Two Newish Vancouver Institutions

Last night at the blogger meetup, I met Theresa, who runs Slow Food Vancouver. Basically, it’s a gourmand’s answer to fast food, and comes complete with a manifesto. I’d heard of the movement before, but didn’t realize it was so widespread and organized. Our conversation immediately reminded me of the novel Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor. The novel’s protagonist is a chef, and he categorizes his colleagues into two camps (borrowed from this review):

Chef Jeremy Papier who divides his culinary colleagues into either “Bloods” or “Crips.” A “Blood” himself, Jeremy reveres the preparation of classic French bistro cooking. “Blood cooks were respectful of tradition, nostalgic even…linked to ‘local’ by the inheritance of adoption of a culture, linked to a particular manner and place of being.” On the other hand, Crip cooks, “were post-national. They called themselves artists. They tended to stack things like mahi mahi and grilled eggplant in wobbly towers glued together with wasabi mayonnaise, and were frequently suspicious of butter.”

The Slow Food Vancouver people apparently meet regularly to, well, eat slowly, I guess. Theresa also mentioned Feast of Fields, some kind of rural celebration of foodiness.

Inexplicably, there was a story about Freecycle on the cover of today’s Vancouver Sun. Here’s the low-down:

The worldwide (!) Freecycle Network is made up of many individual groups across the globe. It’s a grassroots movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. Each local group is run by a local volunteer moderator (them’s good people).

As a man who doesn’t like a lot of stuff, this appeals to me. There’s a huge group on Vancouver Island (durned hippies!) and a sizable one in Vancouver.