Wednesday Dinner

Wednesday Dinner — The dinner meal consisted of lotus root, canned corn, frozen peas, black fungus and pork ribs. The lotus root was imported from China by Watson Enterprises Inc. (URL currently under reconstruction), but the actual cost of shipping the lotus root from the farm in China to the port and then across the Pacific Ocean to Canada, and then to the distributor is nearly impossible to ascertain. The canned corn and frozen peas were both Green Giant products (www.greengiant.com). An email to them Monday has remained unanswered, so I cannot say where the two vegetables originated from, except to say that the San Joaquin Valley in CA grows over 90% of the vegetables consumed in the US (www.sustainabletable.org/issues/energy). I assume the vegetables came from there, and the cost would be roughly the same as transporting the prunes to Vancouver. The black fungus originated in Taiwan, where I come from. Once again, shipping details would be next to impossible to ascertain, except to say that the fungus would have arrived by container, but it is difficult to say whether that container would have arrived in Vancouver, Seattle or even LA. The brand is Six Fortunes (www.sixfortune.ca). The pork ribs came from a farm in the Paradise Valley region of Alberta. The pigs were trucked to Vancouver and slaughtered and packaged by Donald’s Fine Foods (www.donaldsfinefoods.com). The distance between Paradise Valley and Richmond, BC is 1,421 km. The same calculation would apply to the cost of shipping the pigs, except that live animals are given more room than produce or other foodstuffs, and the cost of fuel would be greater because all the transportation would be through Canada, which has higher diesel fuel costs.