Slow food lunch

Did you know that there is a fanlisting for Cauliflower? I didn't until today. Aparently the lowly vegetable has a fanbase somewhere out there in internetland. That's kind of cool, and I'm not surprised that it exists. I mean, if individual television episodes can have fanlistings, then why not cauliflower? Or brussel sprouts or mashed potatoes for that matter.

How do I know this? I was reading up on some old news on the Slow Food Vancouver website and somehow found my way to the fanlisting from there. I first heard about slow food several years ago, when I was passing through beautiful Cowichan Bay. It is one of those little places that was originally a fishing and logging town, but is now more of a place where retired people take refuge from the city.

I was hungry and I stopped at a cheese shop where a lady made her very own goat cheese from the milk of her very own goats. She then recommended that I check out the town bakery to get something to go with my cheese. It was a neat little place, specializing in artisan and organic breads and other such baked goods.

While I was there, I talked to the guy working the counter for a while. He was from Vancouver, like me, but he had left because life there is too fast paced. We were talking and the traffic reports came on for the city and he started to laugh. They were talking about stalls on the Port Mann Bridge and a five sailing wait on the Albion Ferry and an accident in the westbound lane of King George and it was all so far away. I started to laugh too. That's the reason why people move out to towns like these that aren't even big enough to have traffic lights.

We talked a bit about slow food and then he recommended another shop, where I went to get some really delicious candied salmon. In the time that it took to get lunch this way, I had a really nice walk, enjoyed the view and met all sorts of interesting people who owned the shops on the main street. I had a nice lunch.

This is how it should be, and yet for some reason or other we expect to be treated as comodities and sources of revenue for transnational corporations. Or at least that's what we put up with. Somewhere, somehow we just ceased to be human.