Newfoundlanders and Their Love of White Food

The past two weeks I have been away from the house because we had our floors refinished and had to bug-off for a bit. So off we drove to a cabin out there in Riverhead, Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, about an hour's drive from here in St. John's. And as I have said in an earlier post, the summer here on the Avalon has been simply dreadful, hence the irony of wanting to eat warm foods in July. August hasn't been much better. And out there on the Avalon over at Harbour Grace, the weather did not serve us well either. So we went museum hunting since these activities would be indoors. We would have preferred walking on more trails, but we did manage to squeeze in the incredible Skerwink Trail in Port Rexton outside of Trinity, and the Burnt Head trail in Cupids, which was awesome (or awe-inspiring as I finally learned the actual definition on Q's contest of misused words. Peruse won the prize, and I can see why. I had no idea we've bastardized the meaning so much. Clearly, none of us have ever bothered to peruse the definition of peruse.)

Needless to say, while we visited all these museums, drove around in the rain, what have you, we got rather hungry. And it shouldn't surprise anyone when I say these various restaurants that seem to be dotted around every which where in little towns with cute, child-friendly names like Heart's Content and Dildo do not serve vegan and hardly any vegetarian fare, if at all. My wife, who I can safely say is a die-hard vegan extremist, managed to eat completely vegan during the whole trip, but I didn't seem to be able to do it, and don't think I would have enjoyed myself much if I had tried. I am certainly not going to beat myself up for eating cheese and butter despite my deep feelings about avoiding such foods. This very topic became very heated on the facebook group nl vegans. When in Rome, or the Avalon Peninsula...

As I have said earlier, I am not an extremist about it, but eating vegan is a lifestyle choice at home, not necessarily on the road, which really depends on the circumstances. I am not ready to whip myself on the back and suffer silently (see Da Vinci Code) as I eat iceberg lettuce and toast because that's the only thing on the menu I will eat. I know if I was travelling in California or Washington, D. C., or England, it'd be loads easier to go veg. But that is not the case here, especially when you venture even twenty minutes out of St. John's. To boldly go where most Newfoundlanders have gone before...Actually, I've heard stories about how there are many Newfoundlanders out there who have never gone more than a few miles from their home in their entire lives. Based on my own past as a nomad having moved over 20 times, I can't imagine.

(wildhorsespubandeatery.com)

Here's a pic of what I mostly ate on my sojourn on the outskirts of St. John's. Yep, this is a Newfoundland favorite a.k.a. fish and chips. You take your cod and deep fat fry it and in case you haven't had your fill of fried foods, you get a bonus in the form of deep fat fried potatoes a.k.a. "chips." (Don't worry, I'm not dissing this dish, but I certainly wouldn't want to eat it daily.) There's also cod au gratin and pan-fried cod if you're feeling fancy. Because of various socio-political and health reasons, I choose not to eat factory farmed food, but where does cod fit on this spectrum of foods-to-avoid? The modern fishing industry is pretty damned awful, and if you're not from here you wouldn't know there's a cod moratorium because of over-fishing, which have apparently/arguably depleted the codfish-stocks here. The history (it's hammered into your brain at every single museum) tells us that fishermen seemed to think the supply of cod here would be endless. Either that or they knew it was a finite supply and decided to take as much as they could as long as it was humanly possible. They'd deal with a sans-cod sea later. Sure enough, we still have bottom-feeders left, not to mention the fact that we're dripping in oil. Without these, I'm not sure St. John's would be booming the way it is, but that's another post.

Please take a look at this picture again:

Notice anything striking? Is it on the tip of your tongue but you just can't grasp it? The word I'm looking for here is "monochromatic." Of one color. Eating this dish completely violates Veggie Daddy Rule #3: Eat a Variety of Foods. There's also a cookbook you can get, Color Me Vegan (we don't have it yet) that enforces this entire point. Whereas Clean Food organizes recipes by season to guarantee you're eating more locally, this one organizes recipes by color!

This guarantees you're eating the rainbow, across the spectrum of available nutrients. This is what you want to do when you eat, and the darker and brighter your food is, the bigger the blast of health. So keeping this point in mind, look again at the fish and chips. Umm, Newfoundland, we have a problem. We're missing some serious color in our foods. I'm not talking about the ones you can buy at Dominion or Sobey's, but at restaurants outside of St. John's. The restaurants out there don't seem to be aware that food is supposed to be colorful and bright. "Oh my god, it's so vivid." That's what we want to say about our food, but not to the point that our Quaker Oatmeal turns blue because of those oh-so-yummy dinosaur eggs the company feels will make kids eat their oatmeal if it glows blue. If my oatmeal turned blue, I'd throw it in the trash. I certainly wouldn't let my kids eat it, you can be sure of that.

At these restaurants, the food was so white. The cod was white, the bread was white, the potatoes were white, the lettuce and tomatoes were pretty much white. Their idea of a salad is iceberg lettuce with bland pink/white tomatoes and some chopped green pepper with shredded cheddar cheese. Sorry, but this is not a salad. Iceberg lettuce is not going to cut it. Why can't they serve whole wheat bread? Not in demand? (The salad I was impressed with was a Greek salad that my father got at Skippers in Bonavista. It was actually green.) But for the most part, once you get outside of St. John's, it's pretty grim out there. Again, history tells us Newfoundlanders had little choice, but this isn't history. This is today, and St. John's is slowly getting up to speed. We already have one all-vegetarian restaurant and a couple of health-food stores. You can get a seven-course vegan tasting menu at Raymond's (if you can afford it.) And it's high time the rest of us here on the rock got up to speed with the times, even if tourists are looking for the traditional jigg's dinner. But to eat this way as a lifestyle? .These restaurant owners don't seem to be aware that tourists might have other expectations. But then if they changed their menus too much, then would-be travellers who are looking for that authentic Newfoundland experience (whatever that means) wouldn't get a true taste of the rock. We certainly can't have that.