TEDxWaterloo: A Salon of Food

What’s a TEDx anyway?

TEDx is a nonprofit organization dedicated to “Ideas Worth Spreading,” as their tagline indicates. Born in the mid-1980s, it is an acronym that I might describe as a sort of Venn diagram with “TED” located in that central realm where all three of the circles intersect, coalesce, and elide: it combines technology, entertainment, and design. It’s pretty funky.

And, so, what’s a TEDxWaterloo on food?

What's up TED? Carrots are food; but carrots as food aren't necessarily a TEDxWaterloo topic, though I imagine they could be.

Well, that’s a group of local TEDx’ers who are, they say themselves, “tapping into the local hotbed of creativity, technology, education and innovation” and blending the skills and talents that have been nurtured–and are nurturing–Tedx-worthy stuff here in WatReg.

This volunteer crew is in its third year of operation or so, and they recently twigged on the salon idea; hence, a more intimate TED produced on a smaller scale that more more tightly focusses on a single issue or topic.

The recent “Coffee House” salon held at Hacienda Sarria was an evening of food, starting with a coffee demo by the good folks at Matter of Taste. Phong and Dawn Tran have quickly established themselves in the coffee market locally in three locations (including the Hacienda) in Waterloo and Kitchener. I’ll point out the downtown of Kitchener is nothing less than a coffee Mecca with something approaching two dozen (yes, nearly 24) coffee shops (see my article here).

Dawn presented a coffee 101-style primer on the best way to make coffee (steeping it like tea, more or less) and used a pretty funky looking, and classic, device from about a century or more ago. I just happen to use fresh ground beans and a French press method to make coffee–and I can’t drink it any other way.

Old meets new: Technology from a couple of centuries ago meets today's interest in real food, its basic qualities and global social responsibility with care for fair trade.

Next up, Asia Nelson, a local academic, gave the crowd of what must have been nearly 100 folks her treatise on food and culture.

Her approach was a strictly academic one (I wondered if other presenters would be able to use “hegemonic” in their chats), and, while touching down with several interesting points, I thought slightly missed the tenor of the evening and with it a real opportunity to provide a theoretical reading (and a foundational support) for the idea of local food and a burgeoning “food culture”–a term that largely still needs to be defined, shaped, and theorized.

Asia Nelson presents: a big theoretical leap from vampirism to foodism but worth considering.

Regardless, Nelson’s approach typifies beautifully TEDx–it opens dichotomies, poses questions, deconstructs ideologies, and challenges assumptions while seeking new questions to be asked and further assumptions to be dismantled. There were, indeed, ideas worth spreading. And that is a good part of what is needed in every community who cares about where it is going.

Just to point out, the night included a previously recorded video presentation by the inestimable Jamie Oliver.

Technology is not going to save us: a video image of a previous TED U.S. presentation by Jamie Oliver

Kimberley Love was up next, and I was immediately touched by her description of the family farm.

Love’s was a fast-paced, informative talk that similarly challenged on a visceral level and hit at the solar plexus with its images and comments on the decline of our food safety and security.

Today, with all of our techno-wonderment and the ease with which we have bent over to hi-tech (and perhaps especially so in Waterloo Region), it is tormenting to realize the food we serve our children today–right now at their very next meal–is less nutritious than it was only 30 years ago. That is sad and frightening.

We are in trouble with this aspect, and technology ain’t gunna save us folks. ‘Nuff said.

Kimberley Love: a farmhouse "made of clover." We need to get back to reality.

Now, in addition to some lovely Rosewood wine and scrumptious crudites and snax from the inimitable Little Mushroom Catering, the TEDx salon finished the evening with a delicious presentation on local food–but more importantly, real food–and cooking demonstration from a man who has set a standard for such an approach in just a few years: Nick Benninger of Uptown 21.

Benninger and bacon: he cooks for "real."

Food should be simple, real, prepared with respect and made with love, to paraphrase Benninger. That’s mostly all that matters, is the way that I read him. And we need to get back to that.

How? Well, he demonstrated it with Kim Love, who supplied him with some maple syrup from her neck of the woods in beautiful Grey County. What became very clear–and aromatically so– is that it’s all about the connection between food and farmers and restaurants and chefs. And diners and home cooks.

As I noshed on Benninger’s maple-candied bacon crepe, it seems to me that this TEDx salon–and indeed every TED event–was about making everything real again … let’s do that people: let’s make it real.

Well done, TEDx Waterloo!

Engaged at TEDx Waterloo Salon