey wars".

Happy Thanksgiving!

How food shapes our cities: Carolyn Steel on TED.com

Gourmet, America's oldest food magazine, folding

UPDATED (10/15/2009): For the last word on Gourmet, check out the Q&A with Ruth Reichl for the New York Times Magazine.

Gourmet magazine is folding. No wonder Ruth Reichl has been on high gear the last couple of years with her career aside from the magazine.

About three months ago I began to write a post on how wasteful subscriptions to magazines such as Food and Wine, Gourmet, Bon Appetit and Cook's Illustrated were. I never got around to publishing it, but now I really wish I had.

The motivation for the post came from the fact that I canceled my subscriptions to all four about a year ago, after a two year stint with each. I feel as though seventy five percent of these magazines are advertisements and the other quarter is food porn and promotional recipes and reviews.

I can't really say I am sad to see Gourmet go the way of the dinosaurs, but I will miss some of the photography.