What's 4 Dinner, UVIC Sustainable Food, UVIC Anniversary of Guerilla Gardening, Campus Community Garden, CUAC

March 24, 2011

I discovered I live only a couple of blocks away from an innovative food-related business in Victoria: What's 4 Dinner (http://www.whats4dinner.ca/ ).What's 4 Dinner is a new concept in food services which helps people to prepare affordable family-sizing meals by providing a menu of meals each month that customers can select from, and schedule a time to come to the What's 4 Dinner and use the ready-to-use fresh ingredients to make the two meals (12 serving), leaving the dishes for the staff to deal with. It's just an interesting new split between public-private, profit-low-cost kind of cooking, which the website says results in meals that cost $4-6 per servicing.

I walked through the UVIC cafeteria today and noticed a big sign up that spoke about the amount of locally grown food UVIC uses, the food waste it composts,etc. I thought it was interesting to see how much work has been done on campus around food security issues while I wasn't looking (http://web.uvic.ca/sustainability/Food.htm ).

Bliss Cafe, EAT Magazine, Food Not Bombs Volunteering

March 6, 2011

For breakfast I ate some of the house's leftover rice with vegetable stir-fry. For lunch I went down to Bliss Cafe ( http://www.cafebliss.ca/ ) and ordered a Chia Seed Pudding, which was $11.20 for a small bowl (complimentary chai tea). It's expensive, but raw, vegan food tends to be. But one can bring food home from a restaurant and make other meals out of the leftovers to stretch the food, like putting this sweet, cinnamon, batter-like pudding over porridge (okay, I put it over rice again because that was what I had). Also at Bliss, I came across a copy of EATmagazine ( http://www.eatmagazine.ca/news/bc/vanisland ) which is a magazine about food on Vancouver Island; it's full of great info about local food. For a one dollar deposit, Bliss also gave me a glass jar for my tea to go in, and I had brought my own tupper-ware to take out the rest of my meal in. I passed by Victoria City Hall, and noticed that they have a small demonstration food garden on the Pandora side of the building.

Education and Food Security

Another site that lacks any formal policy is environmental education. Approaches to environmental education can vary greatly within BC since policy cannot direct what is being taught, the allocation of resources, teacher training and the development of textbooks and resources. Policy changes have seen little advancement, which could be due to the decentralized responsibility of implementing curriculum across school boards to ministries. Education is a site where learning can lead to political engagement and change. Society is at an environmental tipping point, the ball bearing at the top of a mountain that could be pushed towards crisis or reorganization. If we formally provide students with the knowledge to become aware and concerned citizens with worldviews that encompass nature, their choices may move society away from crisis. Not changing is not an option and the school should be a site where critical engagement with environmental issues is encouraged. Currently students environmental education is at the discretion of their teachers; some students may have teachers who are passionate about the health of oceans while others lose out on opportunities. Food Security provides a great space where students, teachers and communities can create partnerships and learn from one another. But until a formal educational policy is in place, environmental knowledge will continue to be crammed in where it fits and not acknowledged as important. Organizations in Victoria have found a way to enter into the school systems and fill the gap by educating students informally. Lifecycles Growing Schools Program implements long-term term organic food gardens on school grounds. "Gardens are used as an educational tool to engage students, teachers, parents, and school community members in learning how to grow food and as a classroom for these topics." For more information contact growingschools@lifecyclesproject.ca.