39,102: Random shots at the locally-grown food movement

Can't wait to cross that 40,000 mark. Indigo managed to pass it handily, easily writing more than twice as much as me in the same amount of time. But just you wait until you see what she's come up with. It's epic.

I'm posting an excerpt from a conversation between Grace and Edie at Jackie's Place. In this iteration of Jackie's Place, it is a "locally-grown food" restaurant, which for some reason I have decided to make fun of for no particular reason.

And I am posting a picture that came up under the image search "bedazzler drunk".

Their conversation was interrupted briefly by the wait staff. Feeling that they should order something in order to justify the fact that they were taking up a table while a line up of over 20 people gathered at the door, they each asked for the “Razmatazz Local Food Organic Special”, not really taking the time to check what that entailed. Jackie himself took their order. Jackie the owner and operator, had become enthralled with the local food movement as a solution to environmental degradation and was gradually changing over the entire menu to include dishes made from ingredients that were all harvested from within a 10-block radius. While this definitely cut down on environmental harm of transporting food, it did somewhat limit the cuisine. As both Grace and Edie were about to discover, the Razmatazz Local Food Organic Special consisted of a stew of water, dirt and leaves with a smack of ham. Basil, rosemary and thyme, grown in the Jackie’s Place window box, provided the spices.

“So what are we going to do?” asked Edie, as Jackie rustling off in his locally-harvested and handcrafted pants made of grass and bugs. “We can’t just sit here like sitting ducks. We’ve got to do something. We have to both stop Ford’s cuts, and also prevent Ford from bringing the wrath of his Ford nation upon your head.”

“I agree. That’s why I came to see you today. I feel like you must be on to something. You mentioned in your last blog that Ford might have a more direct and lucrative interest at stake. What did you mean by that?”

Edie, who barely remembered having written the words, struggled to remember what she had been referring to. “To be perfectly honest, I have no idea. I was really just sounding off. It’s not like blogs have any particular standards of accuracy to live up to. I figured I could just make baseless accusations and no one would ever call me on it.”

Grace laughed. She made a mental note to herself to include Edie’s views on blogging in her ethnography of mommy blogs, and then remembered that she had decided to leave academia behind her forever. “Well, regardless, I think you were on to something without even really knowing it. It was right after you posted that blog that the police were called in to attack the daycare. Ford over played his hand when he did that. The overkill by calling in the entire police force to attack a daycare signalled desperation. I think that we should pursue that angle, see if there really is some personal benefit that Ford thinks he can gain.”

Edie looked sceptical, but was trying to be polite about it. “I admit that I was surprised that Ford went ahead with the attack on the daycare, but there could be any number of reasons for him doing so. On the other hand, it was an uncharacteristically bumbling political move with a lot of risk. And it has certainly backfired on him. The media reports have been scathing. And more than that, there has also been a real shift in the support for his agenda to cut city services. Suddenly there is reporting reminding voters that Ford campaigned promising that he would not cut city services, now he is vowing to cut $700 million in services. He paid KPMG $3 million in city money to find all the “gravy” he promised to cut, and the KPMG reports have all found that there is virtually no gravy to be found. I’m not saying the shift in opinion, at least in the media, can be attributed to his attack on the children at the daycare centre. There is some momentum at the moment that we can build on. I’d be willing to do some digging, see if there is anything Ford has to hide.”

Jackie had appeared with their stews, and placed them gently and lovingly before them. Both Edie and Grace stared with some concern at the brown, muddy liquid with pieces of green leaves floating in the oily ham-laden slick on top.

“This isn’t what I expected when I ordered the Razmatazz special,” observed Grace sotto voce, so that Jackie wouldn’t hear.

“Just be thankful that you didn’t order the Bedazzler Luncheon,” responded Edie. “It tastes even worse than it sounds. Jackie found an old Bedazzler in the basement last week, and since that fell within his “10 block” radius rule for locally grown food, he simply threw the whole thing into a pot of water and boiled it for six hours.”