Footnotes to a Conversation, May 23, 2022
A Left-Handed Obstacle Course
If you’re one of the 11% of people who are left-handed, you face a multitude of challenges in operating equipment as simple as a can-opener or as complicated as surgical instruments. You also face societal prejudices, being viewed as willful, sinful, or even evil. [CBC Radio]
Pizza on Horseback
“It’s called torta di ceci in Livorno, cecina in Pisa, farinata or fainé in Genoa, socca in Nice, and the fried version from Sicily is called pane e panelle. These are all the different names of the baked, chickpea-flour-base, tortilla-like pie that is part of the local street food traditions of many Mediterranean port cities, especially in Italy and France, though there’s a northern Moroccan version, called kalinti, that has Sephardic Jewish origins. As often happens when recipes are shared across regions, each city claims its own to be the original and best version, but regardless of the different names and various serving styles, these pies are all quite similar. All of them are made with fine chickpea flour soaked in water for a few hours to form a liquid mix, which is then baked.” [Whetstone Magazine]
In Sicily, chickpea flour pancake is served as the filling for a bread sandwich. In northern Sardinia, it’s baked with anchovies or onions, and there’s a sweet version filled with vanilla cream in Palermo. In Buenos Aires, you can purchase pizza with a slice of chickpea pancake on top, otherwise known as pizza a caballo (chickpea pancake). Fainá was brought to Brazil with Genoese immigrants. It’s not sure how it ended up on top of pizza, but it now goes hand in hand with football matches. [BBC]
Women’s Work
Patchwork quilts and hooked rugs: textile art is women’s work, designed to be used and yet also serving an artistic purpose.
“Whether hung over beds, laid on floors or worn on the body, textiles have a unique ability to communicate collective histories and individual stories. Over time and continents, this tradition has evolved. From Chilean arpilleras to quilts from the American South, textiles have become a powerful way to shape identity, build community and prompt political action.” Take a virtual tour of What Lies Beneath: Women, Politics, Textiles, an art exhibit currently on display in Cambridge, UK. [The Women’s Art Collection]
Dollars & Spices
I spend money on food every single week and I try to consider the source of that food and who will profit from my purchases. Oh, I buy some items that are of questionable origin and nutritional value, but I do try to shop locally and seasonally. That’s obvious when I’m shopping at the farmers’ market but not so obvious when I’m purchasing spices. I’m reproducing an extract from a Vittles article by Ben Benton as it made me think.
“My local coffee shop tells me in painstaking detail of the high-welfare criteria of its beans and milk, but would they know, or care, where the cardamom in their buns comes from? ... By the time exporters, spice companies and supermarkets have had their hand in moving the spices around the world, the whole process might have taken years; two at best, up to six or seven at worst. Any farm that manages to produce a consistent supply throughout the year will need to be using vast quantities of sprays and water and heat to create consistent conditions, or if not that, then someone along the line will have to be pimping and adorning the poor-quality crop that they can produce, and none of that can be good; not for us or the environment, nor for the flavour of the crop itself.” [Vittles]
I purchase my spices from Épices de Cru and The Silk Road Spice Merchant. Both family-run businesses tell you where the spices are from and they are sure to be fresher and of better quality than what you find in the supermarket.
Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I also post occasional articles on other dates, including frequent book reviews and travel tales.
If you share my love of nature, check out EcoFriendly West, an online publication encouraging environmental initiatives in Western Canada, and Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces.